Now It Was 1993

I can’t always remember their names, but in my nightmares I can see their faces. As the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections from 1992 until 1995, I oversaw five executions. The first two were Thomas Dean Stevens and Christopher Burger, accomplices in a monstrous crime: as teenagers in 1977, they robbed and raped a cabdriver, put him in the trunk of a car, and pushed the vehicle into a pond. I had no doubt that they were guilty: they admitted it to me. But now it was 1993 and they were in their 30s. All these years later, after a little frontal-lobe development, they were entirely different people.
- Allen Ault, "I Ordered Death in Georgia."

Comments

  1. Imagine what a gem young Jeff Dahmer would have become, if only he had been allowed time to develop his lobe.

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  2. The trans-orbital lobotomy does have the most salutary effects!

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  3. "All these years later, after a little frontal-lobe development, they were entirely different people."

    Now they are even more different. They are dead. I like them better this way.

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  4. As a teenager I used to throw water balloons at people from a moving vehicle. I would never do that now.

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  5. As a teenager, I was frequently struck by objects thrown from moving cars. I thank you for stopping that activity.

    Those frequent impacts may well have caused the problem that I encountered when I first began driving, however: while speeding down the highway, I could not rid myself of the concern that I was about to run into an invisible wall stretching across the road, with catastrophic results.

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  6. Amazing how many teenagers DON'T rob, rape, mutilate etc., etc., before their brains fully mature.

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