responsibility

[Doug Henwood]

This morning's New York Times is full of talk of responsibility. Supporters
of a tough new U.S. bankruptcy bill, which was literally written by a
credit industry law firm (a point the NYT doesn't report), say they want to
tighten the code to impose a sense of responsibility among profligate
debtors.

And, responsibility of another sort, too. From a profile of Eleanore L.
Walker, a juoror who voted the other day to condemn Darrel K. Harris to
death for a triple murder, the first death sentence in New York State in
decades:

"She found the answer the following morning. When she awoke on Saturday,
Ms. Walker said, she opened her Bible and came to the Book of Galatians.
'It said something about how the wicked must be destroyed,' she recalled.
'Everything I read pointed to wickedness, destruction, reaping and
repenting. I took it as a strong sign of what my decision should be.

   It helped me.
[...]

   That Ms. Walker, who cast the criticl final vite, traced her change of
heart to a religious epiphany is not unusual, experts say. WIlliam Bowers,
who heads the Capital Jury Project, which since 1991 has interviewed 1,000
death penalty jurors in 15 states, said that jurors burdened by their
responsibility will on occasion invoke what they perceive as the will of
God.

   'It's mostly that it relieves them of a measure of personal
responsibility for the decision.'"

In other words, God made 'em do it.

If only Ms. Walker's bible had fallen open to the "let him who is without
sin cast the first stone" passage.

Doug