I always figured I’d feel badly about it if I killed
someone.
I’m sorry. I mean, wow, what a statement to spew out, to be
tossed amid unsuspecting folks. But bear with me. I have my reasons for
bringing this up.
I suppose this is a rather odd thing to introduce here, the
first sentence on a blank computer screen. Who would write such a thing? Who
would even think it? Reasonable people don’t go around killing other people.
It’s rather an uncommon action. So why would I even contemplate my own reaction
to this? It’s not like I figured on ever learning how it would feel.
But my mind does wander into varied places, and I have
actually found myself wondering about such a thing. The Vietnam War offered up
an opportunity. College kept me out of the draft for years, but I faced one
year in the lottery after graduation. And in those days it was not unusual for
the candidates for canon fodder status to consider their options.
For instance, the wife at the time had told me in no
uncertain terms that I would not be reporting for duty if invited. Nope, we’d
be moving to Canada. But in spite of her dictates, I did consider the
possibility of attending, doing my duty, testing my immortality in war. So I
mulled about in my head the various consequences of such a decision.
Dying came to mind, as did living on with various body parts
missing as a side effect of combat. And I contemplated the taking of life. War
excuses many of the behaviors we avoid most days at home. In war, killing folks
is not only accepted, it is mandated. So I suppose that contingency would make
it all just fine. Strike down a few of them other folks, and then come home and
take up my life again as if nothing had happened. Don’t give it a thought.
But I gave it a thought. Several, in fact. Missed out on any
real experience, for my lottery number didn’t come up, but I finally concluded
that I’d probably feel bad about killing someone if I was compelled to do it in
war. And I didn’t feel wrong for that.
I’ve been around for several of the more significant
episodes of civil unrest in the last 50 years. I’ve seen civilization suspended
following Dr. King’s murder and when the disputed verdicts came down following
Rodney King’s arrest in Los Angeles. I’ve seen the videos of the enraged mobs
in the streets, the beatings and the attempted murders. I watched neighborhoods
looted and witnessed blocks of businesses burned to the ground.
And I sat in my little business here, feeling vulnerable and
threatened by possibilities with those images in my head. And I wondered, when
faced with such a mob, if I would defend my life’s work, and also my family and
my employees who are both friends and family to me. Or would I simply run away
and hope to survive, and take the loss of everything as just the price of participation
in history.
I brought the rifle to work on the day the OJ Simpson
verdict was read, for I wondered what that night would hold for civilization.
Would the mobs be in the streets of my town this time, and would the buildings
soon be burning around me? Didn’t end up needing it, but that old question was
again in the front of my mind. Would I feel bad if I had to kill to defend that
which was important to me, or would I instead choose to run away in terror, or
die rather than kill?
We received the news via the internet. The young woman
arrived at work at the veterinary hospital in Florida early in the morning, to
care for the animals and get things ready for the day. The practice owner
arrived an hour later and was greeted by carnage and gore. The walls were
splashed with blood, the floors flooded by it. The woman had been viciously
beaten to death with a fire extinguisher, after the savage had raped and
tortured her. He was a twice convicted sexual predator, but of course he’d been
let out of jail early both times, for someone didn’t want to keep a man like
this away from society. That wouldn’t be fair.
The owner of that practice has a concealed carry permit now,
and she is armed always. Her practice is located in a marginal area where crime
is common, a neighborhood into which criminals are often released from prison
to prey upon the decent folks, kinda like my place.
We hear of the doctor nearly beaten to death in his own
hospital in Southern California because he annoyed a client, and of the strong-arm
daytime robberies of veterinary hospitals for the few drugs found on the
premises. And yeah, I know of all the armed robberies and those several murders
that have been committed in the businesses just around the corner from my
clinic. So yeah, that haven we call our clinic isn’t all that safe a place
after all.
We have contingency plans in place, and ready access to
weapons in the clinic, and I acknowledge that it is not a stretch at all to
consider that I might someday be faced by that old question again. And no… I
don’t want to be put into that untenable position.
I resisted the assignment to jury duty last month, for I did
not wish to be inconvenienced by closing my clinic for 5 weeks. But I did sit
in the jury box for a short while to be questioned by the judge and the DA
before a jury was selected without me. And I spoke briefly with the murderer
who was serving as his own attorney. It’s not fair perhaps, to judge a man
prematurely, particularly when charged by the judge with the notion that you must
only consider his guilt or innocence based upon evidence presented later at his
trial, but this man was a sociopath.
Twice I watched him walk across the hall to enter the
courtroom while a gaggle of potential jurors wasted time in the hall. He walked
tall, quickly, confident…or was it arrogant? But when he got up from his chair
to question me, the potential juror, he was bent over, limping, smiling,
shucking and jiving. A simple, humble man, trying to pull wool over eyes. But I
also watched him as the attorney from the public defender’s office tried to
offer advice, and he transformed into the monster, flashing anger and hatred
and that look in his eyes as he ripped into the man who tried to help him.
He dripped with anger, narcissism, thinly veiled unspoken
threat, and no suggestion of a conscience. Simply watching him for those few
hours was instructive, for I am a trusting person, and a tad naïve. And he had
killed trusting, naïve people.
So I missed experiencing the murderer’s day in court. The internet
yielded the details, of how he gloated and abused his moment in the limelight
of his own trial, and enjoyed being the center of the universe, even though
that universe extended only to the limits of the room. He taunted his accusers,
insulted his jury, and hurled pain and hatred at the families of the two he had
murdered, screaming at them, torturing them, enraging them for his own
amusement. He was glad to be alive, and utterly dismissive of those who were
dead by his hand. No remorse. No second thoughts. No cares for anyone but
himself. Capable of harm to anyone he chose.
He is the sociopath I had spotted in the first moments. He
is a monster, but in his mind, he has done no wrong at all.
There is not even the suggestion that he feels badly about
killing someone.
He is the kind of un-human that every person in that
courtroom, having witnessed his evil and felt the touch of fear in their heart
when looking into his eyes, likely would consider for a moment seizing the
opportunity to kill him on the spot. But yeah, they would all feel badly,
after.
That jury now is deciding his fate, choosing between the
slim chance that California would eventually abruptly end his wretched life, or
simply gifting him with a life sentence without parole, which he referred to as
his “retirement”.
And I am left to contemplate, with the likelihood perhaps
increasing every year that someone with this murderer’s eyes will one morning
barge into my clinic armed and angry and conscienceless, that I’ll have to face
that choice that I’ve dodged for all this time.
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