When a person decides to kill himself or herself, the incoherent justification is usually based on despair and is unwarranted.
However, a person sitting on death row for more than five years who wants to die early saves taxpayers money.
Quite frankly, it’s more inhumane to leave a person on death row indefinitely than to let them face the consequences of their actions sooner.
Florida inmates Rigoberto Sanchez-Velasco and Aileen Wuornos, both admitted to their alleged crimes and asked that their appeals be dropped for a speedy execution.
Sanchez-Velasco, who was sentenced to death in 1988 after confessing to murdering 11-year-old Kathy Ecenarro and two death row inmates in 1995, dropped his court appeals and decided he wanted to die early.
The 43-year-old was pronounced dead Oct. 1 after a lethal injection at 9:39 a.m.
Wuornos, 46, will follow suit today after opting for an early grave.
The hitchhiking prostitute was convicted of killing six men on the northern and central highways of Florida between 1989 and 1990.
One might argue in favor of people who feel they are innocent on death row. So let those who want to prove their innocence go through the tedious and rigorous task of hiring and firing lawyers to get appeals won in court.
But let the others die if they want.
Some take the stance that allowing death row inmates to drop appeals is a twisted form of the state helping the prisoners to commit suicide.
Death penalty opponents also classify these volunteering inmates as insane.
Insane? Insane is the U.S. 9th Circuit Court taking God out of the equation with the remodeling of the pledge of allegiance.
Why not let Him out of the bind of deciding when a person is to die too?
Both Sanchez-Velasco and Wuornos underwent psychiatric evaluations, which determined they were competent in their decisions for an early execution date.
So the question is not whether a timed death is state-assisted suicide, but whether a timed death can be defined as justice for their crimes.
It’s understood that Jeb Bush comes from a long line of trigger-happy folk (his younger brother George W.’s execution record in Texas for example). So let’s not go there.
The fact remains that these people were going to die anyway, they just opted to go sooner. Let’s not stand in their way.
Give them what they want. Let them die and save us all five more years of paying for three square meals going nowhere but six feet under.
Vanessa Clarke for the Editorial Board.