The tableau leaves the viewer with so many bewildering questions. Is the prosecutor unaware of the booming irony of his comment that by sending people to the death chamber the state is trying to keep them from killing each other?
What is a tough-as-steel criminal prosecutor in the violence-soaked city of Corpus Christi doing citing the German philosopher? Above all, can he not see the sickening implication of his reflection that we are all human, mistakes happen, when the context of his remark is the judicial killing of a death row prisoner?
Especially given that he, Steve Schiwetz, was lead prosecutor at the trial of Carlos DeLuna, a poor Hispanic Texan who was convicted of a murder that he did not commit and executed on 7 December 1989, aged 27, as an innocent man.