MONTGOMERY, Ala. — An Alabama man is scheduled to be executed Thursday after dropping his appeals, saying he’s guilty of raping and murdering a woman in 2010 and he doesn’t want to keep “wasting everybody’s time” and money.

James Osgood, 55, will be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. CDT at William Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, joining the approximately one in 10 people on death rows across America who have asked for their own executions.

A jury convicted Osgood of capital murder for the killing of Tracy Lynn Brown in Chilton County. Prosecutors said Osgood cut Brown’s throat after he and his girlfriend sexually assaulted her.

Osgood told The Associated Press that he wants to apologize to Brown’s family and that he dropped his appeals because, “I am guilty of murder.” In a letter to his lawyer explaining his decision to seek an execution date, he wrote that he’s tired and no longer feels like he’s “even existing.”

“I’m a firm believer in, like I said in court, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I took a life so mine was forfeited. I don’t believe in sitting here and wasting everybody’s time and everybody’s money,” Osgood told the AP.

Brown was found dead in her home on Oct. 23, 2010. Prosecutors said Osgood admitted to police that he and his girlfriend sexually assaulted Brown, forcing her to perform sex acts, after discussing how they had fantasies about kidnapping and torturing someone. Then he cut her throat. His girlfriend, who was Brown’s cousin, was sentenced to life in prison.

“I can’t imagine anyone doing that to someone, even their worst enemy. I don’t know what kind of mind has that kind of thinking,” Jackie Wileman, Brown’s stepmother, told the judge at Osgood’s 2014 sentencing hearing.

In handing down the death sentence, the judge noted that Osgood had a difficult childhood that included sexual abuse, abandonment and a suicide attempt. But the judge also said that it was Osgood who cut Brown’s neck and stabbed her as she begged the couple not to hurt her.

Osgood said last week that he regrets all the “pain and suffering” he has caused Brown’s family, and his own.

“I would like to say to the victim’s family, I apologize,” Osgood said. “I’m not going to ask their forgiveness because I know they can’t give it.” Only God can grant forgiveness, he said.

Osgood’s initial death sentence was thrown out by an appeals court ruling that jurors were given improper instructions. At his resentencing in 2018, Osgood asked to be executed, saying he didn’t want the families to endure another hearing.

The Death Penalty Information Center reported last year that 165 of the peo­ple executed since a moratorium on the death penalty ended in 1977 — a total that has since grown to more than 1650 people — asked to be put to death. The center also said that the overwhelming majority of these volunteers had histories of men­tal ill­ness, sub­stance abuse or suicidal ideation.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey made a rare move this year to grant clemency to another death row inmate, commuting the death sentence of Robin “Rocky” Myers to life in prison. The governor said there were enough questions about his guilt that she could not move forward with his execution. It was the only time Ivey has granted clemency, and the first time any Alabama governor commuted a death sentence since 1999.

If you had the power to save your son from 17 years of incarceration for crimes like lying on a gun purchase form and tax evasion, you would almost certainly wield that power.

But, if there were a national election taking place where this could be a talking point used against your party, maybe you would wait until after the election. To maintain the perception of moral and professional righteousness, you would probably insist that you would not be pardoning your son.

Joe Biden’s decision to pardon Hunter Biden is everything that everyone has said about it: it’s an abuse of power for personal gain, it undermines the perception of fairness in the justice system and it contributes to the normalization of presidents corrupting the purpose of the pardon.

It’s also a decision that we should find it difficult to blame him for. Biden had many competing duties to consider while deliberating on whether to pardon Hunter.

As president, he had a duty to use his power impartially.

As a father, he had no choice but to save his son. In fact, if he stood by his principles, he could be blamed for being excessively moralistic when he had the opportunity to spare his loved one. Arguably, he had a duty to protect his family and he weighed it similarly to how many of us would.

Republicans and Trump supporters may be tempted to point to Biden’s clemency as a demonstration of a lack of principles and a vindication of their criticism of Biden as a corrupt politician — he did lie, after all.

For years Biden has fashioned himself as a principled adherent to propriety as a contrast to Trump’s profile.

They are correct to point out that this appears to defeat at least some of Biden’s self-attributions of virtue but there is also some hypocrisy there. Trump would pardon the tentacled aliens that blew up the White House in Independence Day if it aligned with his personal interests.

In his statement, Biden justified his decision by claiming that his son has been unfairly targeted by his political opposition: “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong.”

Well, many reasonable people have indeed looked at the facts of the case and have reasonably concluded that Hunter was not unfairly targeted but instead may have received privileged treatment. If the power to pardon is best used when a miscarriage of justice has occurred, this wasn’t an example of that. Hunter wasn’t failed by the justice system despite what Biden claims, and this is unlike what has happened to many nameless Americans.

If Biden is going to abuse his power to benefit his own family, then we should at least get something in return. There are federally incarcerated individuals who are genuine victims of miscarriages of justice.

There are those who had the misfortune of committing their crimes during the ‘80s and ‘90s when the war on drugs was in full force, leading many of them to receive disproportionately harsh sentences.

The draconian mandatory minimums of the time saw people like Michelle West receive life sentences for first-time drug offenses.

On behalf of the government, Biden should also apologize to and pardon Edward Snowden so that he can return to his family. Snowden did us all a great service by exposing the government’s secret programs to illegally and unconstitutionally spy on us.