Not the best of all possible worlds: A litany of distressing news in my local newspaper

 This morning, I scanned my local newspaper as I sipped my first cup of coffee and was slammed with a litany of depressingly lousy news. 

First, Anthony Robinson, a 17-year-old high school student, was shot and killed just after getting off a school bus. The police arrested a 16-year-old and charged him with first-degree murder. 

Second, the Baton Rouge police charged a third student with felony hazing after Caleb Wilson, a fraternity pledge at Southern University, died from injuries he received during a hazing ceremony.

Third, a federal judge halted the scheduled execution of Jessie Hoffman Jr., a convicted murderer, to consider Hoffman's argument that execution by nitrogen gas constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" in violation of his constitutional rights.

And there's more. Ashley Lights, a 39-year-old mother, was arraigned on charges of criminal abortion for reportedly giving her teenage daughter abortion-inducing drugs that Lights ordered online from New York.

All these news stories are depressing, but they're particularly dispiriting because they highlight our society's inability to solve our most profound and pervasive social problems.

The United States has struggled with the issue of school violence since the Columbine school massacre more than 25 years ago. Yet a 16-year-old Baton Rouge kid was apparently able to obtain a loaded pistol and gun down a high school student.

Louisiana strengthened its anti-hazing law after Max Gruver, an LSU fraternity pledge, died of alcohol poisoning in 2017. One LSU student was sentenced to prison for negligent homicide in the wake of that tragedy, but fraternity hazing continues in Louisiana.

And then there's the ongoing litigation to stop capital punishment in this country, which has stretched out over decades while more than 2,000 men and a few women sit on death row.

I'm adamantly opposed to the death penalty for one reason: the practice brutalizes our society. Nevertheless, I don't understand why one man's execution is delayed in Louisiana to determine whether death by nitrogen gas is unconstitutional while a man in South Carolina is executed by a firing squad.

I'm also troubled about the criminal case against Ashley Lights, the mother who allegedly obtained abortion-inducing drugs from a state where such drugs are legal and then gave them to her daughter in Louisiana, where abortion is a crime.

Like most Americans, I believe abortion is wrong, but I'm sympathetic to women caught in desperate circumstances or who become pregnant through incest or rape. The prosecution would not want me on the jury if Ms. Lights's case goes to trial.

Most of the issues highlighted in my morning newspaper will be resolved in the courts, but the larger issues that these cases symbolize will continue to fester for many years. These events remind me that I do not live in the best of all possible worlds and that my puny efforts will do little to make the world a better place.

Voltaire is right to remind us that all we can do in this world of violence and injustice is cultivate our gardens.

My spring garden is planted in tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, and popcorn. If my popcorn is a success, I can at least take comfort in knowing that my homegrown popcorn is better than Orville Redenbacher's.

Jesse Hoffman Jr., scheduled for execution on March 18

Governor Landry Wants More Death Row Prisoners to Be Executed: I’m Opposed

More than 100 film industry leaders released a public letter to Governor Jeff Landry expressing their disapproval of Landry's efforts to expand the ways that death-row prisoners can be executed. “How can we,” the filmmakers wrote, “continue to conduct business within a state that contemplates the implementation of execution methods reminiscent of history's gravest atrocities?”

Governor Landy wants the Louisiana Legislature to pass a bill that would add electrocution and nitrogen gas as approved methods for killing condemned prisoners. I’m surprised he didn’t add fentanyl to his list. A hundred thousand Americans died from fentanyl overdoses last year, and no one complained that fentanyl is a painful way to die.

Of course, the morality of capital punishment doesn’t hinge on finding more humane ways to kill people. The guillotine, which extinguishes life instantaneously, probably inflicts less pain than electrocution, but that doesn’t make decapitation a morally acceptable method of execution.

Governor Landry is a Catholic, and as Robert Mann pointed out in a recent blog essay, the Catholic Catechism states the Church’s opposition to capital punishment, calling it “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” Even before the Catechism was amended in 2018 to stiffen the Church’s opposition to the death penalty, Pope John Paul II expressed his disapproval. In a homily delivered in St. Louis in 1999, he said this:

A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.

In short, the Catholic Church’s opposition to capital punishment is not an arcane and obscure snippet of Catholic dogma; it is an inextricable part of the Church’s affirmation of human life and human dignity—as is the Church’s opposition to abortion.

In my mind, Governor Landry, a good Catholic, is bound by his faith to oppose the death penalty in Louisiana, just as he opposes abortion.

57 people on Louisiana's Death Row
Image credit: NOLA.com