I have no idea whether the man they’ve arrested for the mind-boggling, hideous murder of 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin is her killer, but Polimom is hoping wih all her might that whoever the animal is, the police have an airtight case — complete with DNA, an unimpeachable confession, and overwhelming evidence.
Because whoever tortured, murdered, and molested this little girl deserves to die.
In fact, the killers and torturers of all the children we read about have no place in this society, nor do I want to support them in prison even as I pay for the legal costs required to prolong their miserable lives.
I want to be clear here: Polimom does not believe the death penalty applies across the board; I’m not an “eye for an eye” person. However, although crimes committed against young children are, without exception, terrible, there is another level that is above and beyond:
A slain 10-year-old girl’s body, found in her downstairs neighbor’s apartment, had deep saw marks on the neck, said authorities who alleged Saturday that her killer had planned to dismember her and eat the flesh.
From there, folks, the stomach-churning details get worse. Feel free to read via either of the above links, but fair warning: it is graphic and unbelievably grisly. Shades of Jeffrey Dahmer, in fact. Surely you all remember him? His penalty was death, also – but it was carried out by a fellow prisoner, since Wisconsin doesn’t have capital punishment.
There are, I believe, crimes that are so heinous – so beyond the limits of what society can possibly tolerate – that they call for the ultimate penalty, and atrocities like those committed against Jamie Rose Bolin, Dylan Groene, and the many (too many) others are where Polimom draws the line in the sand.
Yes, I worry about the possible miscarraige of justice against a wrongly convicted person. The evidence supporting a death penalty cannot be questionable — but there is nothing extenuating enough to explain or defend these types of crimes; even insanity will not do.
Was the murderer abused as a child? I don’t care.
Was he a good boy in school? Had a good job and lots of friends? No prior record?
I don’t care.
I care about the children who, like my own, are going about the business of growing up right now – today – all over the country. They’re playing with friends, or watching television, or swimming, or crying, or laughing, or being mad…. they’re in the process of learning about trust, and life.
I care about the lifetime still ahead for my daughter and her friends, and all those like them. I look forward to the years of memories yet to be experienced. even while I know that the memory books of the mothers and fathers and grandmas and grandpas and siblings of the lost children are finished now. End of story.
I care enormously about what the family of this Oklahoma girl is going to suffer, knowing the awful suffering of their daughter – that her last moments were full of terror and agony. There is nothing worse than this pain, and they will be engulfed in it for the rest of their lives.
This is the crime that rises above all the others, and for which the penalty must be death.
I’ve been waiting. You’re a woman of your word and your words are good. Got that can opener out today didn’t ya? Brave woman! And ya know, good for you that you say what you think.
I agree with you completely that this is someone who deserves death.
That said, I remain unwilling to give the government the power to do that. My primary reason is one that doesn’t lend itself to debate: I think it’s morally wrong, period. That’s just a deeply held belief – that even if I cannot find a shred of reason that someone should live, no matter how horrible his or her crimes are, no matter what, power over life and death is not something I am willing to take on (or assign to a government) except in cases of immediate self-defense.
But… there are other reasons that lend themselves better to discussion. One is the difficulty of finding “airtight” cases, even with DNA. I’m thinking of the horrors o the Houston crime lab, of the incredible unreliability of eyewitness accounts, of coerced confessions, of people so mentally disturbed that they may not even know what they’re doing when confessing – it’s disturbing to consider, because I would feel like the world was a safer and better place if there was such a thing as an airtight case, but I’m unconvinced that it exists.
I’m also troubled by cases like this, because they are so horrifying that they are the ones where I am most concerned about the proper procedure of the justice system – crimes that horrify us all so deeply bring out a certain lust for blood that’s quite the opposite of what we want from a criminal justice system.
It gives me no pleasure to tell you that my hope is that if this man is convicted, he’s thrown into a cell for the rest of his days – but not killed. It’s not sympathy for him at all, just an sense that however unsatisfying that is for us, it’s still the right policy for us as a society.
The cost issue does not disturb me – generally a procedure with the safeguards to make sure that we don’t execute the wrong person (something which does not currently exist in the US, I am afraid) tends to be as expensive as incarceration. And in any case, it’s so little money compared to what we piss away on all kinds of things through our government that I think it’s a price worth paying to remove the possibility of an erroneous execution.
Don’t misunderstand me. I relate to what your saying, and if it were someone I knew who’d been his victim, I’d want to kill him with my bare hands. But I just can’t get behind the government doing that, or argue that my or your or anyone’s utterly human and genuine rage and horror necessarily make for good policy.
Thanks for a provacative post.
Polimom, you seem to be saying that killing children is worse than killing adults. Please explain. As an adult, I want the law to provide just as deterrence to potential murders as you think children are entitled to.
Well, if you want deterrence, you’re barking up the wrong tree with the death penalty; there’s no evidence that it deters much of anything.
Gary,
John’s quite right about capital punishment and deterrance. There have been many studies done that support that. Here’s a google search result link (here).
Since many of those google results look to be from vehemently “anti” positions, I have taken the liberty of pulling out a “pro death penalty” link, where they argue in support in spite of the lack of deterrence (here).
Part of the challenge, of course, is that you can’t really prove X does not cause Y. You can prove that Z causes Y, or that there’s no correlation between X and Y, and that’s different. In other words, the burden is on death penalty advocates to show that capital punishment deters crime – and no one’s been able to do that.
Similarly, the burden is on gun control advocates (of which I’m one) to show that it prevents violence, and that’s tough sledding also.
Au contraire to those posters who aver that death penalty does little to deter violence. In fact, those who are so penalized never agqain have the opportunity to cause violence, except perhaps to other like-minded individuals in their cell block before the moment of their relatively quick, uncruel, humane and painless demises (unlike the drawn-out tortures, rapes, etc., of their victims.)
That said… I am with John. I don’t like the idea of the death penalty. I like it less that there are cases where I feel I could remorselessly throw the switch/push the plunger myself. It’s wrong, just plain wrong.
My preferred treatment woudl be to find some unused island or moon base, and put all violent criminals there to fend for themselves. Grant reality TV or WebCam broadcast rights, with advertising $ above actual production costs going to victim families. [Oh, I suppose we will have to offer to send people there for nothing if they want to go, just to avoid the type of morons who would kill a family of 6 just to get on tv.]
I don’t mean to be flip. And I also don’t want to pay for these folks to have a better TV than I do, plus free medical care, educational opportunities, workout rooms, etc., for the rest of their crummy, locked-up lives. But killing a helpless person is wrong, even if he’s only strapped to that gurney after a fair trial by his peers.