May the family and friends of Holly Washa be blessed as they move forward in their lives. They suffered needlessly as a result of Mr. Brown's murder of a beautiful, young woman. Our community must reach out and embrace them. And, we must remember and celebrate Holly's life and goodness.
However, we can no longer promise the family of a murder victim the life of the killer in return.
Today, the State of Washington rejoins China and Iran, Texas and North Carolina, as jurisdictions that violate human rights and international norms of decency.
Today, the State of Washington killed a mentally disordered man after misleading his jury that he was not afflicted with a mental disease.
Tomorrow, we will not wake up any safer. Tomorrow, we will not know a more perfect justice. Tomorrow, we will not have taken steps to prevent the next murder.
We will, however, know the name of the last person killed before Washington ended its experiment with the death penalty; when we recognized that our standards of decency had evolved so that we could no longer permit state-sanctioned killing--killing another to prove that killing is wrong. We will then look back and wonder why we felt we needed to kill Cal Coburn Brown--what justification existed--just as we look back now and wonder why we executed juveniles and the intellectually disabled in this Nation only a few, short years ago.
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The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
