DC sniper John Muhammad’s played his last card with the courts as the US Supreme Court has refused to block tomorrow’s execution. The Court issued the refusal with no comment given as to why it refused. Of course, we all know perfectly well why they refused: the man’s as guilty as it gets, his crime warrants the punishment, and nothing has to come light to suggest either of those assertions aren’t true.
Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine still has Muhammad’s clemency request on his desk and, in spite of assurances that he won’t approve it, he could still set aside the execution. I’ll believe he won’t when he issues the denial but nothing has changed that would render his grant of clemency as anything but a severe miscarriage of justice.
It’s time. He’s had his days in court. Get it done, Virginia.
Update: Gov. Kaine has reportedly denied the clemency request, making good on his previous word that he’d do so. Good for you, Gov. Kaine. The execution is scheduled for 21:00 this evening. Enjoy hell, slimewad.
November 9th, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
Crime & Punishment, Human Interest |
no comments
Ever since I got out of my daily commute job in DC I’ve studiously avoided situations that require me to be in DC before about 10:00 in the morning. That’s especially true since I drive alone and the HOV restrictions make coming in on Route 66 impossible. This morning was a bit different owing to my weekend guests who were coming in to DC for a conference this week. With them in the car, the magical HOV lanes were open to me and I came right in. Some things change and some things remain the same, as they say, and the trip in this morning proved no exception to that rule.
The myth that HOV lanes speed the traffic along doesn’t hold any more true today than it did a few years ago. With the plethora of hybrid vehicles out there and the exception that exists for them to use the HOV lanes with only 1 person in them means that the line of cars in those lanes were, most of the way, about as thick as the other lanes. What traffic slowups were avoided by being in those lanes on the Dulles Toll Road were replaced with construction delays from the new Metro line prep work. Once inside of those delays on 66 it was back to traffic problems. In all, however, it took just a bit over an hour to get into DC this morning. All in all, not too bad. But not a speedy event, either. Traffic is just traffic.
After dropping my guests off and heading over to my usual haunts, I decided to set up my office at a local Starbucks. Trying to get a picture of the place without including some unwitting fellow commuter was a bit of a trick but I managed.
And just as I was filing this, I was treated to a reminder that DC is truly an international city. Two folks in line were having an earnest discussion in German, a couple of businessmen behind me were talking about meeting some Congresscritter this morning (one of them had a helluva southern twang in his voice) and a young woman on a cell phone was speaking intently in French. Should be a fun day.
November 9th, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
Human Interest |
no comments
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