Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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Re:Couey Sentenced to Death
« Reply #1 on: 2007-08-27 04:18:13 » |
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[Blunderov] Here in SA we have been seeing an American crime series called "Special Victims Unit". Each episode begins with a melodramatic male (!) voice declaiming in a low portentious tone that offences of a sexual nature are considered "especially heinous" hence the necessity for the establishment of the said "Special Victims Unit".
The unit is established, we note, not because offences of a sexual nature require appropriately selected and trained investigators, specialised equipment and particularly expert ancillary services, but because they are "especially heinous". Perhaps they should have simply appointed priests or moral philosophers to do the investigating instead.
We gather that there are some strong taboos with regard to sex and in particular children and sex. These taboos engage the emotions so very strongly that they can drown out all reason upon occasion and I think some reflection is warranted because of that and because of the way programs like "Special Victims Unit" contribute to this effect.
What Couey did was so horrible that I suppose he would too have been sentenced to death if the victim had been an adult, and in that sense I suppose the sentence is fair enough. Certainly he will be prevented from committing any further crimes but life imprisonment would serve this purpose just as well as has been shown in most other civilised countries in the world and so we must conclude that this sentence is as much about revenge as it is about prevention.
How virtuous is revenge I wonder? Clearly it is a powerful human impulse but I don't think it should be confused with justice which is, to my mind, the higher ideal taking as it does a broader more dispassionate view of the long term greater good.
In short, if you have the death penalty, innocent people* WILL die. Accepting this is, to my mind, in principle no different from performing human sacrifices like for instance the Aztecs or, more recently, and with added cannabilism, the Roman Catholics.
Apocalypto** anyone? Not a lot about human nature has changed since then it seems.
*The insane in particular.
**The incredible irony of one of the final scenes, a shot of the Spanish priest coming ashore with a staff and crucifix, was, one suspects, completely lost on the director Mel Gibson who probably intended it to signify salvation rather than the advent of a yet more enhanced form of genocide and rapine. Good movie though.
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