AND NOW THERE ARE NINE

Add to the six men already facing very real execution dates in Ohio three more. This morning, the Ohio Supreme Court this morning announced three more execution dates.

• Lawrence Reynolds, Jr. (Summit County)- October 8, 2009
• Abdullah Sharif Kaazim Mahdi (f/k/a Vernon Lamont Smith) (Lucas County) - January 7, 2010
• Mark Brown (Mahoning County) - February 4, 2010

The court itself is less personal, beginning not with a name, but a case number.

1996-1956. State v. Reynolds.
Summit App. No. 16845. On motion to set new execution date. Motion granted. It is ordered that appellant’s sentence be carried into execution by the Warden of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility or, in his absence, by the Deputy Warden on Thursday, October 8, 2009, in accordance with the statutes so provided.
It is further ordered that a certified copy of this entry and a warrant under the seal of this court be duly certified to the Warden of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility and that said warden shall make due return thereof to the Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas of Summit County.
O’Connor, J., not participating.

1998-0552. State v. Smith.
Lucas App. No. L-94-093. On motion to set execution date. Motion granted. It is ordered that appellant’s sentence be carried into execution by the Warden of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility or, in his absence, by the Deputy Warden on Thursday, January 7, 2010, in accordance with the statutes so provided.
It is further ordered that a certified copy of this entry and a warrant under the seal of this court be duly certified to the Warden of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility and that said warden shall make due return thereof to the Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas of Lucas County.

2001-0524. State v. Brown.
Mahoning App. No. 96 CA 56. On motion to set execution date. Motion granted. It is ordered that appellant’s sentence be carried into execution by the Warden of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility or, in his absence, by the Deputy Warden on Thursday, February 4, 2010, in accordance with the statutes so provided.
It is further ordered that a certified copy of this entry and a warrant under the seal of this court be duly certified to the Warden of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility and that said warden shall make due return thereof to the Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas of Mahoning County.

Maybe it doesn't matter too much how you phrase an order to kill. I think it does, though. There's that phrase we use about "cold-blooded killing" - the act of a lizard, not even a mammal. It suggests a mathematical calculus rather than any human feeling. If we have to think about it, feel about it, it might be harder. So here are seven folks, not wearing their robes when they meet to make these decisions. They sit around a table, I imagine, and ask what to do with this or that one. They look at a name, at a calendar. They are distant from it.

They've never seen the person whose life they're ending. Some, I think, have never been in a room with a person who's been sentenced to die. Others have imposed the sentence, spoken the words, "until you are dead." I know, from having heard her do it, that at least one would omit the trational (traditional at least in books and movies) end to a death sentence, "May God have mercy on your soul."

She surely don't have the dispensing power to order that mercy, and frankly, I don't believe in God, but still, it seemed awfully cold.

But maybe when you're ordering an aggravated murder, well, maybe that's not a time to be emotional. Ohio law, after all, says that the sentence should be determined by a rational analysis of whether aggravating circumstances (which don't include things like how the killing was committed) outweigh mitigating factors. Justice is to be both blind and insensate.

And so the death sentence becomes a kind of contract killing, although perhaps not one for profit. Today's announcement certainly is a form of multiple killing. Think of it as a course of conduct specification which, under Ohio law, makes an aggravated murder death eligible.

And may God (if she's out there) have mercy on ther souls. And on ours.