No mercy for convicted murderers

THE EDITOR: Your editorial, “Compensation for a killer” was most appreciated, for it told me that I was not entirely alone in some of my thoughts. (Dec 14/03). I am however, left with so many questions. Are we really expected to believe that convicted criminals are so well versed in law, that they actually instruct defence attorneys to take action? Even down to the point of engaging a British Queen’s Counsel? Who is paying for all this? Why should convicted criminals on Death Row be protected from the proximity of the gallows? Is it not all part of the punishment to which death will bring an end?

Do they really believe that they can escape carte blanche while they still exist and not suffer for their sins? Death should be a happy release. Then we have the case of an attorney who is in the process of seeking the release of a prisoner on a technicality. A convicted criminal who committed dastardly crimes against three women, leaving two butchered. There are some crimes that are so unthinkable that they are unforgivable. The perpetrators should have their ‘fundamental human rights’ forfeited. Maybe then they will begin to realise what ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ of the kind they inflicted on their victims in denying them the ‘right to life,’ really is. I make no apologies for now quoting Adloph Hitler, for the important point is not what who said what, but what was said. “In the end the whole bulk of today’s legal theory comes down to nothing more than a huge system for avoiding responsibility.”

M A KERR
Woodbrook