I Have To Wonder: Did She Use Fountain Pens?

...or biros?

...only this time piloting a new lethal injection on a death row inmate called Kenneth Biros, someone I've written to for many years.

The rest of the issue is the usual paen to the cause of not humanely executing a man who slaughtered a woman in a fit of rage and then cut up the body and spread various parts over a wide territory. The poor wee lamb...

And a glance at Karen Torley's photo will explain any questions you may have about what sort of women are pen-friends with killers and rapists.

The article is so rambling and confused, you might wish for a lethal injection yourself by the time you get to the end of it:

Execution by lethal injection is supposed to be "humane and clinical". Ohio promises a "quick death". But there is nothing humane, quick or painless about any of it. Even when lethal injection "works" there's evidence that its cocktail of drugs paralyses the prisoner, trapping them in what Amnesty International calls a "chemical straitjacket". They're conscious, in pain, but unable to move a muscle or cry out.

Which is precisely why a new method, a massive overdose of sedative, was tried on your pal, Karen.

It seemed to work well enough. And as DumbJon points out, if it's slower, you only have yourself and your fellows to blame...

She objects to the long wait for execution (hey, we do have something in common after all!) yet ignores the fact that it is the long-drawn-out appeals process, mainly driven by the convicted and his lawyers, that sustains this. And even when the condemned accpts guilt and drops this, she's still not happy:

In 1999 a mentally ill man called Wilford Berry was executed, the first judicial killing in Ohio since the early 60s. I wrote to Berry begging him to reconsider: I reminded him that there were people like Kenny Richey on Ohio's death row who were probably innocent – Berry's death might open the floodgates.

Well, I bet he was glad to get that letter!

Of course, the time to ask Berry to 'reconsider' might have been before he murdered anyone, eh, Karen?

I want to know: how can a prison officer go home to their family and act normally after something like this? Aren't they another victim of this barbaric, inhumane system?

Perhaps they know their charges a little better than some misguided fool who writes a few letters and blocks her mind from the awful things they did to land them where they are, Karen?

And this is not just prison, it's imprisonment plus death. Capital punishment exceeds the calculated cruelty of the most heinous of murderers. It's like a criminal saying to his victim: "I'll kill you, but first I'll confine you for years ahead of that appointment with death."

I get the feeling Karen isn't a fan of prison either...

But she has no alternative proposal, it seems. Like so many bleeding hearts.