What took so long

I’ve written about the death penalty several times before: here, here, here, here, here and here. So I won’t make this a long post.

It’ll be just long enough to ask why Richard Ramirez, the infamous Night Stalker serial killer, was given the death penalty then allowed to live another 24 years until he died yesterday of natural causes (and I thought there wouldn’t be any good news yesterday).

He'd been sentenced following his conviction for 13 murders, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries. During the entire 24 years after his conviction, while taxpayers were footing the bill to house, feed, clothe, educate, exercise, medicate, marry (yes, he got married in prison to a woman with very questionable taste in men) and fight appeals for this monster, ironically all 13 people he murdered remained dead.

Their due didn’t come until yesterday. And even at that it only came in the form of circumstance, not the justice they and their families waited for and were promised.

Ramirez, and people like him – Scott Peterson, the Menendez brothers – fade out of the headlines once their trials are over. It's easy to forget they continue to enjoy breathing the air for decades, while appeal after appeal slog through the overburdened court system. And their victims families have to live with the injury of the loss, and the insult that their tax dollars are supporting the killer years after they’ve been sentenced.

I've mentioned it in other posts, but it seems worth mentioning here again. The argument that somehow putting him to death as a punishment for his crime, and the murders he committed have some kind of moral equivalency is ridiculous by any civilized method of reasoning. It simply isn't the truth.

Richard Ramirez didn’t deserve to die of natural causes. He deserved to die shortly after his conviction, in a chamber filled with gas or with a needle in his arm and the families of his victims as witnesses.

He deserved to die younger than he ever thought he would, and terrified beyond words.

Just like his victims did.

Enforce the death penalty

Last Tuesday, Proposition 34, which would've repealed the death penalty in California, was defeated. As well it should've been.

In the week leading up to the vote, and early election eve before all the precincts had been counted, some of my well-intentioned friends were posting fast and furious about how Prop. 34 needed to pass. They talked about how immoral the death penalty is. How it isn't a deterrent. That it was costing the state too much.

As if it were about cost.

I love my friends, and appreciate their sentiments. But I'd like to explain why I think they're wrong on this one. Let's take it point by point:

Moral equivalency

For starters, I've never bought the argument that putting murderers, and in particular child murderers, to death brings us down to their level. It is an absolutely false analogy. Violently murdering innocent adults and young children, then executing the murderer as a consequence of their crime are two completely different things. No matter how much you'd like them to be, they aren't morally equivalent.

Not a deterrent

The fact is the death penalty is the best deterrent there is. Not to criminals in general, but certainly to the individual being executed. I guarantee you nothing deters a convicted murderer more from committing another murder than being put to death. Besides, while some corners would have you believe the reason for it is to act as a deterrent, it's not. It's about enacting justice for a heinous crime.

Costs too much

I recognize it's a reality, but it still seems vulgar to me to talk about it in terms of cost. And I'm not sure where cost comes into the equation when it comes to justice. The argument is all the mandatory appeals that go on for years - years that are torturous and cruel for the victim's families - is much more expensive than life imprisonment. Although most anti-death penalty proponents choose to ignore it, when the hidden cost of items like medical care, psychiatric care, educational benefits (yes, benefits) are factored in, especially for convicted killers with a life expectancy of 40 or 50 years, it becomes more costly to warehouse them for life. If people are genuinely concerned about the cost, instead of arguing against the law they should be advocating for the layers and years of appeals to be handled in fiscally responsible, expeditious manner.

It's inhumane

I think the notion that lethal injection - executing a prisoner in the same manner as you'd euthanize a pet - is inhumane needs a point of reference. Inhumane as opposed to what? Stabbing a 4-year old child 50 times in the bathtub? Using the claw end of a hammer to bludgeon someone to death? Decapitating a 7-year old, then for good measure cutting off his hands and feet? It's nice to care so much about the guilty, but I believe the concern is misplaced.

And while we're on the subject of inhumane, let me again mention the victim's family. The real inhumanity is the fact they have to wait decades while the California appeals process runs its course. Decades without their loved ones. Decades of knowing their tax dollars are paying for three squares a day for the monster that killed their baby, sister, brother, mother, father, friend. I not a big fan of Texas, but in 1998 they passed a law expediting the appeals process. People think they execute people like crazy, but the numbers tell you they don't have a higher amount of people on death row. They execute a higher percentage of them because of the expedited appeals.

