Execution serves justice, but what about our humanity?

The trial lasted for more than two weeks; my testimony took all of three minutes. The defendant was John Allen Muhammad, one of the notorious Washington, D.C., snipers, convicted of murdering 10 people in fall 2002.

Several months before the murders, the snipers lived in Tacoma, where I was the rabbi at a synagogue. During a Saturday service in the synagogue's small chapel, I opened the ark — the alcove holding our Torah scroll — and noticed dust scattered all over. Then, I saw a small hole high in the wall. Somebody had fired a gun into our building. A bullet had passed through three walls and two rooms before going into the ark.

Police took the bullet but had no leads.

Meanwhile, mysterious snipers were terrorizing Washington, D.C. One day after they'd been captured, I got a phone call saying the bullet fired into the temple was from one of their guns.

There was a news conference that evening, and the police chief asked me to attend. He announced the snipers were also suspects in the murder of a Tacoma woman named Keenya Cook — an innocent 21-year-old, shot point-blank in the face after answering a knock at her door. Facing a wall of reporters and a bouquet of microphones, I remember feeling almost guilty for being there. Keenya Cook was murdered; we just had holes in our walls. And for some reason, the incident at the temple was the one that they were calling a hate crime.

Months later, when John Muhammad's trial was near its end, my phone rang. The prosecutors were going to subpoena me so I could testify about the bullet hole in the ark. The crime at my synagogue, they felt, would help persuade the judge and jury to order Muhammad executed. Not only did he murder 10 people, they reasoned, he hated Jews, too.

I flew east, waited two days, testified, came home.

That was six years ago. Tuesday night, John Allen Muhammad was finally executed. I've always been opposed to capital punishment, and I remain so. Yes, Jewish scripture lists many crimes punishable by death, but the rabbis who later interpreted those passages couldn't fathom that this is what God would have wanted. So they made it even more difficult to execute a person under Jewish law than it is under U.S. law. One sage suggested that a rabbinic court that executes one criminal every 70 years is a bloody court. Jewish law accepts capital punishment in principle, but rejects it in practice.

And yet, opposed as I am to capital punishment, I did play a role — albeit a tiny one — in helping secure the death penalty for John Allen Muhammad. How does that make me feel? I don't feel guilty — after all, I was legally required to testify, and all I did was tell the truth. And I certainly don't feel any love or compassion for John Muhammad. Maybe I should, but I don't.

As I think about this weird, horrible chain of events, what I feel most, I think, is an overwhelming sense of sadness. I feel sad for the snipers' victims, their lives so suddenly and horribly cut short. I feel sad for their families and loved ones, for I know that their wounds may never heal. And I feel sad for our society, for we have decided that the death of yet another person is somehow an appropriate response to the tragic deaths of his victims.

During a break after the jury announced its verdict, I found myself chatting with the lead prosecutor outside the courtroom. I asked him, "When do attorneys celebrate in cases like this — after the verdict? After the sentencing? When the sentence is imposed?

"Rabbi," he said, "in cases like this, you never celebrate — too many people have died. Instead, you just do your job, you hope justice is served, and you move on with your life."

With the execution of John Allen Muhammad, justice may very well have been served. But what I wonder — what I fear — is whether the price that we have paid for that justice is our very humanity.

Rabbi Mark S. Glickman leads Congregation Kol Shalom on Bainbridge Island and Congregation Kol Ami in Woodinville.