If you believe in capital punishment, and most Americans do, then you believe Kirk Noble Bloodsworth should be a dead man right now.
There's no getting around that ugly little premise.
He was sentenced to death nine years ago. There's no good reason why he should be alive today.
Instead of being set free, as he was the other day, Bloodsworth should have already been executed. The DNA test that would prove his innocence should have come long after the fact.
Death fit the crime. If you're going to have a death penalty, this was the time to use it. When else? A jury said he raped and murdered a 9-year-old girl. The jury found he smashed her in the head with a rock and then strangled her.
There were no mitigating factors. What mitigating factors could there be in such a crime? How much worse can a crime get? Bloodsworth was convicted beyond any reasonable doubt. In fact, he would be convicted twice.
Imagine being the little girl's parents. Imagine what you'd want to do to this monster. The state felt the parents' pain and the people's pain and said Bloodsworth should be killed for his act.
Three years later, he got a retrial and was convicted again. But this time, Bloodsworth received consecutive life sentences instead of the death penalty. It seemed like a slap in the face to the people of Maryland whose death penalty never seems to get enforced. Nobody has died in the state's gas chamber since 1961.
Didn't Bloodsworth deserve to die?
Let's imagine that he had been executed. What would we be saying now that science has proven him innocent of a crime that 12 people, good and true, twice found him guilty of committing?
We'd say it was a mistake.
We'd say we were sorry.
We'd say people are human and humans are imperfect.
Maybe we'd say that the death penalty deters crime and that, if a mistake is made, no matter how regrettable, others will be saved by the law.
Maybe we'd say that when you make an omelet you have to break a few eggs.
But how many eggs?
According to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, Bloodsworth was the 21st person since 1980 to be convicted of a crime that could have brought the death penalty but was subsequently found innocent and released from prison. It's safe to guess there are others who have been wrongly convicted.
How many mistakes do we get to make before we become guilty of something?
