The Execution

Tropical storm Ida, the remnants of Hurricane Ida, is rolling over my area right now. The sky is black, tree limbs are snapping, we have torrential rain. My yard is a carpeted with dead leaves which have been ripped off their stems.

This all adds to my mood for today. Because today is the day that the DC sniper, John Allen Muhammad, is to be executed. We lived in Virginia when he and his teen cohort, John Lee Malvo, went on their horrific killing spree. This changed my life forever, because I had always been against the death penalty. Then this thing happened, and my beliefs changed radically.

There is no way you can possibly imagine the hell these two put the people of my area through. We were ordered not to go out of our homes unless absolutely necessary. Malvo and Muhammad had let it be known that they were going to execute another school child and, because they were in my area near Richmond Va and had shot and killed their latest victim not all that far from my community, the FBI came in and ordered our schools closed down. For a week, my kids could not attend classes, which is fine because they were terrified to venture out our door. Just going to the grocery store or fill up our gas tanks was a frightening thing. The Guardian Angels, a pseudo vigilante group from NYC, came down to man the gas pumps in my area. Even crossing the street to visit a neighbor left one looking over a shoulder, just in case the white van, we had been erroneously warned to be on the watch for, came rolling by with a high powered rifle aimed at our heads.

Eventually they were caught. And I, the staunch defender of human dignity and anti death penalty beliefs, wanted them dead. I wanted them to fry. I wanted these monsters who had scarred my kids and taken away peace of mind, to suffer, to hurt, to be obliterated off the face of the earth.

This left me tormented. I truly believed it was a horrible desire. I could no longer honestly say I was against the death penalty. I had spent so many years arguing against what I believed was another example of mankind's atrocity against mankind, and now I hungered for it! It took me a long, long time to reconcile my heart.

Now the day has come. Tonight at 9pm Eastern time, John Allen Muhammad will die by lethal injection. Am I glad? Do I feel vindicated? No! I want to cry. I want to lie down and curl up in a ball. I continue to be tormented because this man destroyed my sense of altruism. A part of me will not recover. There is no justice. There is nothing but sorrow and despair.

I feel I should say a little prayer for his soul. But I can't bring myself to do that. Instead, I will eat breakfast, take a shower and head out to work. I'll come home tonight, fix dinner, read, go to bed. And before I fall asleep, I'll turn on the news to watch the reports of the execution. Then I will turn off the light and go to sleep. And hope I do not dream.