What about victim’s rights?

THE EDITOR: An English QC addressing the Privy Council has argued that, “Not every killer deserves to die,” and that those who belong to this class should be shown mercy, because the Death Penalty is “cruel and unusual punishment” and usurps their human rights. (Newsday March’04). This seems to be tantamount to saying that some murder victims deserve to die without mercy. That it is acceptable for them to undergo “cruel and unusual punishment” and be deprived of human rights. A kind of “get them before they get you” attitude.

Kill is kill and dead is dead, yet we are being told that killing is not a crime per se. I think a large part of this problem is that there is no real separation between the secular and the sacred, and as long as religion prevails, the Judiciary will balance their learned opinions with a law book in one pocket and a bible of sorts in the other, and that the question will never really be settled satisfactorily.

In the same way, liberated colonies carried the Declaration of Independence in one pocket, and their allegiance to the Privy Council in the other. Had they really broken free from their former colonial rulers, they would not have been in this predicament now. It is far too late to correct the mistake now that small independent counties have become doomed to extinction.

MA KERR
Woodbrook