Once upon a long while ago, I read Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land," wherein Jubal Harshaw comments that Mike, the Man From Mars, would never understand imprisoning someone, especially for the rest of their life. "Better to kill them," I believe is part of the quote.

From that little nub I started to think about the death penalty in moral terms. I believe in and support the death penalty, capital punishment. I feel it is the only rational and moral response to some criminal acts. I disdain discussing capital punishment on other terms, such as money and the like. I don't care how much it costs, because that shouldn't be an issue. Punishment, retribution, vengeance, and even mercy are not central issues, as they are factors in the entire concept of "justice," and thus are part of any sentence. Well, all right, they should be.

"Better a hundred guilty men live and go free than one innocent man die," comes the cry against capital punishment, the death penalty. The people who utter those words...do they ever really consider the costs on both sides of the equation? Arthur Shawcross kidnapped a boy and a girl, both around 12-13 years of age. After raping them, he killed them. He was caught, tried, and convicted, but New York State didn't have the death penalty then. His sentence was 25 to life. He got out after ten years. He's back in prison now, but only after being convicted in the kidnap, sexual assault, and murder of at least 11 prostitutes in the upper NY state area. I say "at least" because that's how many bodies they found; there are still missing victims that we may never know about. Apparently letting this one guilty man go meant eleven others got to die.

(This illustrates another fallacy, that of "life without the possibility of parole," which is often a myth in this country. Charles Manson regularly comes up for parole hearings after having his death sentence overturned. But that's another debate.)

In any event, focusing on Andrea Yates, I have to ask why she wants to live? She killed her own children. Of course she's a wacko, that's a given. Why let her live a continued, tortured existence with the memory of what she did? To me, that is cruel and unusual punishment.

This was all brought to mind by wacko statements made in a New York Times article. A social worker who was a jury consultant for the defense calls the verdict "ludicrous." She didn't even understand why Yates was on trial. "I think people do not understand mental illness." Oh, but I think we do. The question is why allow a psychotic to move among us, or even a prison population, especially one who has demonstrated the ability to kill "loved ones" five times over.

Meanwhile, there's the case of Adair Javier Garcia in Los Angeles, who killed five of his six children this past Februrary, while also attempting to kill himself. The district attorney's press release is longer than the original three paragraph piece in the LA Times. There was a follow-up about the delayed arraignment, but the longer piece was given over to the theft of money being donated to the man's surviving daughter (and aren't those thieves little bastards).

Garcia was described as depressed for the week leading up to the murders, made so by his estranged wife leaving him and the children. So obviously his wife shares in the blame for the murders, just as Yates's husband does? We'll probably never know, because Garcia's story doesn't get anywhere near the press play as Yates. A search of the LA Times website--using Garcia's name--turned up only the above three references. I'm afraid to count the number of hits if I did a search on "Andrea Yates".