The Execution of the DC Sniper

Last night, at 9:00 p.m. EST, John Allen Muhammed, aka "the DC Sniper," was executed by lethal injection at a Virginia prison. Silent, emotionless, he was strapped down to the gurney in the death chamber. At 9:06 p.m. he was asked if he had any last words, and he said nothing. At 9:08 p.m., the injections began, he began to breath heavily, blink repeatedly, and after a few deep breaths, fell still. At 9:11 p.m. he was declared dead.

With all the day-to-day business of my life, it was easy to get distracted and not think about this event, but every time I checked in with the news I was reminded of what unfolded a little more than seven years ago. Normally I don't pay attention to executions - usually I don't know the faces of death-row inmates, let alone their names or what they did to deserve their punishment. This time was different.

I moved to the Washington, DC area in June 2002. I had just graduated from college and was starting a six-month internship working in downtown DC. In July of that year, I moved into a studio apartment in downtown Silver Spring, MD, just north of the capitol. I was having a hard time adjusting to my new surroundings: settling in to a new place, getting familiar with a new city, adjusting to a new job, trying to meet new people and make new friends. Having grown up outside of New York City, I was used to the energy of that city, and Washington, DC was a different sort of animal.


And then people started getting shot. Not bad people. Not people who were caught up in a bad situation. Just random people, at random times, in random places. There was no pattern to the madness, no way to make sense of what was happening, and, most importantly, no way to rule yourself out as a potential target.

I distinct remember the panicked walks I made from my apartment to the Metro. I walked quickly. I was highly sensitive to my surroundings. I even tried not walking in a straight line, as the police had suggested. Once they made a link to some white box trucks, I was startled by every white truck I saw. Someone was out to kill people - any people - and I could have been one of them.

One of the murders took place one mile south of my apartment, at an intersection that I often passed through. Another took place two miles up the road from me, again, not far from places I often passed through.

I hate when politicians say that we cannot live in fear because then we let terrorists win. Let me tell you something: when you know that your life is truly in danger every day, you will be scared. Terrorists have existed since before Biblical times, and the reason people still do it? It works.

I was both mortified and fascinated by those three weeks in October 2002. Mortified because I feared for my life, but fascinated by the genius of what the DC Sniper was doing: keeping people in fear, keeping the police guessing, even taunting the police and getting away with it. It was surreal, like living in a James Patterson novel, or a serial killer movie. I'm not sure why, but I seem to have some sort of twisted interest in abnormal and deviant people. Maybe I just like to figure out what it is that makes people tick, maybe it's a bizarre sense of empathy. But I do not want to go through the experience again of fearing I might be one of their victims.

When it comes to capital punishment, I'm not sure which way I stand. On the one hand, I think life is precious, and that no one should take the life of another person. At the same time, these people are dangerous, maybe disturbed, and they have caused great suffering for others. We can let them live in a high-security facility, which isn't much of a life anyway, or we can just, well, eliminate them - not just from the rest of society, but from existence, easing the minds of those who know that the people who took their loved ones are still alive somewhere. In more primitive societies, those who killed others either came to dominate or were ostracized - or even killed. Human societies have always sought some kind of order in a world of random disorder, and those who don't play by the rules either change the game or are kicked out. What's the difference, really, between locking someone away for the rest of his life and simply killing him? I know there's the religious argument (which ironically works both ways - life is God's creation but an eye for an eye) but absent some moral construction, the point is the same: they are not a part of "normal" society. Is killing ever a satisfactory vengeance? Most would argue it's not, even the families of victims who witness the executions firsthand. It certainly doesn't change the past, or bring back those who were lost.

When I read about John Allen Muhammed's execution, I was filled with a mix of emotions. "Wow, they actually got him, convicted him, and already it's time for him to die." "Is execution really the way to go?" "Thank goodness, that bastard's gonna get what's coming to him." Honestly, part of me feels like a just punishment for both the pain he caused and the fear he evoked is to let him loose on some secure property for awhile, and let him know that at some point he will be shot and killed. Don't tell him when, or where, or how. Just let him go about his life and live in fear. And then, at some random time in some random place, shoot him. Or let one of the relatives of one of his victims shoot him. That would be justice.

Of course, it would also be cruel. Just as cruel as he was to the rest of us living in the DC area in that fall of 2002. But part of me still wants to inflict that kind of cruelty on him. A murderous monster who claimed he was innocent up until the day he died. A mentally-unstable man who suffered during the Gulf War and afterward as a result of doing his duty. A vengeful but sad man who created this whole rouse as a cover for murdering his ex-wife. Victim of his own life story, of circumstances and situations that had come before, but also the cause of death and destruction for so many people.

And I realize just how affected I was by this man. And I'm just one of many, I'm sure. I wonder who else is out there who read about his execution and was stirred the way I was? Why does it still bother me? Why do I have such mixed emotions? Why do I even care?

Because life is precious, and for three weeks, this man threatened to take that gift away from us. Now his turn has come, and the whole situation is an oxymoron: take the life of a man who took life from another, because he should not have done that, because life is precious.

Thinking about it now, I think the whole thing bothers me because that whole experience I went through reminds me of my own mortality. It scares the hell out of me, and no matter what I do, I can't change my mortality. Getting back at someone for making me feel that way does nothing to change my mortality. Muhammed's death is just another event out of the billions of events that take place each day around the world. His death is just one of many, unfortunately, but he got the headline that day.

So I try and let it go, and I take a deep breath. I remind myself that it's over, both the situation seven years ago and the execution that took place last night. I go about my business. I turn away and look around.

And I do my best to remember that life is precious.