March 30, 2011 THE VILLADOM TIMES II enough, came from an American Civil Liberties Union spokesperson. The ACLU, with some reservations – they slept through Japanese-American Relocation and did next to nothing for American Indian causes during the turbulent 1950s – was an eminently worthwhile group when they were defending free speech and the rights of working people to organize, as they often did. Once they turned into a phalanx whose purpose appeared to be banishing Christianity from public life and public discourse, I turned my back on them as much as I dared. But this time, the ACLU won me over by a very logical argument. “The Death Sentence” doesn’t mean this man is going to die within my own foreseeable lifetime; it means he’s going to spend the next 20 years exhausting every possible appeal, and that he just may be executed when he’s an old man who is no longer a threat to anybody through sheer debilitation. Meanwhile, the government we all pay for will have spent anywhere from $2 million to $5 million housing him and refuting all those appeals, which may also be funded by the government, or by well-meaning people who project their own terror of death into trying to save some thug they would have every right to be afraid of if he popped up out of their back seat and told them to just keep driving. Conversely, keeping him locked up for the rest of his life would cost a mere $750,000. Why not just take him out of the courtroom and shoot him? Based on the Innocence Project, operated from the Legal Center of Yeshiva University, about one deathrow inmate in eight has been released because DNA and other forensic evidence have proved the “killer” wasn’t actually a killer, and may not have known who the killer was. Some guys have gone to the gurney protesting their innocence – and some of them may have been telling the truth. (Surprisingly often, the guilty admit what they did and offer their lives in expiation.) Again, we must remember the Norfolk Four: four U.S. Navy sailors terrorized into confessing to a crime they never committed through manipulated fear of the death penalty, even though the DNA tests and polygraph tests both showed that they hadn’t been the perpetrators. They all confessed because they were scared and, based on their subsequent conversations, not the stuff of which heroes were made, though they were most definitely not violent offenders of any kind. The chief police investigator in the Norfolk Four case is now facing eight years in prison for lying to the FBI and for taking bribes to lie on behalf of drug dealers so criminals could continue to make money and pay his bribes. This man was part of • Page 17 We all know that the federal government and the states need to save money, and I just came up with one of several cost-cutting ideas: Eliminate capital punishment and shift over to life with no parole for anyone who can’t prove that he or she was framed. We may save some innocent lives, and we’ll definitely save a ton of money. The other night, I was watching a very sad documentary about a girl from a broken and dysfunctional family who tried to get her life together with a foster family. She studied by day and worked the night shift at a convenience store. She won eight scholarships and was attending college. While she got hooked on methamphetamines so she could work an eight-hour night shift and spend the day in school, she hooked up with another dysfunctional kid, a guy her own age who was into street gangs. One night, he took her for a ride to meet some people – and murdered two of them, a man and a young girl, shot at point-blank range. A week later, he dragged a buddy along with him, told him at first that they were going to steal the girl’s car, looked up his girlfriend, shot her while she was begging for her life, and then shot her another 12 times. His friend, who had some vestiges of conscience, had nightmares about the wanton murder. When he was pulled over on a motor vehicle offense, he blabbed to the police that so-and-so had murdered his girlfriend and that he was a witness. So-and-so had an extensive minor record, was pulled in, faced his accuser in court, and made a furtive gesture that means “You will be shot” as the witness was describing the murder of a girl who had tried to help him and saw too much. The jury found him guilty of three first-degree murders, and recommended the death penalty for the third one. So-and-so’s defense attorney, a conscientious man, was up against a documentary video showing the girl and her foster mom while she was working the night shift and attending high school full time. The documentary, made with no thought that the girl would become a murder victim, showed a likable girl who had been through some tough times – not a beauty queen or a genius, just a decent person whose friends and foster family loved her and were loved in return. The defense attorney’s argument was that so-and-so also had a runaway father, an abusive mother, and joined gangs to find love and acceptance. If he killed the people who were abusing him, I too would go for leniency. Killing two unoffending girls because they both saw him kill a guy who dissed his gang put him over the top. This guy belongs dead. He is almost certainly not going to reform, and if he does, he’s obviously too dumb and too impervious to any sense of right and wrong to be any use at all to the leaking lifeboat that is now the United States of America, a country many of us still care about. If we dropped him over Libya by parachute with a sack of hand grenades, he would probably con his way into whichever side was most vicious and go on murdering people. The argument that won me over, incongruously There is a kinder, cheaper solution to capital punishment the justice system – perhaps we should say the injustice system. If he had broken his pledge to the Norfolk Four – and if they case had been hushed up a little more – four innocent servicemen would have been executed. We cannot give the occasional bullies with badges the right to murder innocent men or women with the complicity of the state – and for that reason only, not because real psychopaths usually reform. They usually don’t reform. Idealists sometimes argue that it’s better to let a thousand guilty people go free than to execute one innocent person – or to hold that person in prison. They’re half right. When there is clear evidence of a violent crime – and only of a violent crime, not nonsense like “insider trading,” which is generic in the finance industry – the accused, on being convicted on the basis of evidence and not on the basis of race or popular unpopularity, should be locked up. Violence should be the turnkey to incarceration, not envy. Leona Helmsley and Martha Stewart were not a threat to innocent children or senior citizens in wheelchairs. The violent accused should be given no chance at all to continue to hurt, rob, or terrorize decent people – but the accused should also be given every chance to conduct research in an attempt to prove that he or she was not guilty of a violent crime. If the accused was indeed framed, he or she should be released, and the person who knowingly framed him or her should boldly step forward and serve the rest of his sentence: 30 days or 30 years as the situation warrants. Actually, that’s a little Draconian. If the frame-up didn’t lead to a death sentence, those involved should lose their jobs. Jail sentences for any crime where blood wasn’t spilled aren’t fair, and they aren’t even Biblical. Financial crimes were subject to four-fold restitution, and that’s only right. If the crook pays back four times what he or she stole, everybody is better off – notably the victim. Some people burned me once in a financial deal and they went away for many moons. I’d just as soon have had the money back – and I’d have been delighted if they had paid me four times as much for my time and trouble. Whether it’s Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread or a police officer stealing from the PBA or a school business administrator stealing from the taxpayers – go with the four-fold restitution and forget vengeance. If the crime is murder, put the killer away for the whole day unless he or she can prove beyond doubt that it was frame-up. It’s not only kinder that way – it’s cheaper. The College Club Used Book Sale will be April 14-17 at Somerville School, 45 South Pleasant Avenue Ridgewood. There will be a preview and sale on April 14 from 4 to 7 p.m. with a $15 admission charge. On April 15 and 16, hours will be 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. On Apr. 17, hours will be 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is free April 15, 16, and 17. The sale will feature thousands of books at bargain prices, videos, DVDs, books on CD, puzzles, foreign language books, and more. The College Club’s 2011 Book Fair Committee Chairs are Dacey Latham and Toni Cohen. For more information, call (201) 670-9689. Club welcomes bargain hunters