By Anna Arceneaux
(Editor’s note: This article was written the week after Young’s July 17 execution)
Fourteen years ago, Mitesh Patel lost his father Hasmukh in a robbery-murder at the family’s store in San Antonio. The man who killed his father, Chris Young, was sentenced to death. Leading up to Young’s execution last week, Patel called for Texas officials to halt Young’s execution and replace his death sentence with one of life without parole. His calls fell on deaf ears, and the state executed Young.
Patel’s decision to push for clemency shows how the death penalty can betray what justice means to victims’ families.
Patel is in fact just a couple of years older than Young, and, reflecting on the case in the days before Young’s execution, he drew parallels between his own life and Young’s. They are both men who had lived without fathers. Young lost his father to murder when he was only 8 years old and joined a gang not long after that.
Patel realized that his father’s influence in his life growing up was a key part of his successes in life — something Young didn’t have. He also knew that the Chris Young today was not the same person who killed Patel’s father 14 years ago. He knew Young had changed, that he was remorseful, that he had supported his daughters, counseled other young people, found solace in his Christian faith, and made a difference to other prisoners on death row.
Patel, a father now himself, did not want to play any role in taking Chris away from his daughters. Heeding his own father’s words that two wrongs don’t make a right, Patel saw little difference between Young’s intentional killing of his father and Texas’s intentional killing of Young.
Patel’s reflections continued, and they bent away from the government responding to a killing by killing another. Patel knew his grief for his father would remain the same whether Young lived or 
died. He said before the execution, “Killing Chris doesn’t change my path, my history. It only affects a whole other set of people.”
But sadly, Patel’s compassion and informed call for forgiveness for Young fell on deaf ears at the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and with Gov. Greg Abbott, who denied his plea for clemency. On July 17, the state of Texas executed Chris Young.
This isn’t the first time Texas has ignored the voices of victims.
Mitesh Patel’s call for forgiveness, not heard by Texas authorities, is tragically similar to those of many families of murder victims, including another Texas crime victim, Rais Bhuiyan. Mark Stroman was sentenced to death in Dallas for killing two people whom he thought were Arab-Americans after the 9/11 terror attacks. Rais Bhuiyan was the third victim, shot in the face in the attack, who miraculously survived.
Drawing on his Muslim faith — and the very identity that had made him a target of Mark Stroman’s in the first place — Bhuiyan called for forgiveness. He pushed to meet with Stroman before his execution and asked state authorities to sentence him to life. Like Patel’s, Bhuiyan’s pleas were ignored by the Board of Pardons and Paroles and then-Gov. Rick Perry.
Texas executed Mark Stroman on July 21, 2011, almost exactly seven years to the day from Young’s execution this month. Patel and Bhuiyan’s stories are stark reminders that the criminal justice system too often ignores victims who oppose execution.
These victims’ voices opposing vengeance must be heard in the criminal justice system. We need reforms that will ensure rehabilitation and reconciliation are valued and promoted. As Rais Bhuiyan said, “In order to live in a better and peaceful world, we need to break the cycle of hate and violence.”
Patel courageously pushed the state of Texas for compassion and forgiveness and asked that something better than Young’s execution comes of his father’s death. As Mitesh Patel knew, presciently, with Young’s execution, little if anything was gained, but another father was lost.
Let us follow in the brave footsteps of Patel and Bhuiyan in calling for the criminal justice system to do more than kill. Vengeance is not justice. That the system ignores victims who call for forgiveness and redemption shows that it is truly broken and, in doing so, spotlights yet again that it is in the name of justice that we must abolish the death penalty.
Anna Arceneaux is Senior Staff Attorney with the ACLU Capital Punishment Project
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From other sources
“Just before the murder, Young pointed a gun at a woman and raped her at her home while her three children watched, court records state. The woman told the San Antonio Express-News she’s still furious with Young and can’t forgive him — at least not yet. So are her mother and her children.”
So at best, a split decision.
Did she say she supported the death penalty for him?
“I don’t necessarily agree with the death penalty, but I can’t say I would spare his life,” said the woman, whom the Express-News is not identifying because she is a rape victim. “These are things you don’t forget.”
