Choosing the Hangman/ Beating the Reaper

Billy Slagle hanged himself in his cell.  He was found there early this morning. 

I don't know just why he did it.  Probably he didn't know just why, either.  But here's what we do know.

Just under 26 years ago, Billy murdered Mari Anne Pope.  He was 18 years old.  He's been in custody ever since.  First in the county jail.  Then on death row.   For all those years, Billy and his lawyers have been fighting for his life.

Last month, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor urged the Parole Board to recommend clemency to the Governor.  By today's standards, we'd not have sought death for him.  It's not appropriate that he should get it, Tim McGinty said.  Billy's Death by Prison Guard sentence should be converted to LWOP, Death in Prison.  It was quite an extraordinary thing for the prosecutor to do, and there was reason to think the Parole Board would, indeed, make that recommendation.  

It didn't.  By a vote of 6-4, the Board urged Governor Kasich to let Billy be Killed.  Still, it seemed there was a fair chance.  The Governor has shown himself willing to grant clemency, has demonstrated by action if not by word that he's not an enthusiast of executions.  And there were those 4 votes on the Parole Board and McGinty's recommendation.

Kasich denied clemency.

Billy Slagle was to be killed on Wednesday. August 7.  At 10:00 AM.  Priosn guards would strap him down to a table (we don't actually use a gurney in Ohio), stick shunts in his arms.  Pump drugs.  Witnesses would watch as Billy Slagle died.

Then everyone would go home.

But there was still litigation.  Last week his lawyers filed a motion for new trial and a motion to stay the killing long enough to litigate the new trial motion.  Then they filed a motion to vacate the death sentence.  McGinty's office, which wanted the Governor to grant clemency, argued in responses to the motions that what the Governor should have done the courts should not.

Ensure that he is killed, they said (though not in those words). 

Late on Thursday, the trial judge denied the motion for new trial.  There remained appeals, and the motion to vacate.  And the Governor could grant a reprieve for time to litigate.  Or could just change his mind.

Coulda woulda shoulda.

It's all moot now.  

Billy Slagle hanged himself in his cell.  He was found there early this morning.

I don't know just why he did it.  Probably he didn't know just why, either.  But here's what we do know.

Billy's been whipsawed.  Hope given.  Hope dashed.  Hope given.  Hope dashed.  Hope . . . .

Hope.  It's "the thing with feathers," Emily Dickinson said.   And then there's lead.  Which she didn't say.  

The folks on death row, pretty much all psychologically battered well before they got there, living on borrowed time.  

Motions, hearings, judgments, appeals, execution dates, stays, new dates, new motions, hearings judgments, appeals, execution dates, stays, new dates, new motions, 

Hope given.  Hope dashed.  Hope given.  Hope . . . .

Prison is about control.  And on the row?  Billy knew that they planned to kill him Wednesday morning.  He knew how just when.  He knew just how.  I've quoted Camus on the subject before.

What then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be an equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal, who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him, and who from that moment onward had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.

And he sat in the cell and good god.  You'd be inclined to kill yourself, too.

Which is maybe what happened.  Maybe he just went crazy.  Maybe he couldn't take the being jerked around any more and he just snapped.  Maybe the guards or the other inmates or someone or something taunted him into it.  Hell, maybe he wanted to relieve the guards of the burden of murdering him.  I don't know.

But maybe, just maybe, it was an existential Fuck you.

Because the one thing we know with certainty is that the prison guards won't get to kill Billy Slagle Wednesday morning at 10 o'clock.  Not in our name.  He ensured that.  He beat out the reaper, chose himself as his own hangman, and denied the State of Ohio its pound of flesh.

He's dead now.  A few days sooner than planned.  Mari Anne Pope is still dead, too, of course.  Nothing was going to change that.  Two tragedies.  Neither had to happen.  They're not equivalent. 

I don't know just why he did it.  Probably he didn't know just why, either.  But here's what we do know.

Billy Slagle hanged himself in his cell.  He was found there early this morning.

* * * * * * *

A bit more from Emily Dickinson:

WE play at paste,
Till qualified for pearl,
Then drop the paste,
And deem ourself a fool.