Tuesday, December 12, 2006

From The Department of Legal Affairs

Photograph by Kilroy_60
I have been avoiding writing about the news of late. This item, though, caught my eye and I couldn't let it pass by without comment.

--------(-)--> Eric Rudolph, - he who will always have "Olympic Park Bomber" attached to his name - has been talking about his life in prison:

"It is a closed-off world designed to isolate inmates from social and environmental stimuli, with the ultimate purpose of causing mental illness and chronic physical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis," he wrote in one letter to The Gazette of Colorado Springs.

Rudolph wrote that he spends 23 hours a day in his 7-by-12-foot cell, adding that his only exercise is in an enclosed area he described as a "large empty swimming pool" divided into "dog-kennel style cages."

"Using solitary confinement, Supermax is designed to inflict as much misery and pain as is constitutionally permissible," he wrote.

I'm going to limit myself to six comments here...

--------(-)--> I think it's time we start looking at things more realistically in this country. The Department of Justice is a dreadful misnomer. Justice has nothing to do with the law. At best what we have is a Department of Legal Affairs.

--------(-)--> This statement from the article jumped out at me, "designed to inflict as much misery and pain as is constituionally permissible". If that were true, I would say, "Well done." In fact, those who are held in federal prisons have a better life than alot of people on the outside.

--------(-)--> I agree that capital punishment is not a deterrent. It takes a decade or more to carry out the death penalty {if it ever happens}. The story gets a few seconds on the news {if at all} or is reported in a paragraph or three that lands buried somewhere in the newspaper {if the story ever sees the light of day}. Under those circumstances the death penalty is never going to make a positive difference in society.

--------(-)--> I believe state and federal governments should provide DNA tests for every prisoner held on deathrow. Those who can be exonerated should be released. Executions would begin the day after the test results start coming in. So, if you're not cleared...you're in the express lane.

--------(-)--> The best thing I think we can do is return to public executions. The one thing on which I have agreed with George W. Bush is his enthusiastic support of the death penalty when he was the Governor of Texas. I think ol' George W. could get behind this. I see it this way, television stations would be required to air the executions in order to receive a broadcasting license from the FCC. This might be a good two birds with one stone opportunity; in addition to the free broadcasts they could do Pay Per View events with the proceeds going to pay off the national debt.

--------(-)--> Lethal injection; I think we should dump that one. I think there would be a greater impact if we went back to the electric chair, the gas chamber, firing squads, the guillotine and hanging.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nothing I write can justify my emotion in this matter. But, clearly I think you are correct in your statements. Although, I hate killing.