WASHINGTON — Progressive groups paused Thursday from their regular commentary on executions they regard as justice in order to condemn an execution they regard as cruelty, the distinction turning on the résumé of the person strapped down. The condemned in the second case had been convicted of killing a number of people large enough to require a list. Coalitions that had spent the morning explaining why certain other deaths were complicated, contextual, or the fault of the system issued a statement by afternoon calling this one barbaric. “We oppose the death penalty,” the statement said, “particularly when it is applied to someone we have had time to read about.” Asked about the morning’s commentary, which had treated a different set of corpses as an overdue correction, a spokeswoman said those were “not the same.” She declined to rank the victims. She did rank the perpetrators. One had been armed and unknown. The other had a docket, a last meal, and lawyers. Only the second, she said, raised moral questions. Vigils were announced for the mass murderer. None were announced for the people he murdered, on the ground that the time for that had been the trial, or possibly earlier, or possibly never, depending on the feed. Several lawmakers who had described a prior killing as “restorative” called the scheduled one “state violence.” A spokesman said both phrases had tested well with their respective audiences, and that consistency had tested poorly with all of them. The execution proceeded on the state’s calendar. The commentary proceeded on the activists’. By evening the groups had returned to the first subject, having logged, for the record, that they were against death in the case where the paperwork was long and the guilt was not in dispute. The post Leftist Takes Break from Cheering Public Execution of Innocent Guy to Condemn Public Execution of Mass Murderer appeared first on Genesius Times.