Makes you wonder...

I was watching Campbell Live tonight and there was an interview with a lady who was on Florida's death row for a crime she didn't commit. Her time there must have been harrowing and un-imaginable for those of us who do not live in a country with the death penalty. She seems though to have weathered a rather nasty storm.

But I look at the two most recent high profile murder cases to come through the courts and wonder, is it worth the eye for an eye, rather than tax-payers footing the bill year after year for them to live in relative comfort even behind prison walls?

15-year-old Kori Trevithick who killed 77 year old Doreen Reed by stabbing her 25 times in a home invasion was put away for the murder for 14 years. He won't see freedom until he is almost in his 30's. The sheer brutality of the murder and the surety of the case against him should have been enough to put him away for life and perhaps may have had him on death row.

Then there is the couple who beat that poor child to death with all sorts of things. Why the hell did they only get 4.4 years each for a brutal murder. I say murder because I do not believe they were stupid enough to think that the things they were doing to this child were for its benefit. Maine Ngati and Teusila Fa'asisila were last month found guilty of manslaughter, wilful ill treatment and failing to seek medical care for Ngati's three-year-old son, Ngatikaura.

I think the judges thoughts of them feeling remorseful as a reason for the low sentence length is a bit off the mark. This beating didn't happen in one moment, it was drawn out, it was lengthy, it was painful and at times to a point when the pain caused the 3 year old to pass out. Yet, a moments remorse robbed the other family members of this child to feel robbed.

I know a lot of people who would like to go into a room with this couple and see how they like it with a baseball bat, or a vacuum cleaner pipe and see how they like it. In cases like this, where will-ful mistreatment and deprivation is the cause of death I can see the sense of the anti-smacking act comes into play. BUT, would you think twice about doing anything like this if you knew there was a possibility you would end up with a lethal injection, or a gas chamber, or a firing squad, or a noose or a shocking encounter with a chair?

Hey...maybe...you guys who drive trucks and run red lights, or boy racers who end up killing people on the roads might even want to think about that one. What if by your own action, you kill someone, and what if the possible sentence handed down to you was death.

I think, it is only a matter of time before one government or another thinks about bringing it back. Our PC laws and ways of doing things is creating a society where the school of hard knocks in normal life might soon itself be out of work and the only school like that will be in a prison.

Maybe you would like to go back and look at my Blog of January 8th this year. The case is compelling.