Although those were apparently separate incidents…
“Young admitted shooting Patel, but denied intending to kill him during the robbery, which took place after Young drank nearly two dozen beers and had taken cocaine, reports Associated Press. He had also sexually assaulted and carjacked a woman on the same night.”
So he was not being executed for the rape of the woman
“So he was not being executed for the rape of the woman”
Hard to say. raping a woman, especially in front of her children, may have played a significant part in his sentence. Do you have some evidence it did not?
Does not matter to me. it’s just another example of the BS the permeates the ACLU advocacy pressers. Reading this junk never gives you a true idea of what the situation is, they lie both in commission and omission.
There were several articles in Texas mainstream newspapers that were similar in content to the ACLU one that you are objecting to.
People in TX are familiar with all the gory details as this has been a headline case for years so they focus on updates. The ACLU “fake news” release is intended for people who don’t know about the case.
They purposely omit the key aspects as they do in this case. Raping a women in front of her children is frowned upon by many people, not you apparently, but other people and is central to the outcome.
From July: https://www.texastribune.org/2018/07/10/texas-san-antonio-chris-young-execution-faith-leaders/
Still more: “On Tuesday morning, U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison reluctantly rejected the filing, expressing frustration with his court’s inability to allow for further examination of potential racial bias.”
https://www.texastribune.org/2018/07/17/chris-young-execution-clemency/
“Young is the eighth person to be executed in Texas this year and 12th overall in the U.S., according to the Death Penalty Information Center.”
Wow – only 12 people have been executed in this country this year, two-thirds in Texas.
I’m opposed to the death penalty (as well as the US government sending troops to nations we are not at war with to kill people) but it should be noted that less than 1,500 people have been sentenced to death and actually killed in the US in over 40 years (about 35 people every year) and I am surprised that people seem to go crazy about the number of people killed by the death penalty since Nixon was president but don’t seem to care that twice as many people will probably be killed this year in just Oakland, Chicago, Washington DC and Baltimore before Trump hits the halfway point of his first term…
P.S. More people are killed roller skating each year than killed by the death penalty…
Ken
An important distinction for me is the deliberate wrongs done by individual people, over which we have no control and the deliberate wrongs done by the state over which the people the state represents surely should have some control. Also if we are considering motive, individuals are acting for some perceived personal gain…money, power, revenge… The state is supposed to be acting to ensure safety and in the interests of justice. If the directly involved victims family does not perceive the death penalty as just, where is their justice? Their resolution?
As I indicated just 12 executed, for me though, it is the principle of the government being able to put people to death that bothers me. Low numbers do not exonerate that.
There is a disconnect between the verb tense used in the caption, vs. reality as shown in the article.
And Young’s execution was not “last week” it was two weeks ago…
H and K, just got to this article. One at a time. I often don’t worry about the ACLU articles – and they don’t usually have temporal constraints.
cathy
Since unlike in CA where prisoners can make up to $0.95/hr (someone needs to take the “fight for $15” to the prisons) prisoners in TX are not paid for their work so I’m wondering what the ACLU meant when they wrote: “He knew Young had changed, that he was remorseful, that he had supported his daughters” (it is hard to “support” your daughters when you are on death row in a state that does not pay prisoners for work (see link below).
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/
Ken
An important distinction for me is the deliberate wrongs done by individual people, over which we have no control and the deliberate wrongs done by the state over which the people the state represents surely should have some control. Also if we are considering motive, individuals are acting for some perceived personal gain…money, power, revenge… The state is supposed to be acting to ensure safety and in the interests of justice. If the directly involved victims family does not perceive the death penalty as just, where is their justice? Their resolution?
“it is hard to “support” your daughters”
Support has more than one meaning. In this case not economic, but emotional. Our society often, although not in this case, takes into account one set of victims of crime, the family of the victim, while remaining oblivious to the other victims of crime, the innocent family of the perpetrator.
The problem here is that Young was not executed soon after he committed his killing and raping sprees. He got to live a longer life than he deserved. For that, he should have been grateful.
I find it interesting that the advocates of murderers that claim that time has changed the black criminal to warrant compassion are often the same that continue to persecute southern whites for the crimes of slavery that happened 150 years ago.
“he should have been grateful.”
He may have been. The article says nothing at all about his feelings, only about those of the victims son.