Let's see here. She did, after all, brutally murder six men in a serial killing spree. Gee, what do you think? Is there not a case to be made that when you run around committing homicide - six times! - you do probably have some sanity issues?

So, sure. Point taken. Wuornos was hardly the poster child for mental equilibrium.

It's also probably true that the majority of residents on Florida's death row are a Freudian psychiatrist's dream come true. You don't need to be a professional shrink to figure out that when you commit murder, your wires are more crossed than a Chernobyl fuse box.

But simply because Wuornos might have been certifiably insane doesn't mean she necessarily was nuts.

There's a difference, you know.

At Peace

On the one hand, there was the parallel universe Wuornos, who believed her mind was being controlled by sonic waves, a level of reality that in another life probably would have qualified her to be just another faceless member of the Florida Legislature.

The day before her execution, Wuornos gave an interview to Nick Broomfield, a British documentary filmmaker who concluded afterward: ``Today we are executing someone who is mad. Here is someone who has totally lost her mind.''

But by all accounts, in the last hours of her life, Wuornos was at peace, spending time with a childhood friend who found her fully aware and calmly resigned to her impending death.

Completely mad? Totally lost her mind? Really?

Perhaps nothing contradicted that diagnosis more than her thoroughly lucid decision to drop all her appeals and willingly accept her fate.

Wuornos may have been battier than Ezra Pound, but she still understood she had murdered six people and acknowledged that if given the opportunity, she would kill again.

Candor. It's a wonderful thing.

In what might have been the murderette's single contribution to society, she argued that she already had wasted enough taxpayer money to keep her incarcerated, which was true after the first $1.35.

Wuornos had a unique understanding of her situation few others can appreciate.

In the end, what is a more cruel and insufferable punishment: Ending one's life on a gurney at Florida State Prison? Or facing the prospect of decades locked away in a cage with zero hope of ever walking free?

Not a great deal of upward mobility there.

Faced with those dreary alternatives, cannot a case be made that Wuornos got off easy? She certainly made an arguably sane and pragmatic decision.

What's The Hurry?

There's no debate that Florida's capital punishment system is horribly, fatally flawed.

When this state leads the nation in death row commutations, the potential for killing an innocent prisoner ought to send a chill down the spines of even the staunchest law-and-order drum beater.

Death row inmates have every legal right to appeal their sentences, and especially in those cases where there is a scintilla of doubt about their guilt, or in which DNA testing might exonerate a condemned prisoner, every effort should be exhausted, every reasonable doubt should be considered.

That's not merely justice. It's fundamental humanity.

But in the case of Wuornos and Rigoberto Sanchez-Velasco, who preceded her into the death chamber a week earlier, both admitted guilt for their crimes, dropped all appeals and asked for the last meal menu.

Why shouldn't the state accommodate them with a friendly ``Step this way and have a seat''?

Danny Rolling, who murdered five Gainesville women, should have as much courage as his former death row neighbors and do the one decent thing in his life by ending it.

Then again, when you face the prospect of spending eternity in the company of Aileen Wuornos - literally the blind date from hell - Rolling might well be figuring, what's the hurry?

Columnist Daniel Ruth can be reached at (813) 259-7599.</BOD>