KPLU Local News
(2009-11-11)
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SEATTLE, WA
(KPLU) -
The use of the death penalty last night [Tuesday] in Virginia has echoes in the Northwest. You may remember the so-called Beltway Snipers had lived earlier in Tacoma. With the execution of one of the shooters, those connections are stirring memories for KPLU commentator Rabbi Mark Glickman.
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The trial lasted for more than two weeks; my testimony took all of three minutes. The defendant was John Allen Muhammad, one of the notorious Washington DC snipers, accused and later convicted of murdering ten people in September and October of 2002.
Several months before the murders, the snipers lived in Tacoma, where I was serving as rabbi of the local synagogue. During one Saturday morning service in the synagogue's small chapel, I opened the ark -the alcove holding our Torah scroll - and noticed there was dust scattered all over. And then, I saw there was a small hole high in the wall. Somebody had fired a gun into our building. A bullet had passed through three walls and two rooms before going into the Ark. Law enforcement officers took the bullet, but they had no leads.
Meanwhile, mysterious snipers were terrorizing Washington, DC. One morning after they were captured, I got a phone call telling me the bullet fired into the Temple had come from one of their guns. There was a press conference that evening, and the police chief asked me to attend. He announced the snipers were also suspects in the murder of a Tacoma woman named Keenya Cook - a n innocent 21-year-old, shot point blank in the face after answering a knock at her front-door. Facing a wall of reporters and a bouquet of microphones, I remember feeling almost guilty for being there. Keenya Cook was murdered; we just had some holes in our walls. And for some reason, the incident at the Temple was the one that they were calling a hate-crime.
Months passed; John Muhammad's trial was drawing to a close, and my phone rang. The prosecutors were about to issue me a subpoena. They wanted me to fly to Virginia so I could tell the court that I had found a bullet hole in the ark. The crime at my synagogue, they felt, would help persuade the judge and jury to have John Muhammad executed. Not only did he murder ten people, their argument went, but he hated Jews, too.
I flew to Virginia; I waited for two days; I testified; I returned home.
That was six years ago. Last night, John Allen Muhammad was finally executed. I've always been opposed to capital punishment, and I remain so. Yes, Jewish scripture lists many crimes punishable by death, but the rabbis who later interpreted those passages couldn't fathom that this is what God would have wanted. So they made it even more difficult to execute a person under Jewish law than it is under American law. One sage suggested that a rabbinic court that executes one criminal every seven years is a bloody court; another said that one execution every seventy years is enough to make a court bloody. Jewish law accepts capital punishment in principle, but rejects it in practice.
And yet, opposed as I am to capital punishment, I did play a role - albeit a tiny one - in helping secure the death penalty for John Allen Muhammad. How does that make me feel? I don't feel guilty - after all, I was legally required to testify, and all I did was tell the truth. And I certainly don't feel any love or compassion for John Muhammad. Maybe I should, but I don't.
As I think about this weird, horrible chain of events, what I feel most, I think, is an overwhelming sense of sadness. I feel sad for the snipers' victims, their lives so suddenly and horribly cut short. I feel sad for their families and loved ones, for I know that their wounds may never heal. And I feel sad for us as a society, for our authorities have decided that the death of yet another person is for some reason an appropriate response to the tragic deaths of his victims.
During a break after the jury announced its verdict, I found myself chatting with the lead prosecutor outside the courtroom. I asked him, "When do attorneys celebrate in cases like this - after the verdict? After the sentencing? When the sentence is imposed?
"Rabbi," he said, "in cases like this, you never celebrate - too many people have died. Instead, you just do your job, you hope justice is served, and you move on with your life."
With the execution of John Allen Muhammad, justice may very well have been served. But what I wonder - what I fear - is whether the price that we have paid for that justice is our very humanity.
Rabbi Mark Glickman leads Congregation Kol Shalom on Bainbridge Island and Congregation Kol Ami in Woodinville.
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