On December 6, I wrote: Dear Mr. Bush: Please do not allow Angel Diaz to be executed on December 13. I've written you many times on many issues. But this is a really terrible way to leave the office of Governor of Florida. You do know we anti-death penalty people just may ultimately be right. You won't really know until you die and face the One who does know. The furor you will cause in Puerto Rico, the glee you will create in the hearts of the vindictive, the guilt you will bear to the grave are all three things that you can avoid with a simple fiat to God's commandment. Leave Tallahassee with grace and dignity, not with a Christmas execution. Very truly yours, ______________ Then, on December 13, I wrote: Dear Mr. Bush: It is now one hour past the time you scheduled for the execution of Angel Diaz. I cannot discover whether he has passed away or not. Please inform me. Then, P.S.: Nevermind. I received the news from A.P.: Diaz, 55, was pronounced dead at 6:36 p.m., just minutes after an executioner injected a cocktail of chemicals into IV tubes leading into his arm. Merry Christmas. _______________ Well, now it is December 16, and now that all you folks in Limbaugh-land have had your say against Mr. Diaz in many public forums, I'd like to add to my original lament. Angel Diaz's last words (while he was strapped to a gurney with the I.V. poked in his arm) hold some astonishing importance. If a person believes in life after death, it's a bad time for him/ her to lie. I think Mr. Diaz's last words proclaiming his innocence ought to penetrate even the hardest brassed-over heart in Florida. Perhaps you anti-bleeding hearts don't believe in life after death and ultimate justice from an omniscient and Just God. I do. Maybe a bleeding heart is far more precious than a stony one when we return to dust. I hope so. But allow that stone lasts longer than flesh. I want to carve my words into stone. As for hoping for some truth about ultimate justice, if a stubbornly unrepentant executioner doesn't fry in hellfire after death, I believe you who dismiss the existence of hell as _religious crap_ will be vindicated at last. But we won't know for a while yet, will we? As for the witnesses retracting their testimony, I wonder if Mr. Diaz's heart was noble enough to forgive his snitching girlfriend. I wonder if he or we can forgive the professional healthcare inserter of the I.V. needle for incorrectly performing that duty--so that it penetrated both vein walls and spilled the venom into his arm. I wonder if you who have registered your vindictive pity for Mr. Nagy and his family will be forgiven by God or by your own consciences before you go into that dark night. I wonder if Mr. Nagy had a last chance to make a perfect act of contrition for managing a topless bar and incurring the burden of guilt for its associated sinfulness. Killing people who kill people doesn't prove that killing people is wrong. Neither torture in prison nor the death penalty deters murder--usually a crime of passion. The torturer and the executioner, on the other hand, seem far more heinously guilty of serious sin performed with knowledge aforethought and full consent of the will. I am willing to give my heart up to believing Mr. Diaz was speaking truth with his last words. I think he did not kill Mr. Nagy. The jury system is not infallible. The method of execution and the amount of pain it causes matters very little when measured against the flagitious villainy of State Execution. Getting revenge is immoral. It was a mistake to execute Socrates, Jesus, Sacco and Vanzetti, Franz Jagerstatter, and Angel Diaz. We should all be trembling for the just punishment that is our desert. At least Mr. Diaz's entry into the after life has given Florida and California pause, a moratorium on executions.