Leroy White, murderer

Where were you on October 17, 1988, in the late afternoon? Leroy White was at the home of his estranged wife Ruby in northwest Huntsville, Alabama, where he shot open her front door. He shot Ruby as she ran from her house trying to escape him and returned to his car to reload his shotgun. He then approached where she lay wounded in the yard and shot her again at point blank range with his shotgun. She died there in the yard from wounds to her arm, leg, chest, and shoulder. Leroy White killed his 35-year-old wife, who was an elementary school teacher, while holding the couple's 17-month-old daughter in his arms. For this he was to die tonight at 6 p.m. in an Alabama prison, but just moments before his time was up, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas issued a temporary stay for "further review" of the the case, after the Alabama Supreme Court denied White's appeal earlier today.

I grieve every time I know there is an execution. Even in a case like this one, in which there seems to be no doubt that White is guilty. He came to her house and stalked her down and shot her like an animal. Yet I do not see that we have the right to kill him. His jury, which took only 20 minutes to find him guilty, recommended life without parole as his punishment. But in Alabama, judges are free to ignore juries' desires, and White's trial judge sentenced him to death. I, too, would have preferred life without parole.

Amnesty International says that the dealth penalty is "the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the cold-blooded and premeditated killing of a human being by the state." A large majority of the countries in the world have eliminated the death penalty in law or in practice. The United States stands alone among developed Western nations in killing its own citizens, just as we stand alone in the rate at which we kill one another.  I think there is a connection there. Life has become pretty cheap in our culture. Because the death penalty is the greatest violation of the right to life, it can only occur when we allow exceptions to that right. And once we begin allowing exceptions, there is no end to the violence. There can be a million excuses to kill.

The anthropologist Colin Turnbull, famous for writing The Forest People and The Mountain People, worked with death row prisoners in Virginia's historic state penitentiary in Richmond, an institution that no longer exists, having been replaced by a new, modern facility. Turnbull wrote about the death penalty, showing  how it brutalizes the society that implements it in the true sense of the word 'brutalize.'  It hardens our hearts. It makes US brutes. It makes us killers. What kind of people can rejoice at a death and sing "Burn, Baby, Burn"? What do you have to do to your humanity before you can do that? And what are the repercussions for our society when it's made up of people who have done that to their humanity?
 

I grieve Ruby White, too.  We can never forget the victims of violent crime. May God bless her and the family she left behind. The couple's daughter LaTonya is grown now, and she filed papers with the court asking that her father's life be spared. She says she has forgiven him. She says he is all she has left that she is related to and that losing her remaining parent would hurt more than she can say.

How this will turn out I cannot say. No one knows how long the stay of execution will last or if anything will change.  What Leroy White did is reprehensible and vicious. When Ruby White's life was to end was a decision for God, not for Leroy, but the same is true for the end of Leroy White's life. What he does deserve and what we have the right to impose is the maximum civilized punishment available.  Civilized.

Please remember Ruby White and her loved ones in your thoughts or in your prayers.  And I hope you will remember Leroy White, too.  May God have mercy on his soul.

ADDENDUM: The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the execution to proceed. White died at 9:10 pm Central time, after 3 hours in limbo, on January 13, 2011.