Another Dandy Reason for the Death Penalty

A week or so ago, a 14-year-old girl in the southwest suburbs was murdered by a guy she found burglarizing her family's home. The Cook County State's Attorney tells us that the suspect stole her cell phone and later used it to text "cruel" messages to her parents about killing the child.

Her death is horrific. The taunting by text suggests unspeakable evil.

For cases like these, and all of the rest that are just as incomprehensible but not as widely publicized, Illinois needs to reinstate the death penalty.

A death penalty that is written to allow a defendant constitutional legal recourse but limits the number of appeals and narrows them in scope. Not a death penalty that can be subverted by endless legal maneuvering but, rather, a death penalty with mandatory review by a panel made up of professional investigators tasked to evaluate all the evidence in the case, even that which is pertinent but not introduced at trial. And not a death penalty that would allow the convict to languish while on death row. Time awaiting punishment would be spent at hard labor or, at the very least, in a cell with no television or radio, no amusements or distractions of any kind. Four walls, a cot and three meals a day. Limited exercise periods.

I believe in capital punishment for two reasons. First, if publicized and implemented on a regular basis, without anger, in a humane and efficient fashion, it may become a deterrent to others contemplating unspeakable crimes. Note the phrase, "if publicized and implemented on a regular basis." One execution once in a great while won't get the message across.

Second, while deterrence cannot be measured, putting the individual to death assures he is no longer a threat. To anyone. Correctional officers while he is incarcerated and any innocents on the outside if the system, in what often passes for mercy but is, in truth, misguided wisdom, one day decides to release him.

Capital punishment is brutal. Many good and kind souls find it morally repugnant and not socially acceptable.

I find it fundamentally unacceptable that animals wearing the disguise of human beings wantonly destroy innocent lives and then face a "maximum" penalty that many of them find laughable.