There's a legal case pending for some poor woman on death row. She graduated from a prison theology program in 2011. Now in 2015, she's set for a graduate degree; instead of studying God, she's going to meet Him. Oh, Georgia, you wry old thing.

Seems to me only the poor get sentenced to death. The rich get off with murder, rape, theft, or whatever they fancy. If they don't buy the judge, they'll buy the best lawyer, or buy the governor, or buy the prosecutor. Somehow or another, the rich get off, whatever they do.

On the other hand, what about the lady's poor husband, mouldering in the ground? Does the victim not deserve justice? These death penalty cases are complicated morally. Sometimes I feel it is hubris, our taking another life. Maybe Gandalf was right when he said, "There are many who deserve life. Can you give it to them? Be not eager to deal out death. Even the wise cannot see all ends." Other times, like in the recent case of Münchausen syndrome by proxy, my gut reaction consists of five words. First-degree murder. The chair.

Blame the whole situation on the killers. They are the ones that put us in this accursed moral predicament. It's all their fault. We are absolved, morally, as long as we make the death as swift and painless as can be. I find a swift death rather enviable. Many of us will not die so cleanly, so elegantly, so painlessly. What about the victims? Again and forever we must ask that question. I wonder if her husband died so painlessly? For my part, if the grace left me altogether, and I slew another, then most likely I would not fear death, but accept it as inevitable. I reckon, given her chosen field of study, she has embraced philosophy as well.