Post-Mortem

I really didn't want to write about Harry Mitts again.  

I thought I'd said all I had to say when I posted last night.

Mitts murdered John Bryant and Police Sergeant Dennis Glivar, shot and injured but didn't kill a couple of other cops.  Glivar's mother and sister forgave him quickly, shortly after the killings.  They said god wanted them to.  And they let him know.  Still they wanted him to die, said god wanted that, too.  And they planned to watch. Mitts himself was eager to be killed so he could get going toward what he believed would be his eternal reward with god since he repented and all.

Really, I figured I was done.

Then I read what Debbie Glivar, Sergeant Glivar's wife, said this morning.  She was there, at Lucasville, in the death house at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, to witness Mitts being killed.  She wept, the AP reports, as he said his last words.  He asked forgiveness.  And he offered an apology.

"I had no business doing what I did,” he said.

But then, afterwards, stepping up to the microphones, she declared her commitment.

I won’t forgive him, ever.

Which is, of course, understandable.  Nineteen years ago, in an act of surpassing horror, Harry Mitts took from her what can never be returned and for which there can be no adequate compensation, the person we can safely assume to have been the love of her life.  Why should she forgive?  Why shouldn't she wallow in that hatred?  Which of us can fairly say with certainty that we would not.  I can't.

Nor could John Bryant's sister, Johnnal, though she thought maybe, some day.

“No, I don’t forgive him,” she said as she fought back tears. “Maybe one day I will, but right now I don’t.”

And yet, and here's the thing, the lesson we learn from those who manage, truly, to do the unthinkable, to fully forgive.  Sometimes even to embrace the ones who ripped apart their lives.

When they give up the hatred, when they give up the anger, that's when it stops being about the killer.  That's when they can fully open themselves up to the love that they had.  That's when they are able to achieve . . . not closure.  There's never closure.  But peace.  That's when they can move on and resume their own lives.

It's their voices I celebrate and honor in these posts because they're the engines of the grace and mercy I keep writing about.  Our "better angels" in Lincoln's words.

For them, in a way, we should rejoice.  For those who wallow in the hatred and anger, who insist upon it, for them we might well mourn.  Not mourn with them, for them.

The Death Reward

Harry Mitts, Jr.

They'll be killing Harry Mitts in the morning.  That's been pretty much a foregone conclusion for some time now.  If there was any doubt, it was dispelled last month when the Parole Board recommended against clemency and then when Governor Kasich denied clemency.  But really, we knew before then.  So did Mitts.

He's under constant surveillance.  He would be anyhow by now.  They keep a minute-by-minute log of the last days.  They were getting set to start doing that for Billy Slagle back in August, but he hanged himself just before they began.  Then Ariel Castro hanged himself in his cell.  And another guy less prominent.  They're not taking chances with Mitts, by god.  They're gonna kill him.  

Can't have him doing it to himself.  The sentence isn't death, after all, it's execution.  He's not supposed to die.  He's supposed to be killed.  Doing it himself?  That's how he "escaped justice" in the words of a Toledo Blade editorial.

On August 14, 1994, Harry Mitts shot and killed John Bryant and Police Sergeant Dennis Gilvar, shot but didn't kill a couple of other cops.  Just over three months later, Mitts was sentenced to be killed.  That's fast enough to raise eyebrows among the folks who have some idea how this system works.  But Harry wasn't kicking up all that much of a fuss.  At trial he didn't contest the evidence of what he did.  Instead, he argued, in the words of the Ohio Supreme Court, "that he was too intoxicated to form the required intent to kill."

His'll be the 52nd killing here in the Buckeye State, 3rd this year.  And perhaps the last for a while.  The supply of pentobarbital expires now, and there's really no more readily available.  So Harry's killing will be the last under the current murder protocol, and while they've said they'll be setting out a new killing plan by October 4 and that they intend to use it on Ronald Phillips in November, new plans mean new litigation and, well, who knows.  Harry may be the last for a while.  

We can wish he'd be the last forever, the coda to the killing fields of Lucasville.  Frankly, that's unlikely.  But it might be fitting.

None of that moves this far out of the mainstream of killing and death sentences in Ohio or anywhere else where we put folks on death row. If that's all there were, I'd be holding off on writing this.  Maybe I'd do a post-mortem piece after the killing, but not now.  Not the night before.  What has me writing now is the Bible.

