Charley Reese: Everyone’s under a death sentence
Posted: 07/08/08 - 11:26:16 am CDT
America’s court system has been broken, abused and perverted by lawyers, judges and legislators.
You would think that at least the lawyers and judges, who use the system to make a comfortable living, would have an interest in preserving it. Instead, they are the main abusers of it.
These thoughts are prompted by the execution of Mark Dean Schwab, a 39-year-old psychopathic monster who kidnapped, raped and murdered an 11-year-old boy. The problem is that it took 16 years after his conviction to execute this piece of human dung thanks to laws, lawyers and judges. It’s not justice. Neither is lethal injection. How in God’s name did we become so squeamish that we have to provide a peaceful, painless death to vile and vicious criminals?
Schwab wasn’t so kind to his victim, Junny Rios-Martinez, a little boy who would have made any parent proud. I’m very proud of this boy’s father, who attended the execution. The boy’s father said he had vowed that his would be the last face Schwab would ever see.
Schwab was released from prison early in 1991 after serving half a sentence for raping another boy at knifepoint. Within a month, he was stalking little Junny. At the time of his trial, he boasted that he would gladly go to the electric chair if he could have a famous child actor sit on his lap. When the end finally came, he wasn’t boasting about anything.
“Finally” is the key word. It shouldn’t take years and even decades to execute a criminal. Two years from the day of sentencing should be the final day of the perp’s life. Virtually all of the appeals in capital cases are frivolous, filed by opponents of the death penalty who simply are trying to wreck the system.
Let’s get our thoughts in order concerning the death sentence. Everybody dies. Everybody is condemned to death from the day of his or her birth. Thus, executing a criminal isn’t doing anything to him that won’t happen anyway. Good and decent people get death sentences every day from their doctors, and there are no appeals or stays.
When the Founding Fathers wrote the Bill of Rights and prohibited cruel and unusual punishment, it was an era when people were burned alive, torn apart, drawn and quartered or slowly killed by any number of torture devices. Certainly, they did not consider hanging or shooting to be cruel and inhuman punishment.
We should be neither hesitant nor squeamish about executing people who take the lives of innocent people, especially children. God knows, if we don’t have enough juice to protect and, failing that, avenge the death of children, then we are a poor excuse for a society.
We could provide university education to 10 children for the cost of keeping one of these dysfunctional human slimeballs alive for his natural life. I’d support a return to public hanging in the county where the crime was committed. Let the public come and see justice done. I’d even favor hiring a Saudi with a good, sharp sword to take the man’s head off. If beheading was good enough for English royalty, it should be good enough for American animals with two legs.
As for convicting the wrong person, that’s a problem with a community’s police and prosecutors and sometimes incompetent defense lawyers.
Clean house. Fix that problem. Don’t use it as an excuse to stop the death penalty. Lawyers, who claim to be professionals, do a lousy job of policing their own ranks. Incompetent lawyers often end up as judges with nice vacations and pensions they don’t deserve.
One day, the American people may get fed up enough to vow to never elect a single lawyer to a legislative post. Then we might get some clear laws that protect the people rather than provide a lucrative living for lawyers and judges.
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Bobby wrote on Jul 15, 2008 9:34 AM: