Too old to die?

Calif. Executes Oldest Death Row Inmate - Yahoo! News
The linked story is written by the AP. That's why I wasn't really surprised by the superfluous description of the "large correctional officers" who assisted Clarence Allen into the execution chamber. Somehow it sounds like they've done something wrong by this murderer-by-proxy, at least if you're a frail old blind diabetes victim who has spend 23 years serving time on death row.

What bothers me the most about this is the outcry of liberal simpering about how unjust this punishment has been. It doesn't surprise me, of course. More to the point, it baffles me... These people seem to think that if you spend 23 years on death row it somehow absolves you of your sins and the government should step in to protect you from the big bad punishment that the judicial system layed upon you for your crimes.

The story goes on to compare this case to the Tookie Williams case. Liberals want to make a death row inmate's actions while on death row count as some sort of credit when it comes time to decide if the inmate should have clemency. If you write children's books, for instance (as Mr. Williams did) you should be allowed to live as long as you were to naturally live. That doesn't quite make sense to me, though. The people these men killed won't have that chance, even if they had happened to write children's books before they were murdered. Why should their murderers?

Besides, if you were to grant clemency to death row inmates based on their charitable actions while on death row the liberals would then want the judicial system to grant parole to murderers who have been brought off of death row under this logic. Then we'd have all sorts of murderers on the streets because you'd be able to kill someone, serve 10 years on death row while making children smile with books or whatever, and then get right back out on the street to kill again. Yeah, um, somehow that doesn't sound like a great idea.

And besides, the point of the story is to make you feel sorry for the poor, old, infirmed man that the cruel justice system murdered after forcing him to suffer 23 years of painful imprisonment on death row. They even go so far as to mention the man had a heart attack from which he was revived and then forced to go back to his prison cell to finish his sentence. We should ask 17 year old Josephine Rocha if Mr. Allen's treatment was cruel and unusual. Oh, wait, she's not around anymore because her treatment WAS cruel and unusual, as was the treatment of the three other victims (who were not named in this story).