It Makes You Proud

The bearer of civilised values and World Cop by the grace of God is sending some mixed signals on the subject of capital punishment. The Christian state of Texas is gearing up to execute a man with a tested IQ of sixty-one. Although the Supreme Court has banned executions of people with mental retardation, it has left states some leeway for interpretation, and the Christian state of Texas has decided that this means it can define mental retardation according to the supposed deserts of a fictitious character. The beneficiary, one Marvin Wilson, is black - a purely incidental detail, no doubt.

Meanwhile, the Christian state of Oregon is dithering about whether to execute a man who is presumably in his right mind and purely incidentally white. Gary Haugen wishes to overrule his reprieve by the state governor and proceed with the death penalty. A judge has ruled in Haugen's favour, but the governor's legal team is going to appeal.

A similar situation to Haugen's exists in our own increasingly civilised justice system, where Ian Brady is apparently being kept alive against his will. Brady has been detained in a psychiatric hospital for a quarter of a century, and has been making legal representations to be transferred to a prison instead. If he were transferred to a prison, he would be able to commit suicide by starvation, because sane prisoners are not force-fed.