Freddogg Off The Chain

Lisa McCalmont, 49; lawyer had key role in challenge to execution by lethal injection


The Oklahoma attorney took her own life just before the issue is to be addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court. She left no suicide note.
By Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 14, 2007
Lisa McCalmont, an Oklahoma attorney who played a key role in the legal battle challenging the execution of inmates by lethal injection, has died. She was 49.

McCalmont killed herself at her home in Norman, Okla., about midnight on Nov. 1, according to friends. She was found by her husband, Craig Dixon, a geophysicist. She did not leave a suicide note before hanging herself.

Friends and associates, some who had known her for years and others who had worked closely with her in recent months, all said they were mystified about why McCalmont decided to take her own life just two months before the lethal injection issue was due to be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court.


I read this online this morning in the Los Angeles Times and it kind of knocked me over. I have always taught that suicide was an overriding of the self preservation instinct and by definition the person was “not in their right mind” and, in fact, they may not be in there at all.
I taught my psychology students to think of themselves as a 747 which can fly autopilot if you fall asleep at the controls. That’s why alcohol and abuse of drugs coupled the stressors that make a person an addictive personality in the first place can all evolve into an automatic pilot cerebral condition that will have the brain protecting itself from itself like in conversion disorders where healthy people go blind, paralyzed and lose their voice. It is the control center shutting down in “freak this mess” self defense.
I know, “what about clinical depression” you ask, raising your head from your hands? I know it’s real because I’ve read it in books but it cannot be bottled or transmitted and name another mammal that lies around despondent before sprinting off to end its own life by hurling it’s doggy self under a self propelled lawn tractor or whatever.

The woman behind the “lethal injection is cruel and unusual argument” to be heard in front of the Supreme Court in two weeks hangs herself and leaves no note? It’s just too weird, a self execution by hanging which is a cruel twist of fate and certainly an unusual ending to the life of a smart woman with a social conscious.

I could be driving these points home to students today in a classroom. I see a hand going up in the back of the room. ”Yes Dan, do you have a question?”
“Do you care if I eat this corn dog in here if all your going to do is talk?”
All my readers can now ‘corn dog it up’ because I am out!

Professor Freddogg