DJ Says...

Following the recent green light from the Supreme Court of the U.S., the State of Texas resumed executions of cold-blooded killers yesterday. Karl Eugene Chamberlain was pronounced dead at 6:30 pm after receiving a lethal combination of drugs.

On August 2, 1991, Mr. Chamberlain raped and murdered Felecia Prechtl in her apartment, leaving her to be found by her 5 year old son when he returned with his uncle to the apartment. Ms. Prechtl’s mother, Ina Prechtl, posed a very good question.

“One question I ask myself every day,” Ina Prechtl said. “Why does it take so long for justice to be served?”

No doubt that some of that time spent waiting for justice is well served. Our society does not wish for innocent people to be put to death by the state. But most of that time is spent on frivolous appeals by death penalty advocates, appeals which do nothing to further justice at an excruciating cost to the victim’s families.

“It has been 11 years since his conviction,” said Ina Prechtl, whose daughter was murdered. “He has been housed, clothed, given blankets, pillows. at some point TV, mail, sunlight, clean clothes, food and drink, appeal lawyers all paid by our tax dollars…

“The victim, Felecia, our daughter and mother, has been in a sealed concrete vault and casket 6 feet under dirt for the past 17 years, since the crime was committed. Paid for by her family.”

In addition to the frivolous appeals, much time is spent by the media on what amounts to nothing more than a public relations makeover for these deviant creatures. The Huntsville Item helps them out by including an article on the perpetrator’s family and their “feelings” each time one of these murderers is executed. Here are some excerpts from the one for Mr. Chamberlain.

Mu’ina Arthur of Las Vegas, N.M., chose not to see her son executed a short distance away.

“This country is a fascist country,” Arthur said, using a megaphone. “This is not a compassionate America. We have to stand on God’s law. Jesus was a pacifist. Jesus was a pacifist.”

“Let all the countries around the world put the pressure on The United States of America,” Arthur said with Ron Carlson standing next to her. “The leader of killing. The leader of mayhem. We’re talking about human beings, we’re talking about my son.

Ah, yes. Her son. Her lovely son. What does she have to say about her lovely son?

“He’s a jewel; he’s a teddy bear; and yeah, he messed up. He didn’t have a criminal record, and he’s not a bad man. He’s a good man. He’s a jewel compared to most. Compare him to Bush. God, oh Jesus save us.

He messed up. He bound and raped a 30 year old mother of a five year old, then shot her in the head with a M-1 rifle and left her lying there for her son to find her. He messed up.

Just who is this mother of Mr. Chamberlain? Here is what her teddy bear son says:

In a recent Death Row interview, Chamberlain said, “There was so much from my childhood and my life the jury never heard.”

He said he was molested repeatedly, raped at age 5 and frequented hippie camps and communes with his mother, who later married a strict Muslim who berated him as a “son of Satan.”

Nice mom, eh? Perhaps that is why she tried so hard to keep him alive, guilt from the past. She gave this interview to the Sante Fe Reporter back in January, trying to change the truth that her son was nothing more than a cold-blooded killer.

Arthur says the rapes her son suffered as a child could earn him clemency, as could his attempts to reform during the five years between the crime and the arrest.

They offered him life in prison without parole and he didn’t take it, Arthur says. He wouldn’t accept it because he thought in his mind that everybody would clearly say that in the last five years he had changed his life so much. And indeed he had.

Changed his life? No, he hadn’t changed his life in the five years that he was free after he murdered Felecia Prechtl. If he had indeed been trying to change his life, he never would have been caught for her murder. You see, it was only after being convicted of attempted robbery and abduction in Houston that his fingerprints led to his arrest in Ms. Prechtl’s murder.

Patrick Genovese, a crime scene detective for the Dallas police, found a fingerprint on a piece of duct tape, and kept running it through a database every few months until he got a match – five years later.

A homicide detective, Ken Penrod, picked up Mr. Chamberlain and got him to confess to the murder, Mr. Shook said.

“He’s a very dangerous individual,” said Mr. Shook, who added that evidence showed Mr. Chamberlain had violent sexual fantasies.

Mr. Chamberlain’s confession was bolstered by DNA evidence. Jurors took seven minutes to convict him and about two hours to decide he should die.

Seven minutes to convict, 11 years to execute, 17 years for justice to be served. But, in the words of her father, Milo Prechtl, at the time of Mr. Chamberlain’s conviction,

“There is justice, and it will be done,” he said.

And so it was.