Reply #73: Thank you for responding in a thoughtful and considerate manner.

[rrneck]

Heh. Back home in the Bible belt I’m known as a raging hell bound iconoclast. If they find out I believe in anything I’ll never hear the end of it, so lets just keep that between us, okay?

Actually the term belief is close to the mark. But it might be better to say I presume there are no evil babies; as in the presumption of innocence. The kid just hasn’t had time to do anything wrong yet.

Now, the notion that there are perhaps evil people because of “something in their genetic makeup or their body chemistry or their brain patterns” is exactly the kind of thinking that concerns me. I am not aware of any proof whatsoever that there is some biological cause for evil in people. If that were the case, we would be able to find a biological cure for evil. I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, but it’s been tried; remember Eugenics? That kind of thinking was a major contributor to some of the worst human rights abuses in history. That’s because somebody had an "opinion" about who should be “removed from the life cycle” because of who they are. It doesn't take that much work to decide almost anyone is evil. And that’s the problem. If we step away, even for a moment, from the idea that it is at any time right to end a human life, then there will always be somebody around willing to move the goalposts. We just had eight years of a “decider” who gave us Abu Ghraib. Do you really want to start down that road?

I absolutely agree that there are people who simply cannot live among us in society. But do we have to kill them? We can separate them easily enough, just ask Charles Manson. I guess if society decides that someone has to die, it has occurred to me that the best way to execute them would be at the site of his or her crime off the back of a flatbed truck. That way justice would be dispensed and those dispensing the justice would see it being done. We, the people, have condemned this person to death, and we, the people, should see the results of our condemnation. I expect it wouldn't be pretty. I don’t like the idea of locking them away and hearing about how we killed them sanitized on page twelve of the newspaper. But it’s a moot point now that the exoneration of condemned predators through the introduction of new evidence is almost a cottage industry. The entire process of judicial execution has been called into question. Until we sort that out, I expect we should just put the entire notion on hold.

It takes years to ruin a person. It takes even longer to fix them. Some people can never be made whole no matter how hard we try. Unfortunately, we have no way to know exactly who can be made whole or how long it will take until we make the attempt. We just don't know who the truly evil people are.

It makes no sense that someone can locate evil in another, declare them thus, and then condemn to death because of it. For that reason, we have a legal system that is designed to adjudicate evil acts, not evil people.

I am sorry to hear about your friend. Two years is hard time for a good man. I hope he is doing well now and I wish him all the best. I don’t know the particulars of the case but I would surmise that the jury felt that since he killed another well in advance of the actual materialization of an imminent threat, there was some doubt that he had no other option whatsoever but to do what he did. It’s a sure bet those in the jury box weren’t around when he needed them. In any case, he conducted himself honorably under impossible circumstances. We should be thankful he didn't get the death penalty.

As for the guy he killed? Could we have made him not evil anymore? I guess now we will never know.

damn typos