Editorial: Our screwed-up system cures only to kill
A Missouri newspaper columnist noted for his ability to ferret out
stories that highlight lifes ironies, delicious or otherwise, recently
told a tale that bears retelling.
Beyond its particularities of person and place, it says much about
deep, unresolved conflicts in U.S. society over the most fundamental human
values.
As Bill McClellan recounted events in the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch on March 11, the Missouri Supreme Court in December
unanimously upheld the death sentence of Thomas Brooks, one of Missouris
high-profile criminals. In 1993, paroled three months earlier on an armed
robbery conviction, Brooks sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl before beating
her to death with a bed slat. He was in his mid-20s at the time.
A defense attorneys portrayal of Brooks miserable
childhood, a tale of poverty and abandonment, of living in a car as a
third-grader, of suicide attempts, poor education and defiant behavior
ineffectively addressed, failed to convince a jury that Brooks deserved to
live.
Not long after the Missouri Supreme Court rebuffed Brooks
appeal, he was taken to a St. Louis hospital -- a Catholic hospital, in fact --
for treatment of various health problems. Details were not forthcoming, because
medical records of Missouri prisoners are confidential. But McClellan was able
to learn that Brooks suffered from pneumonia, tuberculosis and AIDS --
illnesses so severe that he spent weeks in a private room in intensive care.
According to McClellan, no costs were spared in giving the best medical
treatment available to a man condemned to die. Bills mounted to more than
$500,000 -- a half million dollars -- before Brooks was discharged in early
March. (He had reportedly returned to the hospital for another round of care as
NCR went to press.)
Apparently taxpayers will not suffer unduly, although its
possible the hospital may have to write off some costs. The state pays $4.37 a
day for medical care for each of its more than 24,100 inmates.
What piques our interest in this story is not that Brooks got the
best of care. Legally he is entitled to no less, in part the result of a
class-action suit brought several years ago by prisoners on death row. Readers
of these pages will know that NCR would find it morally reprehensible to
deny prisoners basic human rights. Fortunately, the state of Missouri agrees --
but only up to a point, for like many states, while it would not deprive Brooks
of his health, it would deprive him of his life.
The Brooks story dances seductively into many contradictions
of our societal values: our obsession with medical technology; our willingness
to spend hundreds of thousands to physically build up a man even as we are
preparing to put him to death; our seeming inability to find remedies for the
worsening ills of the inner cities. If Brooks were struggling for life at the
time of his scheduled execution, would it be harder emotionally for us as a
society to accept or easier? Should the execution be advanced, so that less
money be spent to keep him alive? Or should it be delayed until he is in better
health? Should he be allowed to die of natural causes? Or, if he is terminally
ill at the time his execution occurs, could his death be classified as
euthanasia -- an act that is illegal in Missouri, as in most states.
It could be dangerous to explore the contradictions too fully.
Simple cost analysis and logic could easily lead to inhumane conclusions: that
it is futile to expend money on care of a man doomed to die; that many good
people in the poverty pockets of our cities -- people who have committed no
capital crimes -- are denied the sort of care that is being accorded Brooks.
(Therefore, they should get the care and Brooks should not?)
Logic and cost analysis are of limited use when it comes to
fundamental human values. Those instruments have already fueled the finding
that Brooks, the murderer, should die (even though his death will not bring
back 10-year-old Cassidy Senter). That is why we need the gospels, to remind us
that logic, like other tools, can be morally detrimental unless it is used in
the service of love.
In the end, we leave the story of Thomas Brooks -- a story that so
poignantly underscores the barbarity of capital punishment -- with readers
willing to contemplate subtle ironies that defy easy answers.
Meanwhile, should Sr. Helen Prejean, foremost storyteller in
opposition to capital punishment, be planning to write a sequel to her book on
the topic, we suggest that, in recognition of such ironies, she call it Dead
Man: Keep Him Walking.
National Catholic Reporter, March 27,
1998
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