What is wrong with this country??

On the one hand, we have a president who amuses himself by pardoning his friends, celebrities he fancies, and anyone he thinks can help him politically.

On the other, we have the State of Alabama, with its shameful history of systemic racism, executing a man for a murder that everyone freely admits he didn’t actually commit.

Apart from the fact that execution is a barbarous punishment that has been demonstrated to be a poor deterrent to crime; the argument has always been made that, while theoretically just, it should be extremely rare and meted-out only in the most extraordinary of circumstances.

By that standard, the execution of Nathaniel Woods, without a unanimous verdict on the sentence, is an abomination. 

The actual killer has confessed his guilt, given exonerating testimony on behalf of Woods, and himself sits on death row, awaiting the outcome of an appeal.

It transpired that, after being apprehended at the scene of the crime shortly before the triple shooting occurred, the plight of the luckless Woods was worsened by an incompetent defense and the truly Byzantine inclinations of southern law.

This is the stuff of Kafkaesque nightmares.  Woods seems to have only been guilty of fleeing the scene and being  young, black, and male in the state of Alabama.

For the interest of the press, Alabama Department of Corrections Public Information Specialist Samantha Rose offered details of his final meals:

Woods refused his breakfast, Rose said. The breakfast meal consisted of milk, eggs, syrup, prunes, two biscuits, and oatmeal. He did request a final meal of sweet potatoes, spinach, a chicken patty, a chicken leg quarter, cooked apples, fries, two oranges, and an orange-flavored drink. According to Rose, Woods ate just one bite of the chicken leg quarter and did not eat any of the other items.