Tell It To the Judge

We stopped for gas in Seabrook. A black Lincoln with State Judge plates pulled up to the next pump. I asked, and the gentleman told me that he was State Judge Jerome Jones, on the bench in Galveston for thirty years.

I introduced myself and told him that as I don’t often speak to State Judges, I wanted to take the opportunity to tell him that I was appalled at the actions of Justice Sharon Keller and Attorney General Greg Abbott before the execution of Michael Richard this month. He asked me to elaborate on which case I was talking about, and then he warmed to the subject, without commenting directly on any of the personalities.

He admitted growing ambivalent on the issue, but said that every time he’s about to decide against, “some heinous case comes up with a guy cutting a baby out of a woman’s womb or something, and I say hell, (screw) ‘em.”

He complained about the cost of keeping a prisoner on death row for “fifteen years or more.” I replied that as long as we strive for due process, it’s cheaper to keep somebody in prison for life than it is to execute them.

I think a lot of people, like Judge Jones, are no longer convinced that capital punishment is right, or necessary. This is one more issue where the citizens are way out ahead of their elected officials. So what’s stopping us?