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Why-- in Certain Cases -- I Favor the Death Penalty
Perhaps supporting the death penalty is indicative of some moral failing in my character, but I doubt it. I hold that in certain circumstances, certain crimes, it is in no way unethical or immoral for the killer or killers to be executed.
I believe that by the commission of certain unspeakable crimes, the perpetrator fundamentally – and in perpetuity -- forfeits his humanity, along with any claim to the tender mercies of his fellow man.
He has, in fact, degenerated into a poisonous reptile that is entirely deserving of being speedily dispatched. He is in no way entitled to be supported – for years or decades – by the state at a cost of 70k or more per year.
I speak of such death-worthy crimes as the Cheshire, Connecticut home-invasion triple murders of the Petit family (see below) – crimes where there is no question of guilt whatsoever, and are especially heinous. Other heinous-crime variations include those of serial killers, spree-killers, torture-murderers, and any and all mass-murderers, such as the Virginia Tech shooter.
I do not find it mitigating – not in the least – that some vicious perpetrator was only 13 years old or had the IQ of a Dalmatian or was black or was raised by wolves or was permanently or temporarily insane or was terribly abused by his parents, etc., etc., etc. He has committed an act or acts whereby no punishment short of torture can be considered too cruel or unusual. It is a testament to our own society’s humanity that we now attempt to enforce the executions of these snakes as gently and painlessly as possible.
A Second Consideration
There is also another benefit that factors into my death penalty support --- and this is something that never seems to be mentioned by DP opponents. In my spare time I have become a serious fan of “true crime” TV shows – I must have watched hundreds by now – and one thing that regularly pops up is a scenario in which (a) the crime was committed in a death-penalty state, and (b) both the defendant and his attorney know the evidence of guilt is overwhelming.
What nearly always happens in these situations is that the defendant is willing to make a deal to avoid execution, and often those deals have to do with locating the remains of one or more of the victims, or implicating others complicit in the murders. Put another way, the death penalty can be a serious and valuable bargaining chip for the prosecution – and often a source of solace and closure for the families of the victims.
Another aspect of these shows – shows which most often deal with homicides – is that they demonstrate, over and over and over, how overwhelming must be the evidence against a suspect before a D.A. will OK his arrest.
Because defense attorneys in these mini-documentaries rarely – very rarely -- represent clients who are innocent, they depend on two now-commonplace strategies having nothing to do with concrete evidence: (a) muddying – with a capitol “M” – the waters and (b) encouraging and aiding their clients in fabricating -- out of whole cloth-- ridiculous stories. To paraphrase Twain, there are liars, pathological liars, and defense attorneys.
These days, by employing such methods, and being greatly aided by post-1960’s leftist judges who – as they put it – would rather have dozens of guilty men go free than convict one innocent man, and who did thus put in place all kinds of conviction hurdles – particularly “exclusion of evidence” rules – good defense attorneys now routinely make capitol murder cases exceedingly difficult to prosecute. And, these trials typically drag on for months.
"People grieve in different ways."
Two perfect examples of the power of these tricks are the O.J. Simpson and Casey Anthony trials, trials where defense attorneys were able to dupe juries into ignoring clear evidence of guilt.
A Third Consideration -- Victimized Families
Another scenario that regularly arises is one in which a vicious murderer, rather than being executed or given life without the possibility of parole, gets “life” with the possibility of parole, often after serving no more than 10 years.
Rather than allowing the victim’s family to move on, this situation forces them into having to appear before the parole board -- sometimes every two years – to plead that the killer remain in prison. Sadly, this often goes on and on for years until such time as the murderer is paroled or dies in prison. Far better for the victim’s family would be that rare scenario in which the killer is convicted and then promptly executed.
I recently saw a documentary where a man in Texas was convicted of strangling a woman – and served 6 years. WTF?? Then, within a year of his release, he was found guilty of strangling a second woman in New Mexico. Due to “technicalities” and a terribly timid D.A. this vicious rat served 5 years for his second murder -- and was released.
The second victim’s husband stated, “What do you have to do to be put away? Kill 3 people?"
Although the program did not get into some specifics, I’d be willing to bet that the judge refused to allow the New Mexico prosecution to enter into evidence the criminal’s first murder conviction. That would be “prejudicial”.
Can you imagine being asked to make some life-changing decision – but where you were not allowed to have all the facts because others believed you were incapable of making a rational decision given all the facts? Such is Leftist justice.
The Deterrence Factor -- or Lack Thereof
Lastly, I’d like to address the issue of whether or not the death penalty is a deterrent. I am beyond convinced that it would be a very powerful deterrent indeed, if swiftly implemented, which it no longer is. The average time spent on death row is now 14 years.
But, consider this scenario – call it the Instant Deterrent -- where the criminal is about to shoot someone, only to have a police officer get the drop on him, informing the would-be killer that he will be shot dead should he proceed to kill his potential victim. It is the rarest of killers who opts to kill knowing full well that he will immediately be executed.
So – it’s all a matter of timing, no? – instant death -- or death in a year or two – or death decades later.
Ergo: The deterrence effect of the death penalty is directly proportional to the average lapsed time between the crime and the punishment.
