32 YEARS ON DEATH ROW AND COUNTING

In 1977, Anthony Leroy Pierce killed the manager of a Houston fried chicken restaurant during an armed robbery. This worthless piece of shit has been roosting on Texas’ death row for 32 years. That’s right, 32 fucking years on death row. You think that’s ridiculous? Well, there are three other Texas death row inmates who have been roosting there even longer.

Endless appeals have kept Pierce, now 50, from getting his just deserves – death by execution. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to hear yet another appeal of his death sentence. The latest appeal questions the credibility of a psychologist who testified for the prosecution and also claims that his attorney failed to investigate and present mitigating evidence to the jurors that Pierce was mentally impaired, had been subjected to an abusive childhood, and suffered from an impoverished upbringing.

Abusive childhood? Impoverished upbringing? Oh my God! Give me a moment to wipe away my tears. No wonder poor Mr. Pierce was led to rob and kill. Heaven forbid that we execute this helpless victim of a heartless society in which some children are abused and/or forced to grow up in a life of poverty.

Come on, let’s get real! There are millions of people who grew up in poverty and who did not go on to steal, rob, rape and murder. Mitigating circumstances my ass!

And what to make of all that psycho-babble about an abusive childhood mitigating against the death penalty? That crap just doesn’t fly. Take my case. My father was a good man and a good father, but he was also a strict authoritarian-disciplinarian with a Teutonic temper. Upon the slightest provocation he would let loose with an “ohrfeige” (German for slap in the ear). From my erly childhood until I enlisted in the army on my seventeenth birthday, I was the recipient of many an ohrfeige. It’s a wonder I don’t have cauliflower ears.

By today’s standards, my father would have had his ass hauled away to jail on child abuse charges. Did my father turn me into a cold blooded killer? Of course not. Did I treat my kids the same way? No, I just made sure that when I spanked them it was never in a fit of temper. As a matter of fact, I know that my father’s harsh discipline turned me into a better person. And yesterday, I was discussing the Pierce case with a middle-aged lady. She told me that her father often whipped her with a belt. Did he turn her into a cold blooded killer? Of course not. She is a nurse who, together with her husband, has raised two lovely children. But like my father, by today’s standards her father would have been jailed for child abuse.

There are millions of people functioning as law abiding citizens in our society who, like the belt-whipped lady and myself, were subjected to harsh corporal punishment of one kind or another. If the psychiatrists and psychologists are right about the effects of child abuse, our society should be infested with millions of cold blooded killers.

Finally, Pierce claims that he received inadequate counsel during his trial. Since he was represented by a court appointed attorney, that claim is probably true. I have long advocated that indigent defendants be represented by a public defender’s offices, like those with the federal justice system and in California. Court appointed attorneys are notorious for their incompetence. But did that inadequate legal representation make Anthony Leroy Pierce any less guilty. Not at all. There was plenty of evidence against him.

32 fucking years on death row and still counting? That’s a crime against society in and of itself.