Next Wednesday, Robin Lovitt of Virginia will very likely become a cause célèbre.

He doesn’t deserve to be: he is a murderer. In 1988, during a robbery, he stabbed a man to death with scissors. He was convicted and sent to prison for that crime.

But on Wednesday, he will receive notoriety when he is the 1000th person executed in the United States since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty. In return for his murder of a man during a robbery, he will be murdered by the State of Virginia. Earlier in the week, two more people will be murdered by the States of Arkansas and Ohio, bringing the totals to 998 and 999 people respectively.

A bit of math shows that the murder of 1000 people since the 1977 murder of Gary Gilmore (the first to proceed under the 1976 reinstatement) results in an average of someone murdered every ten days. During this same time period, 122 people — some 3.5% of the current death row population — have been released from death row after their innocence was proven. Evidence exists suggesting that some of the people already murdered also were innocent.

In the name of law and order, we have instructed our governments to shoot, strangle, suffocate, chop up, electrocute and paralyze people and called it by the rather neutral term “capital punishment.” Some of these people may have been innocent. Some of them, such as “Tookie” Williams (founder of the Crips, multiple murderer and noted anti-gang activist), have saved other lives. Yet supporters of State-sponsored murder dare to call themselves “pro-life.”

How could the deliberate, premeditated and vicious murders of 1000 people, some of whom were innocent and others who have saved lives, be “pro-life”?

Sources: Gary Gilmore’s Eyes, 1000th Execution Next Week, Death Row Gang Founder Gets Schwarzenegger Hearing