The Death Penalty Hits 1,000

Look, I oppose the death penalty for my own reasons. But I will never advocate against it -- maybe this is my case of acting like John Kerry, but I find it absurdly difficult to tell the family of a murder vicitm that the moral choice would be to keep their loved one's killer alive. However, I don't think it's right.

With that being said, it's allowed under our Constitution, and many of the states have it because the populace is in favor of it. So the 1,000th person gets executed yesterday since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment, and while I find that sad, I also think it's sad that most (if not all) of the criminals in questions committed crimes worthy of such punishment. What's even sadder is what we heard from the 1,000th individual...

Kenneth Lee Boyd, who brazenly gunned down his estranged wife and father-in-law 17 years earlier, died at 2:15 a.m. Friday after receiving a lethal injection.

After watching Boyd die, Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page said the victims should be remembered. "Tonight, justice has been served for Mr. Kenneth Boyd," Page said.

Boyd's death rallied death penalty opponents, and about 150 protesters gathered outside the prison.

"Maybe Kenneth Boyd won't have died in vain, in a way, because I believe the more people think about the death penalty and are exposed to it, the more they don't like it," said Stephen Dear, executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty.

"Any attention to the death penalty is good because it's a filthy, rotten system," he said.

Boyd, 57, did not deny killing Julie Curry Boyd, 36, and her father, 57-year-old Thomas Dillard Curry. But he said he thought he should be sentenced to life in prison, and he didn't like the milestone his death would mark.

"I'd hate to be remembered as that," Boyd told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "I don't like the idea of being picked as a number."

The Supreme Court in 1976 ruled that capital punishment could resume after a 10-year moratorium. The first execution took place the following year, when Gary Gilmore went before a firing squad in Utah.

During the 1988 slayings, Boyd's son Christopher was pinned under his mother's body as Boyd unloaded a .357-caliber Magnum into her. The boy pushed his way under a bed to escape the barrage. Another son grabbed the pistol while Boyd tried to reload.

He doesn't want to be remembered as a number? Look, that's the kindest way anyone can probably remember a double-murderer who killed the mother and grandfather of his own children. I realize this is a news story, but why should anyone, including me, give a damn what he thinks?