Texas Execution #506 Is Personal To Me

[TexasTowelie]

By Carol Morgan

“Putting down” a human being in the same manner as an animal is abhorrent to me. The death penalty seems pointless. It doesn’t deter crime. It doesn’t rehabilitate the offender. It doesn’t bring back the dead. It doesn’t bring closure to either family.

So, what, exactly, is its purpose?

It’s no more than a public spectacle like the entertainment in ancient Rome; a relic of a barbaric past. One person kills another and then we kill the offender to show that killing is wrong. Where’s the lesson? An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. It’s quite remarkable that America is the only industrialized nation in the world that still employs the death penalty.

The point of my writing this is not to protest the death penalty, but to ask questions: What is it that makes a young man go wrong? What could have been done to prevent this? Are we any closer to preventing these mistakes than we were one hundred years ago? Does anyone care?

Michael Yowell was the 506th execution in Texas, a state that supposedly recognizes the sanctity of life.

I knew him. My memories are of an impulsive and restless 13 year old in my seventh grade class from thirty years ago. One-on-one, Michael was easy to talk to; a sweet boy with an impish smile who bonded easily in private; so different from the brash and off-putting exterior he employed as protection. In a classroom situation, he was very different. He jockeyed for attention and tormented other students. I was forced to place him alone at a table near my desk to keep him on-task and out of trouble. Some days he drifted in and out sleep and other days he hovered over his books and papers, nervously hyper-vigilant, as if he was afraid of those around him. The faculty made various attempts at intervention, but they were summarily dismissed by his parents. They claimed we were unfair; singling him out and picking on him. We gave up. He moved on to high school and I never thought about him again until 1999.

Even though it takes a village to raise a child, purists will claim his fate was the result of his own personal choices. The uncomfortable truth is that it’s somewhere in between; we all bear some responsibility when this happens. From his parents in denial to his drug-using friends who irresponsibly enabled him, then onto teachers, psychiatrists, and over-worked probation and parole officers who gave up too easily, followed by pro-bono lawyers merely going through the motions of their professions; prosecutors and judges using another’s misfortune to score political points or earn a brief mention in a law journal.

He’s not the only former student of mine who lost his way in life. Addictions, crimes, imprisonments, executions. Some took their own life; others died in pointless violence because of a poor choice of friends. I’m the unfortunate curator of story after story that stacks endlessly upon a mountain of other stories. All of us unknowingly greased their facile falls through the cracks. Of course, it’s true that they failed themselves, but in our frustration, we contributed to their failure.

The years that span 12-18 are dangerous years. They are a narrow precarious bridge to adulthood where a boy or girl can tumble over the edge at any time.

In past years, at the beginning of every school year, I buried myself in the school vault to pore over the permanent records of the 150-plus students in my classes. I familiarized myself with their personal situations along with their academic strengths and weaknesses. I did so to prepare for the challenges that awaited me over the next 180 days. The brown envelopes were a time capsule; a fascinating mini-biography of each student’s life.

There were pictures of my students as kindergarteners and third graders with gap-toothed smiles; a haircut and clothing that reflected the trends of the time. Their educational careers began hopefully with comments such as “eager to learn” or “sweet boy”, but the comments quickly evolved to less-flattering adjectives like lazy, stubborn, or hostile. Those comments distressed me. No nine-year-old should be saddled with those labels so prematurely. They easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

At one time, all of these sweet innocent children were someone’s joy and hope for the future. What happened? What changed? Life, in all of its bizarre twists and turns, intervened; divorce, disease, family addictions, a job loss, a breadwinner’s disability or the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. All of it was the conductor’s switch that derailed their life to an alternate track. Usually, drugs and alcohol followed; an anesthetic to deaden the pain of their troubles and sense of worthlessness.

Poverty and working class homes were more likely to contribute to the dark road, but the wealthy homes of busily-distracted doctors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs weren’t immune. The “difficult” children of divorced parents bounced from house-to-house and many times a much-younger stepmother hosted keg parties every weekend, effectively pushing other vulnerable teens off into danger. The only difference between the wealthy and poor was the banishment of their offspring to expensive schools like Hockaday or St. Mark’s, instead of Texas’ prisons. The wealthy can easily purchase interventions for their children that working class parents cannot.

Of course, there were always success stories; proof that a combination of attention from caring adults and the student’s inherent resiliency could result in miracles. Sometimes love never failed, but sometimes it wasn’t enough. Maybe no one could have saved them or perhaps everyone could have saved them; that riddle remains unanswered.

I only know that those youthful fresh faces of the past haunt my dreams to this very day. I realize it’s a misplaced and undeserved guilt, but I wanted so desperately to save them ALL and I failed.

Educators and parents spend a lot of time and effort in constructing lives. Psychologists, criminologists, and interventionists spend time reconstructing broken and damaged lives, but few of us think of deconstructing a failed life to analyze it and prevent its cruel repetition in another. We simply count the ones that crash and burn as a cautionary tale.

We added one more this evening.

Senseless.

RIP, Michael Yowell. May you find the peace in your next life that eluded you in this one.

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Carol Morgan is a career counselor, writer, speaker, former Democratic candidate for the Texas House and the award-winning author of Of Tapestry, Time and Tears, a historical fiction about the 1947 Partition of India. Follow her on Twitter @CounselorCarol1, by email at [e-mail], on Facebook: CarolMorgan1 and her writer’s blog at www.carolmorgan.org

http://lubbockonline.com/interact/blog-post/carol-morgan/2013-10-09/texas-execution-506-personal-me

Cross-posted in Good Reads forum.