Sometimes it is hard to believe every life is special, every human being and creature, despite any evildoings, is worth trying to save.

It has been especially difficult for many of us in the Eastern community to keep our faith in the basic good of all people as we have watched the details unfold of Shannon McNamara’s brutal murder.

How could someone who committed such a heinous offense have anything but a cold, empty heart? Why should any of us care what happens to the man who took a young life so terribly?

But Anthony Mertz was not a man who was incapable of love.

His grandmother, sisters and ex-girlfriends sat on the witness stand last week in tears and spoke of a man who was caring. Family members said he was the type of person who liked to greet loved ones with a hug.

As a boy, known then as Tony, he had 13 years of perfect attendance to the church he worshiped at with his grandmother.

Mertz’s ex-girlfriend Summers couldn’t look in his eyes as she told the jury how it was Mertz who taught her to trust men again after she and her daughter were abandoned by her husband.

Now that man is going to die.

Whatever in him that is good, although there is evil, all of it will die.

The state has decided Mertz does not deserve to breathe and think and feel as the rest of us do. They have tossed him aside to the pile of people who have no intrinsic value at all.

He may soon be forgotten by many of us as a worthless human being who committed unspeakable acts.

Still, his death will be mourned.

His grandmother and sisters, the remaining members of his broken family, will cry for the person who once brought joy to their lives.

They will cry because even a person who can be cruel and calculating is not completely devoid of character or virtue.

His best part may have died off years ago after abuse and abandonment by people who were supposed to protect him, but some tiny jewel of good is still left inside his dark heart.

Now no one, not even his family, will be able to experience any love he has left to give.

In our culture, committing a crime makes you unworthy of life, but it is our culture that is committing the crime.

It is not up to the federal government to play God and say what person is or is not deserving of life.

It is as wrong for the government to kill convicted felons as it is for the citizens of this country to commit murder.

There is a little good in everyone, even if it is just a little, and it is that little that gives them the right to live.