Monday, January 5, 2009

Seriously, though: Don't Mess with Texas

Horrifying fact I learned today:

Only a single dissenting vote prevented the death penalty in Texas from being carried out by immersing the convicted person in a nest of fire ants.


I have very real fear of ants, a fear I think is completely logical given that I was swarmed by fire ants at the tender age of 3 and some days I can still feel them crawling on me.

I'm mostly horrified, but also slightly impressed, that the people who drafted the capital punishment code in Texas even considered fire ants as a potential execution method. Lord knows that would have deterred ME from committing a capital crime! (I mean, hopefully not the ONLY thing that would deter me, but still)

2 comments:

ian said...

Oh! Liz, can that really be true? Do you have any way of confirming the story or should I look on Snopes.com instead?

Liz said...

Ian: Doh, now you're going to make me hunt for a reputible source, vs just my "random facts about Texas" source. Well, Snopes didn't anything one way or another; I'll try to dredge up something concrete :)