A Death in Realtime...

Being the Story of a Poorly-Reported Event in a Small Texas Town....


It's just really tragic after all the horrors of the last 1,000 years we can't leave behind something as primitive as government sponsored execution.
 -- Russ Feingold; U.S. Senator




A modest brick building in the small town of Huntsville, Texas (population 35,000) houses an horrific secret - the place where over four-hundred people have died in the past 33 years - and 247 since the current governor, Rick Perry, has taken office.

Last week, while the rest of the country was planning Thanksgiving festivities, Robert Lee Thompson was planning something else -what do to with his corpse, his modest property, and who to invite to the circus which had been planned to mark his passing.

You see, Robert Lee Thompson was about to become the latest in a series of new records in the State of Texas - by signing-off on the execution of Terry Hankins in early June of this year, Governor Perry set a macabre 'record' - Hankins became the 200th victim of Texas' execution-mill since Perry took office; a record previously held by the previous occupant of that office, George W. Bush.

Thompson's crime?

He fired a pistol over the head of a convenience-store clerk.   Thompson's partner in the holdup, Sammy Butler, was identified as the trigger-man who actually killed the clerk; Butler and Thompson were tried separately.  Butler got life in prison; Thompson was sentenced to death.

Thompson, likely insane (in his statement to the police, he told them that 'god' had told him to 'do something' about Middle Eastern convenience-store clerks who were discriminating against blacks), was sentenced to death for the crime committed 13 years ago when Thompson was 21.

Two days before his execution, Thompson's attorney pleaded with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, stating that given Thompson's mental-state the sentence was not fair, and asked that the sentence be commuted to life.  

In a rare reversal of what has become policy for the Texas Department of Corrections, the Board voted 5-2 to commute Thompson's sentence.  Perry rejected the recommendation, in effect giving the greenlight to execute Thompson.

Perry, with his value-system firmly on the right-hand side of the radio-dial, has made it clear that he will not change his position on the death penalty (he's also come out in favor of 'boy scout values', and secession).

Texas' track-record of executing people is consistent - but it's not without serious controversy.   Perry signed off on the execution of a Mexican national rather than return him to Mexico to serve a life sentence (Mexico does not have the death penalty); in the case of Cameron Willingham, Perry fired three members of the Forensics Board when they raised the all-too-real potential that Willingham had been executed while innocent of the crime for which he'd received the death penalty.

(Thompson went to his death peacefully, declaring that 'Allah would forgive' him.   His mother screamed, cried, and pounded the walls; demanding to be taken away before her son died.  Thompson was pronounced dead at 6:19PM; less than ten minutes after receiving the first of three drugs in the lethal-injection process.   In addition to the relatives of the victim and Thompson's mother, there were two reporters.   News of this event was a footnote, nationally.

There are over 300 people on Texas' death row.  A disproportionate number are persons of color.)


There are no further executions scheduled through the end of the month.   They tend to shut things down for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The Toothpaste, and the Tube (Being a Short History of American 'Values' and Thanksgiving)....

The year was 1620.   A group of people (latecomers; really) who didn't like the notion of the Church of England telling them how to worship their Imaginary Friend pooled their resources, bought a license from the Crown to start a colony, rented a ship, and headed west.  

When they got here, they immediately began applying their 'values' to the locals - the way they saw it, the land was 'wild', and hence open for the taking - the people living here were 'savages', and not 'Christian' - with those three strikes against them (they hadn't 'improved' the land; they didn't have a recognizable political structure and didn't worship the same Imaginary Friend) - they were considered little more than bands of wandering hellions with no rights at all.  

The 'Pilgrims' (I put that in quotes; they never referred to themselves by this term - they used the terms 'Separatist' and 'Puritan') simply set up shop and began platting farms, cutting trees, and acting as if they owned the place.  To their minds, they did.  'God' was on their side, you see.

(A friend of mine is a tribal leader for one of the Northwest tribes.  She once told me, "If my people had been there, they wouldn't have gotten off the boat.   Ears and noses would have made fine trophies.")

While there were colonies up and down the eastern seaboard at this time, these folks were 'special' - just ask 'em.   They managed to create their own mythology - by example, while no launch would have survived fetching up on a rock (their own records state that they first landed the Mayflower's launch on 'dry lande'), they rewrote their own history in this first-of-many-cases; 'Plimoth rock' became their first landfall, echoing the book of Matthew: "...thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church...."

While the 'official' histories are bogus, the reality of the situation is that their first foray to the interior of this new land didn't net them any friends - in fact, they found an iron kettle (the result of earlier trading; this wasn't the Wampanoag's first encounter with Englishmen) full of corn; they took this, along with several 'sundrie and prettie things' from a child's grave.

The Puritans set about poisoning the locals with the twin scourges of the day - smallpox and Christianity - 'converting' native peoples, 'relocating' them into 'praying towns', and teaching them of the tender ministrations of the Lord and the effects of the overconsumption of alcohol.

We're asked to believe that a fellow named Squanto appeared out of nowhere to organize a feast for these people.  The truth is that several of the natives still traded with the Puritans, because they had items which made life easier - 'trade muskets', for example (shoddy firearms which exploded with some regularity).  

In truth, Squanto (Tisquantum) had been sent by Massasoit (chief sachem of the Wampanoag) to keep an eye on the Puritans and determine their intentions.   He rapidly learned that he could obtain trade goods for giving the Puritans the same sort of information about Massasoit - becoming, if you will, the first recorded double-agent in American history.   Far from organizing the first 'Thanksgiving' (Tisquantum was later killed by Massasoit for trying to stir up trouble among the Puritans against the Wampanoag) Tisquantum added to the problem -  proof that, if anything, the native peoples were far too lenient and far too trusting for far too long.

The first harvest-feast probably occurred around the fall of 1621 - there are no clear records; save for an oral-history later committed to paper with many inaccuracies.  The natives were attracted by the gunfire of hunting colonists; they originally showed up as a band of men (no women and children were present at this first harvest-feast); when they saw that a feast was being prepared, they left, returning with some deer and wild turkeys - in fact, it's more than likely that the natives provided most of the food for this now-historic event.

Far from a 'celebration of friendship', this event was a cautious affair; likely there was more than a bit of scheming which went on thanks to the efforts of Everyone's Buddy, Tisquantum. 

By this time, the toothpaste was truly out of the tube, metaphorically speaking, and there was no chance to put it back - the Puritans had established their 'holy kingdom' on the backs of people who, while cautious, had been welcoming - and had been repaid in the 'coin' of the era.

_____________________________

(By the 1670's the native people's legendary tolerance and patience had seen its end - corn-stealing and grave-robbing had progressed to wholesale land-theft, rape, pillage, and other depredations - with 'Jesus' on top of it all, grinning like an idiot.

A Wampanoag chief named Metacom (a man the Puritans called 'King Philip') raised an army among his own tribe and the Narragansett, with support from several minor tribes in the region, and went to war against the 'Pilgrims'. 

A year later, Metacom was dead, along with half of his effective fighting force.

The Puritans responded to this event with some joy.   The fight had gone out of the native coalition of the willing.

Shortly afterward (likely in late September), the Puritans declared a 'day of Thanksgiving' for the death of Metacom and the victory of the forces of light over the forces of heathen darkness -- the first recorded, official 'Thanksgiving'.)


Happy Thanksgiving, later this week, all.


Now, at least you know what you're celebrating.