Arizona Lethal Injection Failure Questions Our Will And Skill To Kill

When last we had this not-so-merry go round about the death penalty, the name of the hour was Troy Davis. His name is like the name  Sir Mario Owens to me, people who I will always be able to recall in my brain, even when I am old(er).

My brain has conjoined these names because of a dear friend, Colorado House representative Rhonda Fields, and she is why I am changing about the death penalty. Changing for me means leaning towards it more, but I have yet to fully cross the border.

I am an adult person who only recently bought my first adult pistol, a cheap pellet gun to protect my garden from, "whatever". In hindsight, insects, not animals, have always been my greatest garden issue. Maybe I was secretly leaving the world I once knew, where guns couldn't beat God, so having one represented a lack of faith; faith in the military or law enforcement to stop the crazy folks, but mostly a lack of faith in the mental stability of mankind. I still don't care to own a gun, but I am

getting pretty good with that pellet pistol.

I say all that to squarely categorize myself as a death penalty pacifist. Well, that's not my personal description of me, but it's what those who ardently believe in the death penalty might call me.  My aforementioned change makes me a modified pacifist, and here's why.

Rhonda Fields.

Today she represents district 42 in the Colorado state house of representatives. Back in the day she was my friend Rhonda who does the golf tournament. Before Rhonda Fields, I only played golf when business customers made it free, and they had to cover club rentals as well. When I met Rhonda, I bought a set of second hand junkers and took out lots of weeds practicing for the yearly tournament. Because of Rhonda (and a wicked competitive streak), I turned my back yard into a practice course, bought a better junker set of clubs, quickly dropped my average score by 15 strokes and changed to someone who would push the death penalty button myself, at least for Rhonda Fields.

As for her position on the death penalty, I basically assumed too much. Rhonda is the sweetest person on the planet and she is also a person with a powerful voice. A few days prior to the verdict that would find Sir Mario Owens worthy of death for his part in the ordered hit on Javad Marshall Fields (Rhonda's son) and Vivian Wolfe (Javad's girlfriend), Rhonda came by and expressed her concern for the verdict given the fervor of the defense. I was well aware of this fervor because my crew got the project to print the signs for Owens' defense team. They offered a tragic family tree with mental illness more common in one family then any of us who printed the signs could ignore. The short version of his defense is, this kid never had a chance.

My assumption was that Rhonda felt like I did about capital punishment. Maybe she did before it was her son's murderers in question. In the years after Sir Mario Owens was sentenced to death, Rhonda Fields, that lady with the powerful voice, became rep. Rhonda who led the charge against the gun violence in her district by the Aurora theatre shooting.


When Troy Davis was up for execution, I had to come face to face with my feelings about killing killers (especially with controversial convictions) and the ease at which I would eliminate Owens if I knew it would comfort my friend. Funny how life can change our beliefs.

Yet, would I wish to be among the executioners who now gets to imagine Joseph Wood gasping for air for the better part of two hours? Only for Rhonda. Even then I might want to double check to see if she was pleased with the proceedings. According to some of the family of Wood's slain victims, his passing was too serene in light of the carnage he was convicted of. They described it as an uncomfortable sleep of sorts that ended at two hours. If others couldn't endure two hours of gasping, several members of the victims family would've happily offered to expedite the process.

Humans are not really good with the death process. We are awful with every aspect of killing because it was not included in the original design. We don't even grieve well enough to understand the death business.  We are well rehearsed in the realm of retribution and retaliation, so typically one emotion or the other is driving our efforts to kill each other when non-psychotic people find solace in death.

Owens has yet to be put to death. In solidly purple Colorado, his death will drag on. I often wonder if Rhonda will even feel the same by the time she is in the room like the Arizona families of the slain victims of Joseph Wood.

As for me? I will call Rhonda Fields when it's time for Owens to die and reassess my feelings after I talk with her.