Ann Althouse writes

"The Time Has Come to Say No to Death," by Bianca Jagger.

All right then: No!

You hear that, Death?

I wondered if Bianca Jagger had taken up the questionable Immortalist philosophy of Sondra Ray, as demonstrated in her book How to Be Chic, Fabulous and Live Forever. (1990) (Ms. Ray is in fact alive and well in 2010—so far, so good.) Perhaps, like G. K. Chesterton's Methuselahite, Bianca Jagger had decided to live as long as she possibly could. (She's 64.)

In fact, Miss Jagger is not saying "No" to death, she's saying "No" to the death penalty, which means saying "Yes" to murder, since murder rates always go up when the death penalty is abolished. The Huffington Post article at the link is The Time Has Come to Say No to Death, which "was delivered at the fourth Congress Against the Death Penalty, in Geneva, on 24th February, 2010" by Miss Jagger, who is described as an "International human rights and climate change advocate," rather than, say, the ex-wife of a noted guitarist.

It's frequently claimed that the death penalty has a racial component, and thus should be banned. In fact, it's crime that has a racial component, leading to the disparities involved.

One of Jagger's examples of the horrors of the death penalty is the murderer of Bobby Grant Lambert, a 53-year old white man in Texas, who was killed on a trip to the grocery store. The killer, an African-American who was 17 at the time, was in the middle of a violent robbery spree in which he had 28 victims, the last of whom was a 57-year old woman who he kidnapped at gun point, took back to her home and raped, after which he fell asleep, leading to his capture. Details can be found in Guilty as Charged.[By Dianne Clements and Dudley Sharp, Wall Street Journal June 28, 2000]

Bianca Jagger is convinced that he's innocent, arranged to be a witness to his execution, and gets all pathetic about it.

"I cannot put into words my feelings on that day. Gazing through a Plexiglas window, I could see [the killer] tied to a hospital trolley and about to be killed. It reminded me of a modern-day cross. I was terrified at the thought of witnessing another human being killed.

His forehead was in held in restraint by a leather strap and he had to strain his head to look at us. His look was intense. Suddenly, he began to speak. He knew they would be his last words on earth: "I'm an innocent black man that is being murdered. What is happening here is an outrage for any civilised country." It was at that point that I broke down. We told him we loved him. I put my hands and face on the glass. I was just four feet away."

Where was she when he was raping and killing? Probably Gstaad.