If ever there was a textbook case for the death penalty, this should have been it.
When a career criminal broke into the home of two nuns in Durant last week and brutally murdered them, it’s hard to imagine a situation where the death penalty seemed more appropriate.
The two nuns — Sisters Margaret Held and Paula Merrill, both 68 — had devoted their lives to noble service, working as nurse practitioners, where they often treated poor and uninsured patients with diabetes and other chronic conditions. Their bodies were found in their home after they failed to show up at work Thursday.
The suspect, Earl Sanders, 46, was quickly captured and now faces two counts of capital murder and one count of burglary grand larceny after taking the nuns’ car only to abandon it about a mile away from their home. According to news reports, Sanders confessed, but offered no motive for his crime.
Sanders had a long criminal history, including two convictions in Iowa, one for robbery, the other for theft. He was also convicted twice in that state for felony DUI and, at the time of the murders of the nuns, was on probation for yet another felony DUI in Mississippi. Sanders also served six years in prison in Mississippi for armed robbery.
Given the character of the victims and that of the suspect the murders were at once heart-breaking and appalling, arousing the strongest of passions.
In Mississippi, there has never been much sentiment for abolishing the death penalty. While New Mexico (2009), Illinois (2011), Connecticut (2012), Maryland (2013) and Nebraska (2015) have all abolished the death penalty by legislation, there has been no such effort here. Our state likes the death penalty, in fact, and does not shrink from imposing it.
So, it would stand to reason, that the state would call for the death penalty in this case would be as certain as the sun ascending from the east.
But it hasn’t happened yet. And it may not.
According to reports, the sisters’ orders have issued a joint statement against the death penalty and family members of the slain nuns have asked that the death penalty not be applied as well.
When heinous crimes of this nature are committed, much consideration is given to the wishes of the victims’ families, as well it should be.
Yet, we note, in legal terms, that murder is an offense against the state. It’s always “The People vs. the defendant,” rather than “The victim’s family vs. the defendant.”
The reason for that is to ensure fairness in sentencing because what might satisfy the family of a victim in one case, might be considered either insufficient or excessive to another,
There is another factor that has emerged, too, in questioning the appropriateness of the death penalty.
Enhanced forensics, including remarkable advances in DNA testing, have proven that too many of those sentenced to die have later been exonerated through that evidence. In fact, there are three such cases where that has been the case in the Golden Triangle. When a person wrongly convicted is exonerated, there should be an avenue where that mistake can be corrected. But you can’t “un-execute” someone who has been wrongly convicted and put to death.
That should give us pause in light of what we now know.
Based on what we know of Sister Margaret and Sister Paula, neither of them would desire that Sanders be put to death for his crime.
The question then is whether the state is obligated to respect those wishes with the same enthusiasm it has always offered to those where the victim’s family cries for the death penalty.
To do so, of course, means that this ultimate penalty is, essentially, arbitrary. What is arbitrary is unjust.
That may well be the strongest argument against the death penalty.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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