House of Eratosthenes

Okay as a science fiction writer, how would you set this up. How would you write the ultimate parable about a dystopian society with a confused, irrational opposition to the death penalty.

How about…how about this.

A rapist and butcher of young girls, who has been spared the death penalty due to his traumatic childhood on previous occasions — has wearied of the exercise and now taken the initiative to bar his boyhood exigencies from his latest trial. Let us say — he says this: “If they sentence me to death, I’m good to go.”

Write that up. Whatsamatta, you afraid no publisher would accept it? Too unrealistic?

Behold.

James Leslie Karis Jr. said neither his tormented childhood nor his severe psychological problems could lessen his responsibility for what he called a cold-blooded attack on two women 25 years ago.
:
Karis was 27 when he kidnapped two county welfare workers on their morning break and drove them to a remote spot five miles north of Placerville.

He ordered the women to undress, tied them up and raped one. Afterward, he made the women dress and turn around. They pleaded for their lives and prayed aloud, but Karis shot them in the back and neck. Peggy Pennington, 34, died. The other woman survived to identify Karis.

He was caught during another kidnapping and attempted rape in Sonoma County.

Despite his second chance, Karis has dismissed the experts’ assessments as “psychobabble.” He said he’d rather be executed than spend the rest of his life in prison.

“If they sentence me to death,” he said Thursday, “I’m good to go.”

Sacrameto Bee has a more beefed-out story with a good bit more detail:

One of the women died, but the other, who had pretended to be dead, later identified Karis as her assailant. His trial was moved from El Dorado County to Sacramento Superior Court, where he was convicted and sentenced to death.

In 1998, appellate lawyers persuaded U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton to overturn Karis’ death sentence, and Karlton’s decision was upheld by the federal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Karlton concluded the jurors who sentenced Karis to death might have ruled differently if his attorneys had presented evidence of his abusive childhood.

Leaving the convictions in place, the judge ordered Karis resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole unless a new penalty phase was initiated by prosecutors.

It was, and preparations — including an intensive jury selection process — have been under way for months.

But Thursday morning, just as proceedings were about to start, Karis asked Judge Trena Burger-Plavan for permission to dismiss his lawyers, Michael Bigelow and Steven Bailey, and to represent himself.

Karis said he did not agree with Bigelow’s strategy to present evidence of his childhood traumas.

“He’s going to drag out the defense for two months with all this garbage about my family history, my background, and all that stuff which doesn’t really amount to a hill of beans, in my opinion,” he said, according to a transcript of the session. “And that’s why I choose to defend myself.”

Karis said he would rather return quickly to death row at San Quentin Prison than spend more time in the Sacramento County jail.

“I want to get out of Sacramento as fast as possible,” he told the judge. “I want this trial to be as short as possible.”

“I just want to get back to the row and do my time until they execute me,” he said. “I don’t really care if I get the death penalty.”

So we got here a situation where someone’s guilty as sin, and we use bullshit to keep him alive. To the extent that the guilty person tires of the bullshit and it’s up to him to say…just knock it off.

Because, hey. We can’t recognize that internally without him pointing it out. Our justice system is just too…enlightened.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

For The Anti-Death-Penalty Types XMonday, April 16th, 2007

For The Anti-Death-Penalty Types X
Monday, April 16th, 2007