A Time to Not Die
When I see stories like the ones I’m about to list, I hear Mick Jagger crooning about the fact that "Tiiiiiime is on my side." Well sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s not; depends what outcome you’re seeking.
In China, a man who had run amok at a school wounding 29 people, mostly young children – he claimed that he was depressed – was executed, a month later.
In Alabama, a man was executed the same week. He had been sent to death row for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a convenience store clerk in 1976; 34 years ago.
Nidal Hasan, the Army major who gunned down 13 people at Fort Hood before he was shot by police officers, just had his first court hearing. The shootings took place at the beginning of November. The hearing determined that there would be another hearing in October to determine whether his case should go to trial. (That’s weird considering there ain’t an iota of doubt about his guilt.)
While I’m not in favor of capital punishment, I confess to frustration with a system that sentences someone to die by the state’s hand and yet they wind up spending decades waiting for their final court-directed appointment with this sanctioned murder. It’s mostly just legal folderol, dotting t’s and crossing i’s in an ultimately meaningless fashion; less about innocence or guilt than judicial error.
And then there’s the enormous expense of capital punishment. Here in The Golden State Governor Schwarzenegger was contemplating commuting all of the death sentences. It would save cash-strapped California tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars.
Justice delayed is justice denied. Just ask the prisoners at Guantanamo who have spent years behind bars, thousands of miles from home, and they haven’t even been charged. These are different issues, of course, but they all boil down to an obfuscatory system staffed by people who are paid by the hour.
©2010 SetonnoteS
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