Note the lower case t in the Bible.  That's because I'm not interested here in The Bible, Old Testament or New, with or without apocrypha, King James or Revised Standard or the abominable Good News.  No, this is about the Bible.  The one that Mitts has had since that day in November 1994 when he was sentenced to be killed.  The one that was handed to him by a chaplain at the Cuyahoga County Jail the day he was sentenced.  The one that he eventually learned was given to him by the mother and sister of Sgt. Gilvar, you know, one of the men he killed. 

He got a letter from Cheryl Janoviak, Gilvar's sister, too.  She wrote to tell him, to make sure he knew, that she and her mother forgave him.  JoAnne Viviano in the Columbus Dispatch.

“As Jesus forgave and still forgives, my mother and I also forgive you,” Janoviak wrote to Mitts in 1994. “Had you died on August 14, 1994, your eternal home would have been in hell. In God’s mercy, your life was spared, and He spared your life to allow you this time to choose where you want to spend eternity.”

Last week, Janoviak explained.

What my mom and I did was only a portion of what God desired to draw Mr. Mitts to the cross and the saving, redeeming, wonderful, cleansing grace that is available to all.

God works through people, but ultimately it is the Holy Spirit and his love that satisfies. Unfortunately, in this case, it took a tragedy to get (Mitts’) attention and hear God calling him.

As it happens, there's forgiveness and there's forgiveness.  

Janoviak said she and her mother plan to attend the execution. When asked whether they support clemency for Mitts, she referred to a Bible verse from the book of Romans: “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.”

Look, I'm an atheist.  I don't believe in God.  On balance, it seems to me that religion has been far more a force for cruelty and pain than for good which has nothing to with the existence of some deity but everything to do with the consequence of believing in her (him? it?).  But if I don't believe in god, I do believe (if you've been a reader of this blawg for any length of time you already know this) in grace.  

So Sergeant Gilvar's mother and sister believe that their god wants Harry Mitts to be killed by a bunch of prison guards in the morning.  And they plan to watch the killing themselves.  But they also believe that their god wants them to embrace love and not hate, to turn pain to forgiveness, and to give Harry Mitts what they believe to be eternal peace and happiness.

To Harry, that means a lot.  And so he looks forward to being killed.

 [M]y reason for desiring to be executed is simple. I’ll be in the presence of Jesus, and I will never sin against God again!” 

Which kind of takes the sting out of punishment, turns it into something more like reward (or so the condemned guy thinks).  But, hey, nobody said this thing made any sense.

Notwithstanding an Inmate's Indifference to Clemency

I suppose it's no surprise to anyone who's followed the case.  

The Parole Board this morning recommended, unanimously as if that mattered, that Governor Kasich should let Harry Mitts be killed on September 25.  

It was just 19 years ago, August 14, 1994, when Mitts shot and killed John Bryant and police Sergeant Dennis Gilvar.  He wounded a couple of other cops.  It was, apparently incontestably, deliberate and intentional.  He wore ear muffs and goggles.  He aimed.  He fired and then fired again.  And again.  And again.   And again.  His defense at trial was that he was too drunk to form the specific intent required by law to get to this point, but the jury didn't buy it then, and Mitts denies it now. 

He says he's remorseful.  One of the prosecutors said that's a strong indication that he isn't. Of course, that puts the condemned in a bind.  The Parole Board wants to hear an expression of remorse, but if expressing it is evidence it isn't felt, and if you both have to feel it and have to express it . . . .

'That's some catch, that Catch-22,' [Yossarian] observed.
'It's the best there is,' Doc Daneeka agreed. 

But really, that wasn't the point.  Mitts didn't beg for his life.  When Cynthia Mausser, the Chair of the Parole Board, asked if he wanted clemency, Mitts told her

that he will be leaving that to the Board’s discretion. 

Of course, he'd be doing that anyway.  But his diffidence probably didn't endear him to a Board that wants to see gnashing of teeth and blubbering.  Before there can be clemency, there must be torment.  Mitts is too much at peace.  In fact, he'd gone back and forth on whether he would participate in the clemency process at all.  (In Ohio, unlike some other states, the Parole Board holds a hearing on the soon-to-be-executed regardless of his interest in clemency.  It is, after all, a chance for survivors and the families of victims to vent their spleen at the condemned - although he isn't actually present.)

