On Wednesday, Texas executed white supremacist John William King, 44, for the 1998 dragging death of James Byrd Jr.
King’s death by lethal injection was a blessing compared to the one he and two other white men afforded the 49-year-old Byrd. They beat him, hooked a logging chain to him, then dragged him with a vehicle for a couple of miles.
Why? I don’t know. For laughs, I guess. And because Byrd was black.
I’m OK with King being dead. Given his crime, he was using oxygen that would have served society more favorably in the lungs of rats. The world is a better place for his departure.
Note: Come to think of it, the world would be a better place if most of us were suddenly to depart, but that’s a whole other column.
Having said that about King, I’m not a big fan of the death penalty. First, because I don’t think the state should be in the business of killing its citizens. Second, because it’s far too easy of an out for King and those like him.
What I am a fan of is people paying for their crimes, and by that I mean in actual dollars or societal progress. I also mean actual crimes — not just cutting someone off in traffic, playing music too loudly, or for having a different opinion.
For the sake of argument — because this is what it’ll turn out to be — let’s just go with the worst of the worst:
Murderers.
Keep an open mind now. I see no reason why King — whose life was determined to be forfeit — couldn’t have spent the rest of it as a participant in endeavors beneficial to society as a whole.
Convicted murderers like King could help us colonize Mars. If you think sending convicts to some inhospitable place is a waste of time, all I can say is that you simply have to send enough of them. They’ll figure it out eventually. Look what it did for Australia.
There are many wonderful things yet to be discovered simply for the lack of trying it out on deserving human beings.
Consider victim restitution. King and his kind could be used as replacements for crash-test dummies, which really don’t tell us all we need to know about high-speed head-on collisions.
Video cameras, electrodes and audio monitors, properly installed, would capture every detail to improve vehicle safety. It could also be shown on a pay-per-view basis, where I predict it would be a smash ratings hit (pun intended).
The substantial proceeds would then go to the family of the victim(s) with maybe even some left over to reimburse the taxpayer for previous incarceration upkeep.
The deterrent factor? Right now, the threat of a long prison stay followed by the remote possibility of a painless death hasn’t seemed to slow down murderers. But what if it worked like this?
Potential victim • “Please don’t kill me.”
Potential killer • [Hmm, what if I get caught, convicted and used to test how close humans can get to the sun without protection]. “OK. Sorry for scaring you. Have a nice day.”
All of this sounds terribly inhumane, but then so are the crimes these potential future pioneers of research are committing. Why not have them give something back before they go?
Robert Kirby is The Salt Lake Tribune’s humor columnist. Follow Kirby on Facebook.
