It’s no surprise that the media is finding ways to portray Governor Ron DeSantis as worse than their formerly most hated man, Donald Trump.

But I was impressed when HuffPo took the side of a multiple-murderer in a tiff with the governor.

My surprise is yet another display of my shameful lack of imagination. I keep on underestimating how venal and stupid many people can be, especially when politics are involved.

The prisoner executed was Donald Dillbeck, who was sentenced to death 32 years ago. In what sane world does the death penalty take 32 years to execute? Apparently, this one, although arguably this is proof that sanity has left us.

Dilbeck was sentenced to death for murdering a young mother, whose children attended the execution. After this they thanked the governor in a written statement for bringing closure to them.

In the witness gallery, family members of Faye Lamb Vann, who Dillbeck stabbed to death in 1990, looked on with stony expressions. They opted not to speak to reporters afterward, but prison system spokeswoman Michelle Glady distributed a written statement from two of Vann’s children.

“11,932 days ago Donald Dillbeck brutally killed our mother,” Tony and Laura Vann wrote. “We were robbed of years of memories with her and it has been very painful ever since. However, the execution has given us some closure.”

Vann was not Dilbeck’s only murder. He had also killed a Deputy Sheriff after escaping prison, where he was serving a life sentence for yet another crime.

"I know I hurt people when I was young. I really messed up," said Donald Dillbeck, who was sentenced to death by a non-unanimous jury. "But I know Ron DeSantis has done a lot worse." https://t.co/V5iKV7TDuS

— HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) February 23, 2023

HuffPo, unlike the Tallahassee Democrat, chose to focus mainly on the critique of the governor given by Dillbeck, apparently finding his take on Governor DeSantis’ character worth taking seriously.

“I know I hurt people when I was young. I really messed up,” Dillbeck reportedly said just before his death. “But I know Ron DeSantis has done a lot worse. He’s taken a lot from a lot of people. I speak for all men, women and children. He’s put his foot on our necks. Ron DeSantis and other people like him can s—k our d—s.”

Well, I guess it’s settled. DeSantis is a really bad guy if Dillbeck says so.

HuffPo’s proof of DeSantis’ bad character is this: he signed Dillbeck’s death warrant despite the fact that the man was sentenced to death by a jury that did not unanimously impose it. Some wanted a life in prison, while the majority voted for the death penalty. The law allowing this had been changed since, but DeSantis thinks that a 2/3rds majority of jurors should be enough.

Dillbeck, it seems, had only made some small mistakes in his youth (he was in his mid-20s when he killed Vann), but DeSantis is the real murderer for allowing his sentence to be carried out and believing it was just.

Besides, Governor Ron clearly did it solely for political purposes; that closure the family felt and expressed couldn’t justify anything.

Dillbeck, you see, “speaks for all men, women, and children.” Case closed.

“I’m not minimizing what [Dillbeck] did to people,” Florida capital defender Allison Miller told the Tallahassee Democrat, “but he is most definitely a political pawn.”

DeSantis has cited the outcome of the trial for Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people in a 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, as a reason to bring back non-unanimous jury verdicts. Cruz was sentenced to life in prison without parole after jurors split 9-3 over the death penalty. Not all of the victims of the Parkland shooting wanted Cruz to be sentenced to death.

HuffPo also trots out the canard that murder is justified when you have prior trauma in your life.

Like most people sentenced to death, Dillbeck endured extreme abuse as a child. His birth mother drank 18-24 beers per day throughout her pregnancy, resulting in “a catastrophic effect on Mr. Dillbeck’s intellectual and adaptive functioning,” his lawyers wrote in a petition requesting that the Supreme Court review his case.

It seems to me that an intellectually disabled multiple-murderer has the moral and intellectual standing to deliver a devastating judgment on the Governor.

RT IF YOU STAND WITH THE MURDERER WHO KILLED A MOM IN A PARKING LOT AFTER HE ESCAPED FROM PRISON AND STABBED HER TO DEATH WHEN HE WAS TRYING TO CARJACK HER!! pic.twitter.com/X7HfehZLxH

— Damin Toell (@damintoell) February 24, 2023

I personally have mixed feelings about the death penalty, mostly based on the potential failures of the justice system itself. If there is any doubt–not even matching the standard of “reasonable doubt” which has already been met–I would prefer the prisoner not be executed. DNA evidence has exonerated more than one person placed on death row.

Yet in Dillbeck’s case, the level of doubt was zero, and it was long past time that he met his maker for final judgment. And while other rational people may reasonably disagree with that judgment for their own reasons, I think we should all be able to agree that his take on the governor is hardly dispositive.

Yet when partisan politics intrudes, apparently even reason goes out the window.

To which I respond, HuffPo: HuffPo writers and other people like them can s—k our d—s. Metaphorically, of course.