“Six degrees of separation” is the theory that anyone on Earth can be connected to any other person through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries.
It’s an intriguing enough idea – so much so that Hollywood even made a movie out of it in 1990. My connection to the idea is somewhat more personal, and depends upon how one defines “acquaintance.”
After all the hysteria on both sides over Samuel Alito’s nomination and confirmation to the Supreme Court, his first case on the Supreme Court bench involved a death row appeal from Missouri, wherein Alito split from the court’s recognized conservatives to side with a prison inmate by voting with the majority to grant a stay of execution. The inmate’s argument – used successfully by two other death row inmates from Florida the previous week – is that death by lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
The inmate in question is Michael Taylor. He and I met for a few minutes, more or less, on a February morning eight years ago in a circuit courtroom outside downtown St. Louis, where I testified in a murder trial.
In late January 1995, a student at the high school in suburban St. Louis where I taught for 25 years was murdered during the last period of the school day. Her body wasn’t discovered until after school, and I was the first adult on the scene. How to deal with the murder of a student you knew is not something generally taught in university teacher-preparation classes or in-service training. (I empathize with the faculty at Columbine High School in ways the general population cannot imagine.)
The victim in this case was a 15-year-old freshman. Christine Smetzer had pitched for the school’s junior varsity softball team the preceding fall, and as the longtime head coach of the school’s softball program, I knew her relatively well, talked with her frequently, and had just spoken to her earlier in the week, asking about her adjustment to high school, her first-semester classes, and in general trying to be supportive.
Christine’s assailant, new to the school, skipped his last-period class and waited in a girls’ bathroom on the third floor for someone – anyone – to come in. According to court testimony from the police investigation, Christine’s nose and cheekbone were broken in the initial attack. She was then sexually assaulted and drowned by her assailant in the toilet.
Her killer was Michael Taylor.
Nothing like Christine’s murder had ever happened at this bastion of suburbia before. There was a media frenzy after the event, with plenty of uninformed speculation by reporters and the public – and by school district officials.
Taylor’s arrest the next day was followed by three years of legal maneuvering and delays, but he was eventually tried in St. Louis County for first-degree murder, and convicted. Early in his trial, I went back to my old home from Colorado to testify for perhaps 10 minutes.
Because he was a couple of weeks shy of his 16th birthday when he murdered Christine, Taylor could not be given the death penalty under Missouri law, and was sentenced to life in the Missouri State Penitentiary.
Eighteen months later, he beat his prison cellmate to death. At that point, I’d moved to Colorado, so I don’t know the details of that second murder and subsequent trial, but he was well past his 16th birthday when it occurred, and was sentenced to death.
I’m not a death penalty enthusiast. Taking Michael Taylor’s life will not bring back either his cellmate or the 95-pound little girl whose life he snuffed out. That said, however, it’s difficult for me to accept an argument that dying by lethal injection comes close to matching the degree of brutality Taylor demonstrated against his victims.
I don’t believe the state has to match the level of savagery of the criminals it’s about to dispatch, either, but lethal injection seems neither especially cruel nor unusual, as long as the legal validity of a death penalty of some kind is being accepted by state courts.
Ray Schoch is chairman of the Loveland Planning Commission.
