CARLTON FLETCHER: You’ll find no misplaced compassion here

As time goes by, an eye for an eye.

— Mobb Deep

It’s funny when someone thinks they have me pegged because they’ve read some things I’ve written over the years.

I’ve often had to stop people in the middle of conversations to clarify that while they may have surmised I’d feel a certain way about a given issue, that’s often not the case.

And so it was last week when someone called to talk about the execution of Marcus Ray Johnson. The caller, apparently convinced that he had a same-page ally, carried his assumption to what he must have felt was a foregone conclusion.

“I’m ashamed that in this supposedly enlightened day and time, we still are complicit by association in state-sanctioned murder,” he said as a preamble to what turned into a rage against the death penalty. “I don’t understand how, this being the 21st century, we can sit back and allow this barbarism to continue.

“Can you imagine the horror Marcus Ray Johnson had to endure over the final hours of his life, the torture of knowing his time of death had been established by a government agency with blood on its hands? Can you imagine what it must have felt like to contemplate supposedly civilized officials taking the power of God into their own hands and putting an end to the life of one of His creatures? Can you …”

That’s when I stopped him.

“Let’s forget about Marcus Ray Johnson for a minute,” I said. “Let’s stop focusing on the state putting an end to his life more than 20 years after he was convicted of the most heinous crime imaginable. Let’s think instead of his vicitim, Angela Sizemore. Let’s think about the 20 years and counting of life that she lost to a monster who brutally took it.

“Let’s wonder for a bit what it was like for her in her final moments. Let’s try and imagine the pain, degradation and terror she felt as this person you’re so concerned about gave in to some subhuman urge that ended her life in a final few moments of horror.”

The person on the other end of the line seemed taken aback by what I’d said, maybe even a little disappointed that I didn’t share his righteous indignation over Johnson’s execution. “But who gives the state of Georgia the right to play God?” he asked.

“What makes you feel sorrow for a convicted murderer who had zero sympathy for his victim?” I asked right back. “Maybe you’re a good enough person to find compassion for the likes of Marcus Ray Johnson, but I’m not. I can’t get past the actions taken against one who did nothing to deserve them. And I can’t help but feel waves of sympathy for the family and friends who were denied a future with this person they loved.

“Sorry, but as horrible as the concept of state-sanctioned execution may be to some, I always side with the victims. And the fact that people like you try and turn murderers like Marcus Ray Johnson into victims is repulsive to me.”

I had a few more choice words of response in my arsenal, but I never got to use them. The caller had hung up.

I wondered, momentarily, if maybe I’d been a little too abrupt in my response to what were the caller’s obviously genuine convictions. But not for long. I once again thought of Angela Sizemore and the hell her family and friends would live with for the rest of their lives. And I found no sympathy in my heart for a man who received his just reward.