Teresa Lewis put to death for murders of husband, stepson

Lately when I see a sunrise, I’m reminded of a parlor game I played this summer at the artists’ colony where I had the good fortune of being briefly in residence. In that game, “Mafia,” a player agrees to be “God” while most other players are “villagers,” except for the one or two Mafia who choose which villager will die in a given night. (There’s also an angel, but the angel’s role is too complicated to explain here.) God’s role is to set the sun so the Mafia can do its dirty work. Afterward he or she announces something like “Once again the sun rises upon the village, and all awaken except [dead person], who is dead.”

Today we all awaken except Teresa Lewis, who died last night at the hands of executioners employed by the commonwealth following her sentence to death by a jury representing the Virginian people. Which is to say that if you’re a taxpaying citizen of Virginia, you participated yesterday in the killing of Teresa Lewis.

In case death penalty advocates are about to quit reading, nothing I just said is less than quantifiable. Teresa Lewis was put to death by the state of Virginia, an entity that exists as a metaphorical representation of the will of the people who live here. Its eight million citizens agreed by majority decision to allow courts to choose death as an ultimate punishment, and that’s what was bestowed upon Lewis last night. If you support the death penalty, you’re probably happy to have shared in the responsibility for yesterday’s murder. If you’re opposed to it, you’re probably disturbed.

Reports the Guardian, “[Lewis] spent her final day with her family … [and] asked for her last meal to consist of fried chicken breasts, a dessert and a Dr Pepper. During her last few minutes she prayed and held hands with her chaplain and with her lawyer, Jim Rocap. She walked the ten steps from her cell to the execution chamber where she was strapped down. Witnesses said she looked terrified.”

Although the Guardian’s reportage of Lewis’s terror isn’t intended to titillate, some in Hampton Roads have thrilled at the thought of it. I’m thinking of local blogger Archie Whitehill, who blogs at HamptonRoads.com. Whitehill wrote yesterday in a Facebook reply to Jay Ford’s If You Read the Paper that “Lewis is defective and must be destroyed. Not revenge, just tossing out the human equivalent of a broken toaster.”

Since he penned those sentences that compare Lewis to a defective applicance, I’d like to believe Whitehill paused momentarily to consider what they meant. Perhaps he thought the abhorrence of his prattle would obscure its illogicality. It’s too bad his thoughts don’t at least a smidgen of sense, because if they did, I’d turn around and compare him to some other type of broken appliance right back, such as a blender. I wish I could explain what I mean, but if I did, my statement wouldn’t be sufficiently parallel to Whitehill’s. Suffice to say I’ve read his Facebook comments often enough to know they can be defective.

Let me be clear: if Teresa Lewis’s case was exceptional because of her gender, it’s not because I think sentencing standards should differ by gender any more than they should by race. No, the exceptionality of Lewis’s case lies in her condemnation to die while the men who pulled the trigger got life in prison. A woman with an IQ of 72 has died for a crime she planned but didn’t commit, but the actual murderers of her husband and stepson live on because a defining characteristic of criminal sentencing in Virginia is its blatant unfairness on the basis of every characteristic against which state law prevents discrimination.

I could write ten thousand words on Virginia’s sick relationship to capital punishment and still not feel I’ve adequately expressed myself, but for now let me simply direct you to author and lawyer John Grisham’s eloquent column on this in the Washington Post. Grisham concludes that the “inconsistencies [in Lewis’s sentence] mock the idea that ours is a system grounded in equality before the law.” The first woman to be put to death by the commonwealth in a century has died for a crime committed by men who will never suffer for it at that level, men who admittedly recognized Lewis as someone who could be easily manipulated. Her execution was held anyway, because it satisfied the bloodthirst of death penalty advocates who ignore its injustice. Their bloodthirst now taints all Virginians, because in a representative democracy we—i.e. you and I—are the government that puts people to death.

Oh, and however you feel about capital punishment, wouldn’t it be nice to quit giving Iran easy excuses to call us out for human rights violations?

Beach OKs purchase of potential light-rail property

I can’t find anything on this in today’s online addition, but last week the Pilot reported that today, 24 September, Virginia Beach would finally close on the purchase of property it will probably use to extend light rail to the Oceanfront.

Virginia commits all $694.5M of highway stimulus

I don’t have it in me today to get upset all over again over $700M worth of road widenings.

Try it, you’ll like it

Congestion pricing is popular.

