Have I Gone Crazy or Has the State of Arkansas?

April 22, 2022 By Justice

Paul Greenberg,

I’m innocent, I keep telling myself, only I don’t believe it. For the flashbacks keep coming: the body sprawled on the concrete, the pool of blood spreading all around it, the searchlights and sirens. It’s all one indelible image after another, and, like a guilty conscience, none of them will be washed away, hard as I try. Oh, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? I’m a homicidal maniac, my lawyers told the judge, and there’s no cure for my condition. Which is why I’m here in this asylum for the criminally insane.

But if I’m a certifiable serial killer and general nutcase, how would you describe the whole team of distinguished officials who put and keep me here? I was accused and convicted of killing only one of my fellow human beings. At last report, the almighty State of Arkansas was lining up one inmate after another to be slaughtered as expeditiously as possible. Yes, yes, I know. None of them is innocent, but how innocent is a state that would do such a thing, or even condone it? The questions just won’t stop, and neither will the almighty state’s protestations that it, too, is innocent. Only I don’t believe it, and it’s unlikely the rest of the world will.

The clock keeps ticking. I can hear it in my mind marking off the minutes and seconds till it’ll go off like a time bomb. Sometimes it’s the only thing I can hear. Can’t you hear it, too? The questions just won’t go away. There are bound to be protesters out there somewhere, anywhere, even if the protests resound only in their own outraged minds. But they don’t seem to hear me.

Alone, abandoned, I prepare to eke out my days and nights wondering if I’m the homicidal maniac or if the State of Arkansas is. You tell me: Is there any difference between us except these bars? The state assures all that these executions will be carried out in a “professional” manner. Just what does that mean? That there won’t be anything personal about it? Every profession, it’s been said, is a conspiracy against the laity. But this one seems to include a whole state. The mind reels. Have the inmates rebelled and taken over the asylum? And how tell the difference?

So many questions, so few answers — if any. I’m nice and safe here, the docs assure me as they adjust my straitjacket and tell me to be a good boy. (“Hold still, old buddy, don’t take this personally. All we’re going to do to these people is kill them.”) Who will keep the endless nightmares away? All I want to do is be free of my warders at last, but they won’t help me kill myself, they explain, for that would be against regulations.

Here in my cell or maybe just in my forever wandering mind the ticking is so loud it could be a time bomb set to go off any minute, but it’s a minute that never comes. If this isn’t cruel and unusual punishment, what would be? If I wasn’t crazy before I got here, surely I am by now. It’s my keepers — as in “my brother’s keeper” — who are judged sane while I’m consigned to the looney bin. I can’t stand it, yet somehow I do. It’s hard to stamp out this death impulse. And just as hard to stamp out the impulse to live no matter what. What a paradox, like the rest of my so-called life.

But I digress, which would be a relief if only I knew what I was digressing from. Maybe you can tell me, Gentle Reader. No one else around here seems able to set me straight. Or even interested in making the effort to explain why I’m a criminal for what I’ve done while the state is blameless for what it wants to do sevenfold. I can’t say I blame people for avoiding my questions. For to do so, they’d have to enter this funhouse mirror that passes for my mind.

Sincerely, best regards, God bless, yours truly and whatever closing benediction would be appropriate, including just a plain “I give up.” For some things, like the peace of God, surpass all understanding. I would wish you well if only I knew what wellness was under these inexplicable circumstances. I can’t think of anything to ask you for, not even a file. For if I did manage to escape, what would I be escaping to? I’d just be exchanging one madhouse for another. Besides, there’s no escaping my real prison: myself.

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  • DrArtaud

    Interesting article, poetic, thanks Conservative Read for covering it. I was conflicted by the article, not sure what the author was intending to say. So I found it online where Disqus comments are used (like here) and see that others either don’t understand it either, or are downright hostile about it.

    Here’s what one person had to say:

    WTH is this POS of an article? Greenberg appears to have lost his marbles. I’m still not clear on what he was trying (and completely failed) to say. A common failing of people who think they are the smartest person in the room. Well, just another columnist that I won’t be clicking on anymore.

    To avoid a columnist because of one article the reader disagrees with is crazy, actually it’s something that’s more a part of liberals and the left, and it’s narcissistic. And I find it hard to disagree with this article because I’m not sure of the author’s other intentions. Even if the above commenter disagrees on this issue, we should not toss aside the author’s other contributions to Conservatism. We had an extreme liberal at work, and I’m a strong Conservative, but some of the more in-depth conversations I had with people at work were with him. When we talk within ideologies, it’s a fan club, but when we talk with others outside our ideologies, it’s a learning experience.

    There has been multiple innocent people in prison convicted and at times executed by malicious or careless lab or police work. Worse still, there are people that prosecutors knew innocent but they convicted anyway. For instance, the Duke University Lacrosse Team, accused of raping a black woman, here’s the charges leveled against the prosecutor before he was disbarred:

    They claimed he went public with a series of accusations that later turned out to be untrue; that he exaggerated and intensified racial tensions; that he unduly influenced the Durham police investigation; that he tried to manipulate potential witnesses; that he refused to hear exculpatory evidence before indictment; that regulations on the conduct of an identification exercise were breached by failure to include “dummy” photographs of anyone who was not at the party; that he had never spoken directly to the alleged victim about the accusations; and that he made misleadingly incomplete presentations of various aspects of the evidence in the case (including DNA results).

    After replacing the prosecutor, charges against the Lacrosse Team were dropped.

    Here’s an old story of an innocent man convicted and executed, and a link to other more recent ones.

    Timothy Evans: Timothy Evans was sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of his daughter in 1949 at their home in Notting Hill, London. Evans maintained his innocence and repeatedly accused his neighbor, John Christie, of murdering his wife and daughter. The police investigation and physical evidence used to convict Evans was weak. After Evans’ trial and execution, Christie was found to be a serial killer who was responsible for murdering several women at his residence. There were massive campaigns to overturn Evans’ conviction and an official inquiry was conducted 16 years later. It was confirmed that Evans’ daughter had been killed by Christie, and Evans was granted a posthumous pardon. This case of injustice had a strong influence in the UK’s decision to abolish capital punishment.

    Artigle: 10 Infamous Cases of Wrongful Execution

    I support the death penalty, after a fair trial, if:

    Upon thorough consideration of the mental status of the criminal, there is incontrovertible evidence of guilt - For killers video clearly showing the crime, caught in the act without leaving the scene, etc., for someone that wilfully substantially physically (sadistically) tortures (not necessarily resulting in death and incontrovertible evidence still applies).

    A killer, convicted, served time, released, and kills a second time.

    Serial killers upon substantial evidence of a series of murders without the incontrovertible evidence aspect.