NY Times – August 7, 2007
When Horror Came to a Connecticut Family
When Horror Came to a Connecticut Family
By MANNY FERNANDEZ and ALISON LEIGH COWAN
CHESHIRE, Conn., Aug. 6 — Dr. William A. Petit Jr., his head bloodied and legs bound, stumbled out of a rear basement door of his two-story home here into a pouring rain, calling the name of a neighbor for help.
The neighbor heard the shouting, but so did the two men inside the house, who peeked outside from an upstairs window. They were both serial burglars with drug habits, having racked up numerous convictions for stealing car keys and pocketbooks.
This time, they took something far more precious.
The men, the authorities say, had already strangled Dr. Petit’s wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and in short order would also kill the couple’s two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. The elder suspect, Steven J. Hayes, 44, had poured gasoline on the girls and their mother, according to a lawyer and a law enforcement official involved in the case, in hopes of concealing DNA evidence of sexual assault. He had raped Ms. Hawke-Petit, and his partner, Joshua Komisarjevsky, 26, had sexually assaulted Michaela.
Moments after Dr. Petit escaped, as the house was being surrounded by police officers, the men lighted the gasoline. The girls were tied to their beds but alive when the gas Mr. Hayes had spread around the house was set aflame.
It was about 9:50 a.m. on July 23 when Dr. Petit, 50, burst into his backyard on what is normally a quiet street in a quiet town of 29,000 in central Connecticut. On this stormy summer morning it was the site of one of the most savage crimes in the state in decades. By 10:01, Mr. Hayes and Mr. Komisarjevsky had been captured. On Tuesday morning they are expected to be presented in New Haven County Court for their first appearance in the venue where they will be tried; they have been formally charged in State Superior Court in Meriden with capital felonies, which could bring the death penalty.
Interviews with law enforcement officials and lawyers for the men, and friends, co-workers and relatives of all involved, along with a study of court records, paint a picture of what happened that morning and show that there were missed opportunities on both sides of the law leading up to the deaths.
The criminal justice system failed to treat Mr. Hayes and Mr. Komisarjevsky as serious offenders despite long histories of recidivism, repeatedly setting them free on parole. The suspects never capitalized on those chances to turn their lives around, instead apparently forming a new criminal alliance after meeting at a drug treatment center in Hartford.
“There’s no question about it: The system didn’t work,” Dr. Petit’s father, William A. Petit Sr., 73, said last weekend outside his home in Plainville, 12 miles north, where the family has long formed a pillar of civic life. He paused, then added: “It’s too late now.”
It started out like any summer Sunday.
After 18 holes of golf with his father, Dr. Petit returned home to the beige clapboard colonial on a corner lot on hilly Sorghum Mill Drive where the family had lived since 1989. A renowned diabetes expert, he helped write “The Encyclopedia of Diabetes” and is medical director of the Joslin Diabetes Center at the Hospital of Central Connecticut. Yet he had never strayed far from where he grew up.
Deep Roots, Bright Futures
His father used to sell trinkets at a general store on Whiting Street in Plainville. The store closed, but the elder Mr. Petit kept an office on Whiting, while his son opened a medical practice a short walk down the street, where the walls of his examining rooms are decorated not with awards, but with pictures of his family.
That Sunday, Michaela — a budding cook whom people called K. K. — made a pasta sauce of native tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and basil and mixed up a balsamic vinaigrette for the salad. At a memorial service for his family, Dr. Petit said that whenever he came home to find Michaela watching the Food Network, he knew he would have to catch the basketball game in the office upstairs. “Sometimes if it was a long day I pulled rank,” he admitted.
Hayley — Hayes to relatives — dreamed of becoming a doctor like her father, and was bound for Dartmouth College, his alma mater. She was always following in Dr. Petit’s footsteps, shadowing him at the hospital on Saturdays, walking behind his white coattails into patients’ rooms.
In April, the Petits celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary. They had met at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, where she was a new nurse and he was a third-year medical student. For their first date, he invited her to dinner, but also invited his parents and two of his parents’ friends.
In Cheshire, where the median household income is $80,466, the Petits lived in a home valued at $387,000, with eight rooms and a brick fireplace. Next to the basketball rim out back was a small enclosed trampoline. There were soccer balls and lacrosse sticks in bins in the garage.
They were charitable with their time and money, particularly in support of multiple sclerosis, the degenerative disease of the central nervous system that Ms. Hawke-Petit had been battling for eight years. Hayley, who rowed on the school crew and was a playmaker on the basketball court, had recently been hospitalized with a collapsed lung.
A month before the killings, friends and relatives gathered on Sorghum Mill Drive to celebrate Hayley’s graduation from the all-girls Miss Porter’s School in Farmington. There were bouquets of white daisies on the tables outside. Deb Hereld, the mother of one of Hayley’s childhood friends, remembered Michaela skipping through the house, turning around to flash her a smile.
“I kind of always joked,” said Christopher J. Wazorko, a Plainville town councilman, “if you weren’t with your own family, you’d certainly want to be a Petit.”
The authorities say the intruders entered the house through an open door at 3 a.m. Monday as Dr. Petit slept in a chair on the first floor, his wife and daughters in their rooms upstairs. The previous evening, the men had followed Ms. Hawke-Petit and Michaela home from the parking lot of a Super Stop & Shop three miles away.
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