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When Capital Punishment Must Prevail

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By TOM JACKSON

tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: February 13, 2009

For genuinely civilized members of this (as far as we know, still) free nation, few acts of our democratic republic surpass executions for their ability to induce gooseflesh.

Perhaps it is the pronounced length of time that elapses between the triggering deed and fulfillment of the death warrant. By the time most condemned prisoners make it to the execution chamber, oftentimes decades and dozens of mind-numbing appeals after the murders for which they've been convicted, the passion has flown.

Except for the victim's (or victims') surviving loved ones - and even they, sometimes, express ambivalence - few of us are inclined to muster much of the energy for any single, specific execution that fuels, generally, the public's endorsement of capital punishment as a suitable end for our worst criminals.

That is to be expected. The horror passes; the bad actor remains. But to what end? Consider Wayne Tompkins, put down Wednesday for his strangulation murder, nearly 26 years ago, of 15-year-old Lisa DeCarr, in Tampa's Seminole Heights. Despite his heinous act, Tompkins had long ago ceased to be of any consequence to society.

Harking To Avenging Angels
When, finally, the courts decided they'd heard enough from Tompkins' attorneys, we had to be reminded why this bald, flabby man with the low brows and the vacant eyes was scheduled for a date with state-administered poisons.

Oh, right. Junior high girl. Sexual advances. Bathrobe sash. Shallow grave. Awful. Just awful. Hmmmm. Has he hurt anybody since his conviction? And the state's cost to fend off his appeals was ... how much?!

So, yes, I get all that. Strip out the passion, account for the ability of a stout cage to neuter the misanthrope's urge to harm surviving innocents, throw in taxpayer-funded attorneys' fees, maybe spice it with what may be unknowable - have we really (really, really, 100 percent) nailed the right guy? - and our acquiescence to the scheduled ending of another human's life begins to feel downright creepy.

Then our gaze shifts to the details beneath another headline - "Death Penalty Sought In Killings" - and we are reminded how even an open, engaged, generally enlightened and usually rational society, one founded on and eternally summoned to the highest human ideals, can justify the utter, complete and final elimination of its most despicable characters.

Saved From Ourselves

In late July 2006, teens Derek Pieper, a fixture in the Wesley Chapel lacrosse community, and Raymond Veluz, an aspiring writer, were discovered on a lonely Trilby road, facedown and riddled with bullets in their backs. Ultimately, authorities tracked down and arrested Tyree Jenkins and Luc Pierre-Charles Jr., the latter when alert U.S. Marshals unraveled the old hiding-under-clothes-behind-a-bed ploy that foiled law enforcement officers from the legendary Pinkertons right through J. Edgar Hoover.

While the victims weren't necessarily utter innocents - investigators surmise a pot score involving the pair was part of the back story - the calculation, brutality and demonstrative qualities (the authors were sending a chilling message to any others who might cross them) of the killings reveal a special brand of cruelty, bound up in soulless evil.

Given these extreme circumstances, whoever was responsible for the slaughter has rendered himself/themselves expendable, reducible, disposable. If the evidence clamps down on Jenkins and Pierre-Charles, the ultimate punishment applies, and shall apply, long after our passions have responded to other tugs.

In the cold, unforgiving light of drafting statutes, the Legislature has established, and the highest court in the nation has concurred, that there remain times when Hammurabi's code applies. In such cases, the dispassionate law stands to defend us from our weak stomachs, the understandable, if indefensible, product of time-lapsed ambivalence.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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