This column by Tim W. Jackson also appears at EverythingNRV.com. 

“To the Timbrook family, you definitely have the wrong person,” said Edward Nathaniel Bell, 43, last Thursday in Jarratt, Virginia, while in the state’s death chamber. In addressing the victim’s family, Bell added, “The truth will come out one day. This here, killing me, there’s no justice about it.”

Bell’s lawyers fought to the very end to keep him out of the death chamber. “The case of Eddie Bell is not one which possesses the certainty and integrity to justify the imposition of the ultimate penalty,” his lawyers wrote. “Confidence in the justice system requires that both sides in a trial advocate for their side, but here the adversary system broke down.”

The contention was that Bell’s IQ was measured at 68, meaning he functioned at an intellectual level below 95 percent of the population. Or in other, more crude, words, Bell was mildly mentally retarded. He knew what he had been charged with, though. And he knew he was scheduled to die.

According to Associated Press reports, when the door between Bell’s cell and the death chamber opened, the inmate thrust his hips backward and wouldn’t step toward the gurney where the lethal injection was administered. Six corrections officers pulled him through the doorway and lifted him onto the gurney.

A few minutes later, at 9:11 p.m., Bell was pronounced dead.

Bell had been charged with the Oct. 29, 1999, slaying of Winchester, Virginia, police Sgt. Ricky Lee Timbrook. No one can deny that Timbrook’s death was tragic. He was a young and popular police officer. His wife was pregnant at the time with what was to be the couple’s first—and only—child.

The horrific death occurred one day after my own child was born. And what I don’t understand about the death penalty can be summed up by a child. In fact, it was summed up by my own 9-year-old daughter. She’s the same age as Ricky Lee Timbrook II, the son of the late Sgt. Timbrook.

My daughter asked if it is wrong for someone to kill another person, why is it OK for that person to then be killed. “In my opinion that’s not OK,” I said. I didn’t really have any other answer.

This was at the time of Virginia’s 102nd execution, that of Christopher Scott Emmett last July. My daughter made a sign and took it to an execution vigil—an event that didn’t bestow guilt or innocence to the inmate being executed but simply mourned yet another life being taken.

It seems like the death penalty isn’t a controversial issue in the New River Valley, though. At the aforementioned vigil, my daughter and I were one of four people to attend. Another similar vigil was to be held in Radford during the Bell execution. One person attended: the event organizer.

So for now, the executions go on. Although on Wednesday The New York Times brought up an argument against the death penalty that seems to be catching on, and it’s not on moral grounds or reasons of humanity. Instead, it’s a matter of economics. For those of us opposed to the death penalty, it seems an unexpected and perhaps not as satisfying reason, but beggars can’t be choosers, they say.

The Times cites Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who appeared before his state’s Senate last week to say that Maryland should abolish the death penalty as a cost-cutting measure.

O’Malley argues that capital cases cost three times as much as homicide cases where the death penalty is not sought. “And we can’t afford that,” he was quoted in the Times, “when there are better and cheaper ways to reduce crime.”

The Times adds that “lawmakers in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and New Hampshire have made the same argument in recent months as they push bills seeking to repeal the death penalty, and experts say such bills have a good chance of passing in Maryland, Montana and New Mexico.”

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Virginia are considering expanding who is eligible for capital punishment to people who assist in killings but do not commit them and to people convicted of murdering fire marshals or auxiliary police officers who are on duty. So would that mean even more people being executed in Virginia?

Bell was the 103rd Virginia inmate executed since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Virginia ranks second only to Texas in the number of executions since then.

In not one of those 103 cases has killing the convicted inmate brought the victim back to his or her family. Mahatma Ghandi said that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. With the death penalty are we exacting justice, or are we just killing ourselves?

Tim W. Jackson thinks that killing someone for killing doesn’t make sense. What do you think? Offer your comments below.