WHY DON’T WE CALL IT:
THE BLACK PENALTY?

(Approx. 530 words non-fiction)

Eric Rudolph is the latest in a string of the worst, White, domestic terrorists, and serial killers the country has allowed to escape from the death penalty.
Rudolph pled guilty, in early April for four interstate bombings that included the 1996 Atlanta incident that occurred during that year’s Olympics. His unrepentant terrorism killed two, and injured 120. He was mercifully sentenced to life in prison.
Terry Nichols, the admitted co-laborer of Timothy McVeigh, was apparently forgiven by two juries who failed to give him the death penalty for his role in what authorities call, “The worst act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.” The two multiple murderers were proven to have killed 168 innocent people, women and children included, in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, in Oklahoma City. He was also sentenced to life.
Then there’s Gary Ridgeway, better known as the Greenriver Killer. After eluding police for over twenty years, while he raped and murdered at least, and admitted 48 women; he, too, was given life.
The list is long. Horrific serial killers, that raped, tortured and maimed their victims for the thrill, or fun of it, or perhaps to make some obscure point. They’re all White, and they all got life.
For whatever reason, there’s always an excuse or circumstance to appease the injustice; Whites are historically forgiven for the most egregious of crimes.
One need only to look at the haunting history: there’s a long chronicle of Klu Klux Klan trials, and the few accused were almost always acquitted by suburban juries – not unlike the police today – while in comparison, there were thousands of Black lynchings; for the smallest of infractions. The deathly condemnation almost always came from all-white jurors – if there was even a trial. The history is: Blacks get death, and Whites get life.
Though a staunch opponent of the death penalty, I question and confront this nation’s discriminatory history of killing.
For further, but disturbing example, there’s Charles Cullen, the Pennsylvania nurse who admitted to six so-called hospital mercy killings, in late 2004, and though he arrogantly claimed it was more like 40 – he got life. Then there’s Maryland’s Charles Davis, and New York’s David Berkowitz, also known as the Son of Sam (both vicious White serial killers who got life). The list goes on ad-nausea.
The U.S. Supreme Court, and its subordinates have verified this horrid history again, and again. The nation’s highest court overturned the death penalty in 1972, because Blacks were far more likely to get that ultimate of sanctions than Whites.
Despite this fact, America, the bloodthirsty, eagerly reinstated the death penalty, and just ten short years later the same court found the same think in McClesky v. Kemp. Since then the pattern has continued, from racial profiling, to gang labeling, to arrests – and ultimately the death penalty. America is committing a slow, but effective, genocide on its Black population.
During this newly claimed compassionate conservatism, and supposed culture of life, we must ask today, not tomorrow, why America is so bent on killing Blacks…any way it can.
Until all Americans are ready to seriously confront this deathly discrimination, let’s just be real about it and call it what it is: The Black penalty.

Source list:

John Bacon, "Rudolph to Plead Guilty to 4 Bombings", USA Today, Aprill 11, 2005; 3A
AP, "Nichols Admits Part in Oklahoma Bombing", USA Today, Nov. 28, 2004; 2A
Stone Phillips, "Chasing the Devil": Dateline with Stone Phillips, Jan. 29, 2005 (re: Greenriver Killer).
John Douglass and Mark Olshaker, "The Mind of a Hunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit (New York, Pocket Books, 1996)
Ibid, 14, 15 (re: Charles Davis)
Ibid, 138-144 (re: David Berkowitz)
Nurse Murderer Pleads Guilty, USA Today, approx. week of Nov. 28, 2004 (re: Charles Cullen)
Joan Biskupic, "Court Unlikely to Make Historic Moves", USA Today, March 2, 2005; 4A

May 2005