Page Created and Maintained by: Kev Summitt.
Page Last Updated: January 19, 2000
Copyright ©2000 Kev Summitt, All Rights Reserved
As I sat typing my entry last night, I was tempted to write this one as it went along. I was watching Leno, as is customary, while typing my journal entry. Then came the Channel 4 News Special Report. I had a feeling I knew what this wold be about. Here's a tid-bit of background...
Robert Glen Coe was convicted of the kidnapping, rape and murder of 8-year-old Cary Ann Medlin 21 years ago. According to the Knoxville News-Sentinel, "After his arrest, Coe confessed to police but later tried to change his story. He saw Cary and her brother riding their bicycles in a church parking lot and enticed Cary into his car with a story that he needed to find her father. He then drove to a secluded location where he raped the child. Coe attempted to strangle her, and failing, stabbed her in the neck."
Since then, he was hanging out in jail appealing over and over. This has been dragging on and on for 21 years. Personally, I felt like they should just shut up and execute him.
Now I don't want to get off on a political argument about whether or not the death penalty is right or wrong. I never really put much thought into it. You could say I'm riding the fence. Truth is two of the principles I believe in contradict themselves here. "An eye for an eye", and "Two wrongs don't make a right" (which in this case goes along with "Thou Shalt Not Kill"). In any case, when people had in previous weeks asked me where I stood on this debate, I avoided it. When that wasn't an option, I said kill'em. In fact, after seeing a news special on what he had done, seeing the pictures of the cute little 8-year-old girl and hearing about how he brutally raped and murdered her, I felt like they should have convicted him, took him out back, shot him in the head, and charge his family thirteen cents for the bullet.
But they didn't. They let it drag on. And on.
Now they have put it off all they could. Tennessee hadn't killed anyone in 40 years. He was set to be executed at 1:00 this morning at a prison here in Nashville. At about 10:00 tonight, he was granted another stay of execution to hold off his death. The only thing that could keep it on was if the State Supreme Court overturned the decision and said the execution would go on as planned.
At about 12:30, the orders came in. I had trouble finishing yesterday's entry because I kept watching the TV. I couldn't turn it off. All of a sudden it became very real to me. This man was about to die, as I watched. Of course, I couldn't see Coe or him being put to death by lethal injection, but I could see the mass of people outside the prison in a media frenzy. There were hundreds of demonstrators holding candles, singing "This little light of mine," and there were those who came to protest the protesters, reminding everyone of the little girl and how she died.
Every once in a while, they'd run out of things to say and we'd go back to Conan O'Brien, then back to Dan Miller and the Special Report. Back and forth, back and forth.
Then shortly after one in the morning, they came on to say it was time, and he was probably being put to death as we go. Then came the reports of his death, then an interview with the little girl's mother.
Around 1:25 I had an eerie feeling. I got the shakes, then it went away. Later in the broadcast they said that was the time he was dying. They administered the injections, and about ten minutes later he was pronounced dead. It was weird. I didn't like it. It made me wonder again about this whole death penalty thing. I said a little prayer for Coe and his family, despite what he had done. A prayer never hurts.
I still haven't made my mind up about the death penalty. People argue back and forth, and I can see valid points on both sides. I don't know. I just don't know.
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