Moot point though it is -- moot in the sense that nothing that ever happened to Ronnie Frye makes the slightest bit of difference in light of what happened to him shortly after 2 a.m. on Friday -- let me clear up any lingering confusion: I'm not the same Steve Ford who evidently got his jollies by repeatedly lashing Frye, when Frye was a kid, with a bullwhip. Don't go in for that sort of thing myself. Horsewhipping the bullwhipper? Now that I could get into.

The Charlotte Observer, in its magnificent series last year on the death penalty, first drew attention to the existence of this fine specimen of humanity with whom I share a name.

"Steve and Cleo Ford were filling their car with gas when they heard that a Hickory woman was giving her children away," Liz Chandler reported.

"They met Carolyn Frye at a restaurant. She introduced 4-year-old Ronnie and his 5-year-old brother David. Then she handed her boys a bag of candy and announced that the Fords were their new mama and daddy."

Citing an account in court papers later filed in Frye's behalf -- an appeal from his 1993 conviction for stabbing his Catawba County landlord to death -- Chandler went on to write: "The new family settled into the Fords' home in Hudson, northwest of Hickory. Ronnie's new parents were surprised to learn the boys hadn't been toilet trained, and could eat only with their hands.

"On a trip, the boys bought a souvenir bullwhip, and Steve Ford began using it on the children. ... Ford beat Ronnie so badly in fourth grade that witnesses reported 'bloody stripes' covered the 9-year-old from neck to ankles."

Good old Steve was arrested and convicted of assault. The evidence of his brutality -- photos shot by the Hudson police chief -- became instructional fodder at seminars on child abuse.

What seems to be the sole remaining picture is the one that Frye's advocates and death penalty opponents were showing around in recent weeks, as part of their attempt to build support for the notion that putting him to death wouldn't be the most sporting of gestures. It's a frontal shot, Ronnie shirtless, arms extended to more fully expose his chest and sides so the welts can be seen. (The irony is that he looks almost cheerful; he supposedly said later that despite the whippings, this was the happiest time of his life -- which is a sad comment on what followed.)

Before we go any further with this, let's stipulate that none of the misery inflicted on Ronnie Frye as a youngster amounted to any sort of excuse for what he did to 70-year-old Ralph Childress, the landlord who had befriended him but finally lost patience and threw him out.

Murderers aren't entitled to some sort of pass just because early on they were dealt a lousy hand. Personally, I'm inclined to hold murderers from advantaged backgrounds -- I'm thinking of the former Carolina graduate business student who shoved his pregnant wife off that bridge on the Cary Parkway a few years ago -- to an even more severe standard of accountability. But Bill Boychuk, with some of the best lawyers around, pleaded guilty and wangled a life sentence. Frye's sentence was death all the way -- in a proceeding so abbreviated you almost could have held your breath.

Instead of Roger and Wade Smith, Frye's lead counsel during the sentencing phase of his trial was one Tom Portwood, appointed by the court and assigned to give the case his best shot. He did, all right -- shot after shot of rum, night after night while the trial was under way.

The Charlotte paper had told us about the distinguished Mr. Portwood -- branching out from a dental career in his early 40s to go to law school at Campbell University, running up a mountain of bills and back taxes. "He pushed plea bargains some days, and pulled teeth on others," Liz Chandler wrote. "In the evenings, he poured navy grogs, mixing rum with tap water the way the British navy did."

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