Blind Justice

This past week South Dakota executed self-confessed murderer Elijah Page. Mr. Page had relinquished all attempts at appeal and asked to die. He was 25. The man he murdered, Chester Allen Poage, was 19. The victims mother, Mrs. Poage, observed the execution of Mr. Page and was available to the media afterward, showing childhood pictures of her slain son while she spoke of his life. She concluded that, "Elijah Page had the ultimate penalty for the ultimate crime, and for that I'm proud of the state, the attorney general, the governor and everyone at the state penitentiary for doing a job well done. I'm proud to be an American." 

My reading of that is that she's proud to be just like Elijah Page, proud to be part of a world in which violence can be used to get what we desire. I know that's not how it was meant; I know that Mrs. Poage feels justified by the violence the state used on her behalf. Many people would take violent issue with my statement, but I have to make it nonetheless. After researching the word "justified" for this past Sunday's scripture reading about the Good Samaritan (the irony here is killing me) I'm sure it's no accident that the word is used repeatedly to validate the execution. At least in the Greek, one of the meanings for the verb is "to make innocent". If that isn't a prime example of violence casting out violence, I don't know what is. Not only are we using violence to contain violence- something Lawrence County Sheriff Richard Mowle pointed to as he commented after observing the execution that, "I can assure you he will never be able to do this again", but we are also trying to proclaim ourselves innocent by virtue of our lesser violence. The two are so inextricably intertwined that it's hard to think clearly about them. Somehow the fact that "he hit me first" makes our (retaliatory) violence different from the offensive violence of the perpetrator. His violence was offensive, even as violence goes. The victim was tortured before being killed. This information is available in varying detail depending on which news article one reads and how hard the author is trying to justify the execution. In a world in which score is kept, the perpetrator "deserved" to die, while the less brutal but equally effective violence of the state is rendered as innocent. Not only as innocent; it was deemed downright patriotic, a cause for pride by the victims mother.

The sad truth is that this is what it means to be an American. It's what it means to be a citizen of any other nation on earth that supports state violence also. That pretty much means every nation on earth, although the forms of violence may vary. Not every country allows capital punishment, but until you find me a nation that is determined to use only peace-making strategies and will never go to war to defend itself, I think we're all equally culpable.

One of the voices of protest in response to this execution came from the local Roman Catholic church. The point the spokesperson made was that if life is sacred, ALL life is sacred; we cannot justify taking any of it. Our attempt to innocently slaughter those we deem deserving of death is to usurp God's role.  I am glad to see the church represented from a position of non-violence here, especially since the history of the human institution of the church is filled with violence of its own. Ultimately, it all comes down to that primal scene that Girard posits: the one where we're all standing round with stones in our hands, convinced that our victim deserves to die. Of course, in Jesus version of the scene, one could only stone the adulterous woman if one was without sin oneself. As we all know, she walked away, free.  Jesus ability to get us to identify with the victim, to recognize ourself in need of love in them, is amazing. It's very hard to do that when the victim is as difficult to love as Elijah Page was after his behavior toward his victim. Attempts to render murderers more lovable often fall flat; we're so stunned by our identification with their murdered victim that we can't make the move to seeing the perpetrator as victim also.

If we ever wondered about the link between culture and the need to contain violence born out of that original scenario, it is surely affirmed in Mrs. Poage's words.  Her words made me physically ill the first time I read them, but I recognize that she's right. She's also wrong; she hasn't been justified at all; she's  been blinded by the powers that be.  Like the old adage says: Don't sink to their level if you don't want to be one of them. We've sunk pretty low.

nancy hitt.

Comments

[Mary]

Hi Nancy,

What do you make of your comment, "My reading of that is that she's proud to be just like Elijah Page,. . . " ??

What is the new binary being set up here?

When I put myself in her place, asking, if that were my son, what would i do, say, I know I would be feeling what she feels. Maybe the difference would be that since I have this Girardian lens with which to look at life, I might have a sense that I don't want to stay in that place. So maybe my own work and mission as one who is beginning to get this stuff is to learn how to stretch beyond my own grief turned to anger turned to violence to. . . what is coming toward me in cross man.

Thanks for provoking me to jump into the binary you have described, and to jump first w/ Mrs. Poage. Perhaps it is from that abyss that I can get somewhere else -

your sister in the cross man -

[nancy]

Mary- help me out here...I'm confused as to where you're perceiving the binary. I understand the emotional logic of the violence, but I want to make sure I'm understanding all that you're saying. I have to admit though, although I understand it, it's an intellectual stretch for me; my emotional response does not mirror that of Mrs. Poage, perhaps because the violence is so repugnant. I'm still left speechless by the violence of the perpetrator, and I don't pretend to know how to love him on a genuine and personal basis, but I do know that I will not find comfort or closure in his (state sanctioned) murder. Anyway, which binary are you envisioning?

My response "that she's proud to be just like Elijah Page" is based on equating violence with violence, that is, the state sanctioned murder/exection of Elijah Page is, in the end, the same violence that Mr. Page himself used against his victim. By equating the death penalty with what it means to be an American and then saying she is proud to be one as a result of this murder/execution, Mrs. Poage has appropriated deadly violence as an appropriate means to satisfy her desires. I think that puts her/us in a position of complicity with Mr. Page in regard to violence. We're all willing to use it to achieve our desires, whether it's because we desire no witnesses to our act of robbery (Mr. Page) or we desire justice and closure for our grief (Mrs. Poage). Sorry if that's offensive to people, but I see it as another venue through which we participate in sin/violence.

[Mary]

The binary I saw involved putting Mrs. Poage in a category with others who kill. Could she have been more appropriate in her feelings toward her son's killer? Perhaps, but in our culture how does she get there? Ann Wilson Shaef, writing Women's Reality and subsequent books, notes that sitting down with a client and staying with them in their space for as long as it takes, is about the only way to help them move beyond it.
Let's continue our dialogue.

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