Needle Packin' Mama

Somehow, I stumbled on this article from a spring 2006 issue of Mother Jones about Dianne Clements. Clements is the Texas mother who runs Justice for All, a Texas-based advocacy group most well known for its vehement support of capital punishment. Somewhat befitting of Texas, Clements has a simple worldview on the death penalty: people are killed by evildoers (where have we heard that before?). Such issues as executing the mentally retarded (Clements calls this "smoke and mirrors") and children (they're not kids, they're "brutal murderers with no regard for human life!”).

How did Clements become such a staunch executioner? What trauma caused this? Well:

Clements was once just another Houston soccer mom, working an office job and raising two teens—Krista and Zachary—with her husband, Woody. 'It was a very typical suburban life,' she says. 'Our routine was work, school, baseball.' That routine was blown apart one afternoon in August 1991. Zachary, 13 at the time, was playing with a couple of neighbors’ kids about his age, when one of the boys grabbed his stepfather’s shotgun and pulled the trigger. The blast tore a hole through Zachary’s chest, killing him on the spot.

Remember, a child who kills another child is a "brutal murderer with no regard for human life," so while the authorities ruled the shooting accidental, Clements badgered authorities until the shooter was prosecuted (he got probation).

Capital punishment doesn't save any lives - it's deterrent effect is pretty much nil. One wonders if Clements had devoted her considerable efforts to getting guns out of places where kids could get a hold of them how many lives would have been saved.