In March of 2008, the most horrific murder in Memphis history occurred in the neighborhood my dad and I drove through when I was a child (I wrote about how that neighborhood changed my life here). I remember so distinctly hearing about it on the Nashville news and breaking down in tears at the thought that someone actually shot and stabbed four adults while five children and babies watched. And that when that person ran out of bullets, they turned to stabbing every one of those children with kitchen knives to eliminate tiny witnesses. The story still makes me want to simultaneously scream and cry.
I later watched the investigation unfold on my favorite reality crime show, The First 48. Today marked the end of the thirteen day trial for Jessie Dotson, who was named as the assailant by his 9-year-old nephew who survived despite a steak knife being lodged in the back of his head when the police arrived at the scene.
A jury took just an hour and a half to convict Dotson on all nine indictments. The sentencing stage comes tomorrow, and I’m following the events with baited breath. The options are (1) death penalty or (2) life without parole.
Pardon me while I get political for a moment: I have never believed in the death penalty. For anyone. For any reason.
Something about having to live with the knowledge of what you’ve done provides more suffering than a potential “out” of having someone else take your life. Then there’s the part about “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” There’s also the constant possibility that a person was wrongly convicted, which isn’t discovered until new technologies are developed to prove that. Last, but most importantly, is my belief in the inherent good of people. Though I’ve never met this man, I know that somewhere inside of him is a grain of goodness.
Did this man do something unimaginably horrific? Yes. Do I believe the state of Tennessee needs to take his life for it? Absolutely not.
If you’re interested, here’s the link to my hometown newspaper’s coverage of the Lester Street trial.
