Hate Versus Death

Almost every week, it seems, we get to read about some state execution, performed or imminent, wreathed in the usual toxic fog of race or sex prejudice, or incompetency of counsel, or prosecutorial misconduct.

Take the recent execution in Ashcroft country, February 7, of Stanley Lingar, done in the Potosi Correctional Center in Missouri, for killing 16-year -old Thomas Allen back in 1985. In the penalty phase of Lingar's trial, prosecutor Richard Callahan, who may now be headed for the seat on the Missouri State Supreme Court recently vacated by his mother-in-law, argued for death, citing Lingar's homosexuality to the jury as the crucial factor that should tilt poison into the guilty man's veins. Governor Bob Holden turned down a clemency appeal and told the press he'd "lost no sleep" over signing off on Lingar's fate.

Is there any hope that the ample list of innocent people either lost to the executioners or saved at the eleventh hour will prompt a national moratorium such as is being sought by Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin?

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