Washington’s Capital Bikeshare launches, bringing biggest-yet system to the U.S.

Couldn’t Norfolk have something like this?

Transportation costs made transparent

Abogo, “a tool that lets you discover how transportation impacts the affordability and sustainability of where you live,” will show the real transportation costs in your zip code. Mine, 23517, is said to have an average transportation cost of $661/month, which is lower than the regional average of $824. The transportation CO2 impact for an average household in 23517 is identified as 0.36 metric tons/month, whereas the regional average is more than double that amount: 0.73.

Race and ethnicity: Hampton Roads

This fascinating map by digital cartographer Eric Fischer charts the racial divides in South Hampton Roads, and it’s but one in a series of portraits of 100 American cities. You can look at others by clicking “newer” and “older” in the Flickr slideshow.

Food bank has ‘pretty dire’ need of donations

There is “a critical shortage in donations” at the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia. According to the Pilot, “items needed most are peanut butter, canned soups, meats, tuna, vegetables, juice, cereal, macaroni and cheese, pasta, and pasta sauces.” These can be dropped off at the food bank at 800 Tidewater Drive, or at various area drop-off sites including all Walgreens and Farm Fresh locations.

Auf Wiedersehen jet: London to Frankfurt by train

It will soon be possible to travel from London to Germany by high-speed train in 3 hours 55 minutes, according to this article that names many enviable European inter-city travel times. One is “Barcelona-Madrid, 2 hrs 40 minutes.” That’s a 400-mile journey. Here are some places about 400 miles from Norfolk: Stamford, CT, Pittsburgh, PA, Asheville, NC, Columbia, SC.

The White House will defend DADT against the Log Cabin Republicans

We all know by now that the Senate has failed to pass a defense authorization bill that called for ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. What hasn’t been as heavily reported is that the Obama White House never lifted a finger to lobby for passage of this bill even behind the scenes. Thanks in part to Obama’s being AWOL on it, the bill was defeated at the hands of cynical bigots even when seventy-five percent of Americans say they oppose DADT. Now, today, the Times reports that Obama will continue to defend the execrable policy in court.

If you think Barack Obama supports gay rights and is only hedged in by political concerns, consider the following: With 75% support, ending DADT is an obvious political winner. The repeal was tied to a defense authorization bill, the Republican filibuster of which is denying funding to our troops in the field. What would Republicans be saying about Democrats if they voted against a similar bill brought up by a Republican majority?

They’d be crying treason, that’s what. So why can’t the Democrats learn to play similar hardball? For the president to state simply that his opponents have now voted against the funding of troops would cost him no political capital. His failure to do it can therefore mean only one thing: he doesn’t care. That is, he doesn’t support gay rights any more than he supports the many other groups who fought so hard for his election: Latinos, gays, feminists, pro-choice voters, educators, environmentalists, the poor. He prefers spending his time at $30,000-per-head fundraisers whining about how “the far left” vilifies him.

Fifty-seven senators supported ending DADT on Wednesday. Federal judges have declared it unconstitutional. Colin Powell and John Shalikashvili want to get rid of it, as do a number of four-star generals. It’s an odious, nonsensical law that causes enormous harm and does no good. The equivocating cowards who have refused to end it now need to see that there’s real depth to the alleged 75% support I cited above. If all the straight people who claim to be part of that 75% would outright refuse to vote for complacent Democrats who don’t care enough to lift a finger, then DADT would quickly go away.

To those who argue that the Senate was dominated by Republican no votes on Wednesday: yes, that party overwhelmingly voted against strengthening our military by extending basic rights to the thousands upon thousands of gays who serve and would like to serve. But the vote was abetted by President Obama’s silence. Once again, if you think Barack Obama believes in equal rights for gay Americans, just imagine George Bush huddling in the White House invisibly mute while Democrats filibustered a defense spending bill during two wars.

The last time I wrote here about my disgust at Obama’s homophobia, a commenter said something like “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” That comment struck me as indicative of a widespread tribal paradigm in which Democrats are Obama’s “friends” and Republicans his “enemies.” We’re on the Democratic team or the Republican team, and we should exult or despair accordingly when our team wins or loses. Well, Obama may have been on my team in 1996, when he supported gay marriage “unequivocally,” but whatever part of him was willing to say so is long gone. I cannot discern anywhere in our president an iota of willingness to fight for gay rights, and I therefore do not consider him a “friend.”