Who would ever have thought that if you beat, burned, and tortured a child, you could get away with as little as probation, and maybe -- at worst --just a few weekends in jail?
That's exactly what might happen if a defense attorney here upon my sunny Staten Island has his way.
The accused in this case (you can see his lovely mugshot at left) is a rather sick bastard who looks as if he hardly possesses the same level of intelligence one might find in a Labrador Retriever, and certainly has serious issues with proportion and Anger Management. After all, he's been accused of having beaten and burned his son and stuffing him into an oven over a missing $20 bill.
If I'm correct (and judging solely by looks, I just might be) it's quite conceivable that this doofus spent that $20 on crack, weed, or a 40-ounce, himself, and simply forgot having done so in his subsequent inebriated state.
But, if you hadn't had similar thought before, this case might actually serve to give you pause and and consider that, occasionally, the Criminal Justice System works in mysterious -- and frightening -- ways. If the facts of this case have been accurately reported in this story, then how could it be humanly possible for the perpetrator of such a horrendous crime to walk away with probation?
Is there some loophole in the law? Did the cops violate someone's rights? Are there those infamous 'extenuating circumstances' (just what those might be, and how they could justify burning an 9-year-old mystifies me)? Is the judge a drooling doofus? Is the DA that inept?
You know, the more I see stories like this one the more I'm convinced that for some categories of crime we don't really need a Criminal Justice System, as such. What we really need is a return to the good ol' days of branding, hanging, flogging, and drawing-and-quartering in the Public Square. Someone capable of treating a 9-year-old in such a despicable and inhuman manner over such a trifling sum of money is probably someone too dangerous to be left alive, let alone unworthy of being sentenced to Lord-knows-how-many-years of three-hots-and-a-cot-and-psychiatric-treatment-up-the-ying-yang at the expense of the taxpayers of the Great State of New York.
You just somehow know, deep in your gut (although you can't figure out just why) that one day, probably relatively soon, the State will declare this brute 'rehabilitated' and let him loose on parole to do the same thing all over again. "Why even bother with trial, then?", one might ask.
And then you ask it all over again when you see a story like this one, not ten minutes later:
Of course, according to the defendant/Mother and her mouthpiece, she's innocent. All those witnesses who saw her launch a fist at a baby's jaw are all mistaken; they didn't actually see what they think they saw. They all hallucinated. Maybe, at best, they have misconstrued a situation in which an an amalgamation of a mother's love and a freak accident have combined to create a scene which can, as they always say, 'be taken out of context'. There was no incident of blatant child abuse, despite the fact that 10, 20 maybe even 40, other people witnessed it.
I'm certain that this...ahem...Mother...will get her chance to explain it all away in a Court of Law one day soon (which will be a colossal waste of time and money) before she, too, is given probation and sentenced to six weeks of intense 'Parenting Classes' that she'll ditch just as soon as that's convenient by a complete idiot in a black robe.
Because, let's face it, an angry Mother who punches her infant in the mouth, or a 270-pound ball of fury who could stuff a child in an oven aren't exactly a high priority for law enforcement, these days. Law Enforcement, and the Criminal Justice System, are instead focused -- like a laser beam -- on other crimes, nowadays, the really important ones.
You know, like shutting down 'illegal' childhood lemonade stands, nailing drunk drivers, speeders, those who eschew seat belts, and the morons who can't seem to stop texting while driving.
Because prosecuting those crimes generates revenue for a cash-strapped state. In times of shrinking state budgets and great big deficits created by the welfare state, it makes more sense to let a child abuser skate with probation and a social worker than it does to lock them up. Jail cells cost money, after all.
Which is complete and utter bullshit, if you ask me, which is why I question the efficacy and utility of a Criminal Justice System which would even consider letting a barbarian walk, or a child abuser to slide. If you don't want to prosecute them, or lock them up, then there needs to be some form of alternate punishment -- a few weekends in jail, a few parenting classes, or probation just won't cut it -- particularly when you remember just who the victims in these crimes were; children who cannot or could not defend themselves.
I'd beat them (child abusers) within an inch of their sorry-ass lives in the Public Square, and see just how they like being on the receiving end, for a change. There are no criminals worse, in my opinion, than those who would perpetrate acts of violence and cruelty against children. There should be a special brand of justice meted out to those who commit crimes against kids, because quite often these are exactly the sort of criminals -- child-beaters and pedophiles -- who are typically immune to the traditional methods of incarceration and intense psychotherapy.
I know that advocating for both grisly sentences and to have them carried out publicly will be considered 'barbaric' ideas by some. They will argue that we are supposed to have evolved as a society, and we should be quite reticent and careful about giving into the emotional aspects of revenge which would lead us down a ghastly path to even greater inhumanities. We're supposed to be better than that. To which I reply:
And holding a child's hands over red-hot stove burners, stuffing him, naked, into an oven and threatening to turn the gas/flames on, beating him with a spatula, and refusing to call an ambulance to treat his injuries are supposed to be a higher standard of civilized and acceptable behavior?
Sometimes, you just have to fight fire with fire. No pun intended.
The last 100 years of therapeutic incarceration geared towards rehabilitation has done little more than to produce a more-persistent brand of habitual criminal, usually with unresolved mental health issues that simply cannot be treated adequately in the traditional prison setting.
Which is why an alternate form of punishment is urgently required. Especially for child abusers.
I know my suggestion of returning to the days of stocks, hurdling, and waterboarding is extreme, and for that reason alone would never be taken seriously. However, until the day comes when we have finally solved the problems of crime and punishment satisfactorily, we''ll just have to accept, I guess, that every so often a bully with a penchant for flames, or a mother capable of cocking a fist at an infant, will occasionally go completely unprosecuted and unpunished.
At least until they finally kill the child in question.
And only then will the Criminal Justice System finally get around to discovering what everyone with three working braincells and the ability to breathe without mechanical assistance already knew:
Someone should have locked the brute up before He/She killed a kid when the chance presented itself.