And so, they said he should die.  The courts never said his trial counsel were incompetent.  He doesn't fully accept responsibility, it was a terrible crime, shooting at cops as he did.  And the cops were so damn heroic in preventing further bloodshed.  And, of course, he's indifferent.

The Board dropped a footnote in response to that last point.

While relevant, a death row inmate’s stated wishes should not be dispositive. The Board can envision cases in which a favorable recommendation for clemency may be warranted notwithstanding an inmate’s indifference to clemency or even an inmate’s stated preference for proceeding with the scheduled execution.An inmate’s indifference to, or outright rejection of, clemency may be outweighed by the existence of significant mitigation, judicial procedural deficiencies, or other factors that necessitate a favorable recommendation for clemency from the Board in the interests of justice. Mitts’s case is not such a case, however.

And there you have the bottom line.  Clemency, for the members of the Parole Board, has nothing to do with the Governor's plenary power of mercy.  (Probably doesn't for the Governor, either, but we're dealing with the Board now.  It's about "the interests of justice" which occasionally "necessitate a favorable recommendation for clemency."  

You know, error correction.  If the guy happens to be innocent, say.  Or if he's convinced them that the death sentence was a mistake.  

That's what it comes to.  It's not about our better angels, it's about our oopsies, our typographical errors.

Abe Lincoln, who had a way with words, explained why that's all wrong.

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

Not in Columbus when the Parole Board meets.*

 

   Harry Mitts by jmgamso

 

----------------------
*And not always for Lincoln, either, but that's a different blog post.

On to 2037

The catalog of the condemned.
 
First up is Harvey Mitts on September 25.  

Then Ronald Phillips, Dennis McGuire, Greg Lott, and Arthur Tyler.  One of them every other month through May 28, 2014.  The next one up, William Montgomery, should be July, but they set him for early August instead.  Another couple of weeks to be not enjoying the summer.

Raymond Tibbets is up in October, and then another break (Chirstmas vacation?) for Warren Henness who's got until January 2015.  Then the parade:

• Robert Van Hook - March 
• Jeffrey Wogenstahl - May
• Alva Campbell - July
• Angelo Fears - September

And as of this morning, Cleveland Jackson on November 17, 2015.  Just over 27 months from now.

It's a little more complicated than that, of course.  This business of planned murder.  And it's likely that one or more, maybe several, maybe most, won't go as scheduled.

There's litigation.  The Parole Board.  The Governor.  Stays and reprieves and commutations.  There's natural causes.  And as Billy Slagle reminded us, there's taking charge of it oneself.

And there's a serious question of method.  After September, our supply of pentobarbital expires.  Variations on that problem are cropping up across the country.  And every alternative generates its own problems.  

Georgia apparently decided to use a compounding pharmacy but passed a law making things so secret even the courts couldn't find out what they're doing so as to determine whether it's constitutional.  Georgia's on hold.

The supply in Texas runs out at the end of the year.  They've been talking about using a compounding pharmacy.  But they're busy recalling tainted drugs compounded there.  Texas might end up with an unplanned moratorium.

As might we here while they cook up another source of drugs or another way to kill.  Either way leads to more litigation, more uncertainty.  I don't know what will happen, but the thing is that nobody else does, either.  And that's a mess.

Meanwhile, the Task Force is due to issue its report and recommendations around the end of this year.  Press reports make clear what was obvious from the beginning given the group's make up.  There'll be a minority report, too. 

We have, 143 men and one woman on death row in Ohio.  136 of those folks are currently under sentence of death.  (I might be off by one or two.)  If we killed all 136, at one every two months, it would take us into something like 2037. 

Put the moral questions aside.  Hell, even put the economic ones to one side.  And forget about fairness and rationality.  Fallibility and error.  Ignore rehabilitation and redemption.  Mercy and grace.  Pretend it has no effect on us and doesn't create new trauma in anyone.  Put aside the lies and the half-truths and the false promise of closure.  Don't even think about the Constitution or, god help us, human decency.

Instead, ask a simple question.

Are we fucking insane?

Go home.  Kiss your partner.  Hug your kids.  Try to explain how it makes sense to kill Harry Mitts next month after he's been on the row for 19 years.

Or Phillips, McGuire, Lott, Tyler, Montgomery, Tibbets, Henness, Van Hook, Wogenstahl, Campbell, Fears.  And now Cleveland Jackson.  And the other 123.  

And the ones yet to be added.