If David Leon Woods is executed on schedule Friday morning, five of his victim's children will be there to watch, since Indiana has joined the majority of death-penalty states in having "right to view" legislation:
Gene Placencia hopes to find closure by watching the man who fatally stabbed his father 23 years ago die by lethal injection early Friday.
"I know because of the length of time it's taken it will give me some closure to be there," Placencia said. "Hopefully it will be the same for all of the family."
I wonder. After having to think about this for 23 years, will she really find "closure" by essentially watching someone fall asleep? There haven't been any major studies on the subject, but some people have thought about it:
Sidney Weissman, MD, a psychiatrist with the Veterans Health Administration outside of Chicago, says that while witnessing an execution clearly provides relatives with a sense of retribution against the killer, it can't help much, if at all, in dealing with the loss of a loved one.
"It doesn't really bring solace, and it doesn't solve the issue of the void in your life," Weissman says. "The more critical issue is what that person meant to me, and how I organize my life in their absence."
That makes sense to me. I don't disagree with the law, which is certainly better than the situation that existed, in which victims' releatives had to seek permission from the killer to watch the killer's execution. But if people haven't moved on in the two decades it usually takes to get an execution done, they're not likely to because of this one final gesture.
