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INTERVIEWER: So what makes South Dakota a pro-life state?
PASSERBY: We always vote for life.
INTERVIEWER: Always?
PASSERBY: Always.
* * *
[background: PAGE, MOELLER, RHINES, PIPER seated, backs to audience; POAGE standing beside them, facing up]
JUROR: I voted to kill a man.
CHORUS1: kill
CHORUS2: kill
CHORUS3: execute
CHORUS4: kill
JUROR: He sits 10 miles from here. Elijah Page.
CHORUS1: You saw his eyes.
CHORUS2: What was he like?
JUROR: He murdered a man
CHORUS3: an innocent boy
CHORUS4: Chester Allan Poage
JUROR: Poage was 19, Page was 18. Page tortured him, killed him.
CHORUS1: But his eyes
CHORUS2: his eyes
CHORUS34: What was he like?
JUROR: He looked right at me, and I at him, and I saw
CHORUS1: a killer?
CHORUS2: a beast?
CHORUS3: a mad dog we must put down?
CHORUS4: darkness, evil
CHORUS1: nothing at all
JUROR: I saw a man.
CHORUS2: A bad man?
JUROR: A bad man, yes
But still a man, a life
CHORUS3: A man who does not deserve life
CHORUS4: A man we must judge
CHORUS1: must sentence
CHORUS2: must kill so he cannot kill again
JUROR: 12 of us, one room, weighing his life
CHORUS3: His life? No!
CHORUS4: No longer his
CHORUS1: He violated life
CHORUS2: He forfeited life.
JUROR: And if he broke free of his shackles, rushed the bench, tried to kill the judge, I'd try to stop him, kill him if I had to
CHORUS3: And we have to now!
JUROR: Have to? No. Look at him. In chains, in a cell, guards all around. The threat is gone. Why kill him? Why put blood on our hands? Lock him up, throw away the key, problem solved.
CHORUS4: But why should we feed and clothe this beast?
CHORUS1: Why should we choose to bear this burden?
JUROR: Do we dispose of life because it is inconvenient?
CHORUS2: We dispose of it when it is evil
CHORUS: evil!
CHORUS2: and not worth our effort
CHORUS3: not worth our investment
CHORUS4: not worth our love.
JUROR: But if we invested our time, our love
Might he not change? Might we not restore the spark
That faded from his eyes when he was a child
And left him this beast before us?
Is not redemption possible for every man?
CHORUS1: Redemption is not in our hands.
JUROR: And judgment is? [pause]
I thought we were a pro-life state.
CHORUS1: [raises hand to vote] I'm pro-life
CHORUS2: [raises hand] but he deserves death.
CHORUS3: [raises hand] I'm pro-life
CHORUS4: [raises hand] but I will kill.
JUROR: So I raised my hand to stop a beating heart.
CHORUS1: The heart of―
JUROR: I know! The heart of a killer.
I saw him once more
Shackled, flanked by deputies, hearing our sentence.
I saw him: a bad man, a killer, all those things
And I saw his fingers flex
His chest move with each slow breath
His eyes
CHORUS2: The eyes of―
JUROR: I know―the eyes of a killer
now turning slowly from his handcuffs to the floor.
Once more, I saw a man
CHORUS: [softly] a bad man, a bad man
JUROR: who would die by my hand.
Now Elijah Page sits 10 miles from here
Seeking death
Delayed only by legislative i-dotting
And a governor who had the same doubts I had
But didn't want to hash them out during an election.
If I could talk to Elijah Page
CHORUS2: He might kill you
JUROR: Or he might listen. If I could pray with him
CHORUS3: He might laugh
CHORUS4: He might reject God
JUROR: Or he might see a light he's never seen before.
CHORUS1: He'll never see the light
CHORUS2: That monster should never see daylight
CHORUS3: A beast like that can never
CHORUS4: never
CHORUS: never change!
JUROR: maybe, maybe not in eighty years
But never, certainly never in death.
Life is possibility, potential, always, always some shred of hope.
CHORUS12: Even the worst man
JUROR: is still a man
CHORUS34: Even the worst life
JUROR: is still a life.
CHORUS12: We're pro-life
JUROR: but Elijah Page deserves to die.
CHORUS: We're pro-life
JUROR: but we will vote to kill.
CHORUS: Live man good
Dead man bad
Saturday, July 7, 2007
As We Prepare to Kill a Man...
As we prepare to kill Elijah Page, let's have a little dramatic reading from "The Pro-Life Handbook," last performed February 1, 2007, at the Brandon Valley Performing Arts Center:
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Four legs good, two legs better...
ReplyDelete"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
--G.Orwell, _Animal Farm_, 1946.
When Orwell citations can apply so aptly to so many current issues, might that be a sign that our society is going down a very bad road?
ReplyDeleteBut does redemption lie at the end of that very bad road? Elijah Page walked a very bad road, and now we'll snuff out his life in the time it takes to do your laundry. (God willing--sometimes it takes longer...) What redeems man is an unselfish belief in the idea that in the darkest of nights, he will hold fast and shield the dimming light of his moral senses from combatant winds.
ReplyDelete"On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time." I had to throw that one in there :)
And lately, my moral sense has been telling me, in the face of the combatant winds of popular opinion and emotion, that state-sanctioned killing is a bad idea. I don't have anything to gain by sparing Page's life. My tax dollars would continue to pay to feed a murderer, a man I'd be scared to be near. But killing a convicted and incracerated man... I used to be sure it was o.k., but now I'm as conflicted as the juror in this scene.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if Page will ever get redemption. I don't know if there is such a thing. But when we kill him, we put a definite end to that possibility.
ReplyDeleteOr, in terms of final judgment, we just put him on the fast-track with his maker!
ReplyDeleteBut I still like the Alaska idea better.
"But when we kill him, we put a definite end to that possibility."
ReplyDeleteHow do you know that?
Nowhere in anything that I have read does it state that I have the right to end a person's life. There is indeed a commandment stating that I do NOT have that right. I find myself conflicted with this when we so readily declare war and allow power and money shape our decisions rather than sound moral judgment. I have to wonder if the old saying is true, " Absolute Power corrupts Absolutely." I also wonder what I would tell my children if I told them it is not ok to kill, but in this one case, I guess it is ok. How do I defend that moral dichotomy?
ReplyDeleteI also have to agree that once we execute Page we eliminate the chance that redemption can take place here on earth, I have to believe that ultimately he will have to come to grips with his behavior and answer to a higher authority.
I can't help but think that to NOT kill somebody who has shown that a great deal of evil lives in them is nothing less than cowardice in the face of having to make a very hard decision that will inevitably scar them forever.
ReplyDeleteI can say that his life means nothing to me, but if the decision was mine alone whether he would live another day, killing him would be a burden the rest of my life.
Letting evil live is a very easy thing. Especially when there is always some measure of good muddled up in the stew that makes people human.
It is immoral to allow him to live if it gives him the opportunity to ever destroy other lives. It is not immoral to kill when we have to. (As far as religious support: God commanded Israel to slaughter entire Canaanite nations and punished them when they didn't follow through completely. Forgiving someone for murdering your son/wife/lifelong friend, does not mean you keep them around like nothing happened, it just means you stop hating them for it. Capital Punishment does not stop us from forgiving them, even as we pull the switch.