State-sponsored killing

I was just flipping through this gallery of Scott Langley's work, world-renowned human rights activist and photography documentarian.

This image struck me particularly strongly:


It is a scan of a death warrant issued in North Carolina for Perrie Simpson, who was executed on January 20, 2006. The state marked the cause of death as homicide, a formal admission that they had murdered one of their own citizens. I didn't realize before that that was the practice. Now there can be no argument.