Disclaimer – The content of this article is extremely sensitive, and will likely offend. If you don’t have a strong stomach and won’t be able to finish, don’t start. There is a point to everything I write but sometimes you won’t get it until you get to the end.
In recent days, Senator McCain released some advertising accusing Senator Obama of promoting sex education to kindergartners. As a father of a soon-to-be kindergartner, I found myself skeptical of this ad, and did a little (and I mean very little) research. It turns out that Senator Obama was promoting education to young children to teach them about stranger danger, a program I can support, again as the father of a soon-to-be. However, this brings me to my point. This is again a mechanism to protect against sexual predators. Some great stuff, but these approaches never strike at the fundamental problem. Educating our kids doesn’t really address the defect which places them in danger in the first place.
In many of our states, we have capital punishment. Execution for certain crimes because their nature is so heinous, and we believe that these criminals lack the requisite ability for rehabilitation. This is a policy I have always supported, in defense of a society free from the animal among us. Serial killers. Traitors. Rapists who kill while in the act. Typically, these are serious crimes and often have an additional factor which places them into a category of more egregious acts. Shocking, if you will. In turn, we find these cases at the bar of the court, with a little kicker available to the judiciary as an option for punishment.
However, the breadth of the availability of this punishment is actually extremely limited. For example, no one has been put to death for jaywalking in a long time. Further, burglary (stealing from an occupied premises), or robbery (stealing from another person), while dangerous are not of this same nature. For good reason – These crimes in and of themselves are not of the same tier of crimes. Yet there is an entire category of crimes which do meet the “shocking” threshold, but which we fail to apply the same standard of punishment. I submit if we did, there would be a dramatic decline in the statistics.
Sex crimes (those criminal acts involving some form of crime involving genitals or sexual pleasure) seem to meet this threshold. The crimes often –
· Require no escalation to become shocking. Rape, molestation, and other sex crimes begin at egregious and climb rapidly to driving me to want to go on a man hunt when I hear of one occurring. Anyone with a daughter (I don’t have one personally) would likely join me with pitchforks, torches and ire.
· Involve a victim who will never recover. Many victims are never able to feel safe again,
and because the violator is often a member of the opposite sex, it forever impacts the victims ability to readily maintain a healthy relationship.
· Involve a criminal who is untrainable or “unrehabilitatable,” Many of these predators are predisposed towards these unhealthy attractions, and I believe from some reading a long time ago that there are indicators that they can never be “cured” by modern standards. (read more for my tirade against Megan’s Law.)
Therefore, I would implement a plan for my state (capital punishment is state legislated), which expanded the options for this punishment, but before I wrote this into law, I would begin with overhauling the legislation around sex crimes in general. For example, the 18 year old who has intercourse with his 15 year old girlfriend is not “raping” his date. Yet in many states this is how the law is written if the father of the 15 year old presses charges. We need to fix these issues.
However, the line is less blurry for me, for many other cases. For example, if you are 60 and the victim is anything less than 18, have a seat in my chair. Digital penetration (using the finger) of a minor is just as bad as rape in the eyes of the victim. Both are permanently scarring and both result in a devastated future. Many rape victims have reported that they would rather have been killed in the process of the crime. I suspect that the 12 year old victim of a neighbor is in the same boat.
All of these crimes are heinous and need to be dealt with. However, there needs to naturally be a level of indisputable proof. While I believe that these crimes are heinous, I also know that sometimes people lie. I know that some cases of rape are not true. I know that sometimes people make things up. Under the normal burden of proof, the judge or jury must have no reasonable doubt. Let’s call this 90% of more certain that the crime was committed by the defendant in the manner described. For this purpose, I will even require that the burden of proof is 95% or higher. For example, the defendant saw the assailant, picked him out of a lineup, DNA confirmed he was the guy and she is still covered in bruises. Oh and they never met before the attack. Or little Timmy goes to school and tells a story about his Uncle Bob who touches him in a bad way. Then mom confirms the Bob was alone with Timmy for four hours on the day of the assault, and that Timmy was bleeding from the same bad place. And Bob has no reasonable explanation. Please Bob, lay here on the table, while I get your injection ready.
And here is where I will really offend, I am sure. If you are in a position of power over a minor, (priest, coach, teacher, parent or step-parent) and you commit one of these acts or if we can demonstrate multiple cases of the crime before you were caught (serial rapists, repeated pedophiles), I have a special place in hell for you. The punishment is not as simple as the other death penalty cases. We will impanel a second jury just to determine a punishment for you. Not a jury of your peers today, but a jury of your peers in hell, so I am thinking we recruit 4 members of a motorcycle gang, four members of the Crips, and four others with an extreme sense of honor. I am thinking Marines, or Navy SEALS. They get to pick a punishment for you, before the execution. I have a list which I have in my head already, but I will let them get creative.
The reason I am so passionate about this issue is simple. I believe in the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights, and law’s like Megan’s Law simply crap right in the middle of it. The 8th Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment (so I might have to reconsider my point immediately above), and Megan’s Law, which requires registration and effectively branding of convicted sex criminals seems to run contrary to the purpose of the 8th Amendment. What we are essentially saying with registration is that we are not sure you are “cured” when we release the offender back on society, so in order to better protect our citizenry, we are going to put you on a list – forever – so that your neighbors can keep a watch on you.
The cruel and unusual part arises when we realize that our system is ill-equipped to handled these deviants with treatment and “repair”, but that our system is overcrowded, and these people have served their judicially appointed term. This is a term set by a judge who is somewhat motivated to keep the sentence shorter in the interests of not further over-crowding jail cells, or the state’s Supreme Court comes in and opens the doors to release the general prison population back onto society. So, we release criminals back onto society as keeping them in prison is doing nothing to rehabilitate them, and placing the society in general back into harm’s way. Cruel and unusual punishment arises when we release these people back into society with a “normal” stamp on them, and then brand them and others on a list. (The list, by the way, fails to clearly discern between the 18 year old boy with a 15 year old girlfriend, and the priest who rapes 12 teenagers.)
Again, this is not an attack on poor Megan Kanka and her family. My heart really goes out for that family. I am simply trying to solve the problem with a longer term, more effective solution.
So once my state has this wonderful legislation, it will have two immediate impacts. (You can do a study to prove this as I am sure it will bear out my conclusion – I am just saving time). First, it will greatly reduce the number of these crimes. Rape, a crime which is as much about power as it is about ejaculation, loses the allure of the power exchange when the criminal knows that the punishment results in his loss of power, and the victim has the full weight of the states power’s behind her. When the punishment is this permanent for a crime which involves a great deal of forethought, the executioner’s chair will be an image included in the mind of the offender before the offense.
Second, many of these potential offenders will leave the state. Sorry for all of you other states, but I really care most about where my soon-to-be kindergartner lives. In many states, where capital punishment is not an option, I suspect it will be back on the books within 18 months of enacting my plan. Why? Because those few states who fail to follow suit will have nothing but those who wish to try to continue this bad behavior. Tragic for your, but not to worry – Your good citizens will be moving out soon, and then we can just put up a big wall around you Vermont. (I don’t actually know if Vermont is a non-capital punishment, but there state is just so pretty, it seemed a waste not to take them down a peg or two.)
Now, if you are pedophile reading this, I have two pieces of advice. First, you can still go visit Thailand and other southeast Asian nations where pedophilia is still available for a price. Just note, if my Immigration Tsar finds out that you have 3 or more visits to Thailand, and you don’t work for a high-tech company, or are actually of Thai descent, have got some explaining to do.
My second piece of advice. If you see me coming, run. I have less to fear in prison than you do.
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