What Right To Life?
Every society has them. Dedicated predators, beings whose social inversion is so bereft of humanity that they're a danger run amok among the vulnerable whom society protects from harm.But no amount of vigilance and care can always protect those upon whom these conscienceless psychopaths prey. The nightmare horrors they inflict on the most helpless among us marks them as beyond the pale, creatures incapable of feeling for others, ready to sacrifice anyone to their unbridled and fleeting pleasures.
Their primitive social focus on themselves sets them apart as total social misfits. The cruelty they impose on others, defenceless against their cunning, means nothing to them, but an expression of their perceived entitlement to do whatever they will.
Yet the justice system that helps to secure our safety, also exercises compassion on these monsters, extending benefits of social entitlement to them that they deny their victims.
Allowing them to rejoin society, once some semblance of justice done has been earned through an all-too-brief incarceration, hardly extinguishing the gravity of their crimes, barely commensurate with the horrors they've inflicted. They're free to once again prowl the primitive savannas of their minds' landscapes for new victims to satisfy their monstrous cravings.
In Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, a convicted child killer and serial rapist was granted a six-month day parole following a three-hour hearing before the National Parole Board. As the family members of his victims looked on incredulously.
Harold David Smeltzer was convicted in 1981 of first-degree murder of a five-year-old child whom he had abducted on her way to her Calgary kindergarten.
He murdered her by drowning her in the bathtub of his parents' home, shoved her body into a garbage can and left it a few blocks away from her home, where her frozen body was discovered the following day.
He was arrested after an eleven-year-old rape victim recognized her tormentor when she saw him out on the street. Other victims among the 40 he admitted to assaulting were a 17-year-old high school student, a 27-year-old librarian and a 27-year-old school custodian.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance for parole for 25 years. That time has since elapsed. At no time did this monster express misgivings, regret or remorse for his unspeakable crimes.
He has been given a second chance, an opportunity to get on with his life. What are the odds that he will try to become a decent human being, rather than resume his atrocities against children and women?
Labels: Justice, Social-Cultural Deviations
posted by Pieface @ Friday, November 07, 2008
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