I also notice many of my friends against the death penalty aren't parents. I'm not saying that in a judgmental way, it's just an observation. I do think, as any parent will tell you, that having children changes your perspective on the issue in ways you never could've expected. I can't even watch movies like Ransom or Without A Trace anymore.

I do agree the system needs to be overhauled, although probably not in the same way my friends do. Again, I think California needs to take a page from Texas' book and reform the appeals process. Expedite it, and reduce the number of appeals given to convicted murderers, especially in cases where DNA is the primary evidence.

If you've followed this blog at all, you know this isn't a new position for me. I've posted here, here, here, here and here about criminals for whom death doesn't come close to being a good enough punishment. Sadly, there never seems to be any shortage of them.

My wish is that nothing bad enough ever happens to anyone I know to change their mind if they're against it.

But I also hope they consider the people who's lives are forever changed by these killers, and think about the only way they and the victims can ever truly have justice.

Wrongful Termination: Chapter 3

Any similarity to persons living or dead, locations or incidents is purely coincidental.

As he walked the hall towards Dean’s office, he passed framed copies of ads Cressman/Krate had produced. Sheridan was amazed that this brain clutter could be displayed with such misplaced pride.

There was an ad for a gas station convenience store showing two just regular blue-collar guys enjoying a beer. “I love it when they make it easier for people to drink behind the wheel,” Sheridan thought. There was an ad for a tennis shoe manufacturer he’d never heard of, a Nike wannabe, showing an extremely buxom girl spilling out of her ridiculously short tennis outfit. The headline read “Love All.” The last one before he turned the corner was a public service ad for a needle exchange program. It showed a drugged out heroin user balancing awkwardly on his knees in front of what looked like a Greyhound station men’s room toilet, throwing his guts up. Even Sheridan had to admit it was a powerful visual. The headline read “Without clean needles, you never know what position you’ll find yourself in.” It was a good message. Didn’t change his opinion about ad people, but still, a good message.

Sheridan walked into the corner office that had belonged to Dean Montaine. The first thing he noticed was the spectacular view overlooking the Santa Monica mountains to the north, and a glimpse of the Pacific ocean to the west. For the last thing Montaine ever saw, he could’ve done worse.

He stooped down next to the body that the coroner had cut down from the light fixture, and was now lying on the industrial carpeted floor covered with a sheet from the knees up.

Montaine’s boots were sticking out the bottom.

Sheridan pulled back the sheet. What he saw was pretty routine as far as hangings went. The head was sitting on the neck at a fifty degree angle, as if he’d been straining to get a better look at a girl in a short skirt walking away from him, or on the phone too long with the receiver between his chin and shoulder. Clearly some additional force besides gravity had been used. If, and it was a preliminary if, it had been murder, then judging by the ransacked looks of the office it appeared as though Montaine had fought the good fight against being placed in a noose and hung from the light. Putting up that kind of resistance, the murderer would have had to use force, yanking him down and snapping his neck. On the other hand, if it did turn out to be suicide, it meant Montaine literally would have to have taken a flying leap off his oak-grain desk with considerable force to do damage like this. His eyes, bloodshot and blank, had popped out of his head far enough for the corneas to touch the lenses of his Coke bottle, tri-focal glasses. His swollen purple, black tongue was sticking out and down to the left side of his mouth, with a thin thread of spittle running down it. Hanging was never a very dignified way to go.

Sheridan also made some personal observations. Montaine was in his late fifties, about six feet tall, hundred seventy pounds. He had a beer gut, and broken blood vessels all along his nose and cheeks. Hard drinker. His hair was straight, long and greasy. His glasses were Jean Paul Gaultier, very expensive, very fashionable. Round in a way that reminded Sheridan of John Lennon. Montaine was wearing stonewashed blue jeans, which had a large wet spot on the front where he’d pissed himself, though it was hard to say if he’d done it before or after. His fingers were stained yellow. His teeth were yellow, brown and decayed from years of alcohol and cigarettes. And probably other things as well. All in all, Sheridan thought, not an attractive man.

Looking at the desk, he noticed Montaine had a small plaque framed in shellacked driftwood branches. It read “Old hippies never die.”

“Guess he was wrong about that.” Sheridan said.