Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Thursday, February 02, 2012

The Final Punishment

Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu merely voiced in a context of reasonable-enough musing on a discussion of great controversy within Canadian society, what many other Canadians muse to themselves, when they read of the arrogance and lack of humanity of psychopathic serial murderers who destroy the peace of mind of ordinary people.

If there is a good reason that those who feel no compassion for those whose lives they destroy to continue living long after the relatives of those they murdered finally find peace in accepting the violent deaths of those they cherished, it escapes most people.

Senator Boisvenu uttered his opinion that although he was not in favour of the death penalty generally, death might yet be considered as due punishment for the most unforgivingly brutal serial murderers who have never expressed one iota of regret for the lives they violently destroyed, to have their own removed in turn.

His intention was clearly not for the state to intervene by directly causing the death of these psychopaths, but to allow them the option themselves of taking their lives, should they wish to. Just a thought. The thought being that why should the state intervene should the mass murderer find no further value in living through the years of life in prison?

If such a person thought little beyond the twisted pleasure derived from destroying the lives of others, and incarceration restrained him from further murders, perhaps he might prefer to let his own life lapse, as a personal rejection of life for himself.

Senator Boisvenu speaks from the anguished experience of personal pain. His family's loss of their 27-year-old daughter who was abducted, raped and murdered is an experience that most of us have never suffered through, and would wish never to have done.

He is generous enough in spirit to reject institutionalized disciplinary killing, and rational enough to understand that there is simply no good reason to support the life of a smirking, self-satisfied murderer like a Bernardo. Although Bernardo would be an unlikely candidate for self-strangulation.

And it is worth noting that his opinion reflects that of a majority of Canadians, where a recent survey on capital punishment found 62% of Canadians giving at least verbal support to the death penalty for homicide. What holds most people back from the brink of supporting the death penalty is the very real possibility that someone innocent is occasionally wrongly convicted.

On the other hand, it is not there where the death penalty might be directed, but toward those for whom no shadow of a doubt could be expressed about the responsibility of someone found guilty beyond any reasonable doubt due to an accretion of hard evidence, let alone an admission of guilt, of a series of gruesome murders. Vancouver's Willie Pickton, for example.

Many people could find it within themselves to accept the quiet and orderly dispatch on the rarest of occasions for these monsters of human brutishness.

Labels: , , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

 
()() Follow @rheytah Tweet