Annie Le
Yet another incident of a young life being taken in an apparently horrific manner occurred at Yale University this past week when Annie Le, a child of Vietnamese immigrants in California and a graduate pharmacology student, disappeared on campus with the subsequent discovery of, first, bloody clothes hidden above ceiling panels and then, five days later, her remains being found hidden in a basement crawlspace in the same building. The discovery of her body happened on the day she was to have been married!
Incidents such as this are why I believe predatory rapists and murderers, whether the victims are children or women, are the vilest of creatures and deserve neither mercy nor forgiveness. A few more examples out of many should help you understand my frame of mind. These are short summaries of predatory murders that have occurred in the past few years to give you an idea of the kinds of animals moving amongst us. Each victim’s name has a link that will give you more detailed information about the crimes. Though the full details of the Yale murder aren’t yet known, most of the victims below were brutally abused and murdered by sociopathic men with histories of violence and/or sex crimes.
Ashley Pond: A 13-year old first abused, then abducted and murdered by Ward Weaver II, who had a history of violence. Later found interred under a concrete pad in Weaver’s back yard.
Miranda Gaddis: A girl friend of Ashley Pond also abducted and murdered by Ward Weaver II months after Ashley disappeared. Even though law enforcement suspected him of the first murder, legal protocols prevented the FBI and police from protecting Miranda. An interesting fact is that Ward Weaver’s father was a convicted serial killer
Denise Lee: Florida mother of two toddlers, abducted from her home, raped, murdered and dumped. Sadly, her call to 911 from the killers cell phone and other witness calls to 911 went unheeded. Her killer had a troubled past but deserves no more compassion than he displayed for her.
Jessica Lunsford: A nine-year old Florida girl, abducted from her bedroom, raped in captivity and then buried alive by John Couey, a convicted sex offender.
Samantha Runyun: A five-year old California girl, pulled into a car and later found dead after being sexually assaulted. Her murderer was also a convicted sex offender.
Dru Sjodin: A North Dakota college student abducted from a mall parking lot, sexually assaulted and murdered. Her body was discovered near her murderer’s home, a convicted sex offender.
When one of these predatory murders occurs mainstream media covers the story non-stop, combining the trickle of released information with unwarranted speculation. This continuous looping with breathless updates of a predatory murder on the major news networks is most often an attempt to get ratings and viewers. At the same time the news media is sensationalizing the crime, they trot out experts to state that such horrible crimes are a rare occurrence and society must not overreact. Both the exploitation of the crime victim and minimizing the possibility of such a crime to the grieving loved ones should outrage the family, friends, and community of the victim.
I am neither a statistician, nor a psychologist, nor a lawyer. I’ll leave it to trained professionals to examine the frequency of predatory murders, to explain the motives and “illness” behind the crime, and to justify the defense of such killers. My thoughts on this issue are just an attempt to release the anger and frustration built up over years of seeing innocent lives being destroyed by human vermin, and the desire to understand why our society resists what I would consider true justice for these crimes. In clear cut cases, I have always wondered what is wrong with capital punishment?
Why is there such resistance to the death penalty in cases where there is no doubt of the murderer’s guilt? Where witnesses, evidence, and confessions prove conclusively that we no longer have just a “suspect” but the real killer in our grasp? It would seem to me that a relatively painless execution would be less “cruel and unusual” than being forced to endure life-long confinement in prison with the prospect of possible rape, beatings, and abuse. We have heard the arguments that even lethal injection has caused some “suffering” during executions (pardon me if I shed no tears), but I recently had general anaesthesia for oral surgery and except for the IV insertion I don’t recall anything until waking up.
Given the proscription against capital punishment by most modern religions, and I’m specifically excluding Islam here, I can understand why many people are resistant to impose the death penalty. But why is there so much secular opposition to the death penalty? I am not constrained by any religious aversion to capital punishment yet I absolutely believe that predatory killers need to receive deserved “justice”.
Why do we rigidly adhere to the laws that allow the clearly guilty to escape justice because of “technicalities”? I mean situations such as an illegal search obtaining evidence proving a suspect raped and murdered a child or an invalidated confession because Miranda rights were not given. Perhaps some punitive measures for the police for having broken procedure would be reasonable, but in my mind no reason to set a known threat free to abduct, rape, and murder again.
Here is an idea that I could live with in the cases of predatory murderers, serial killers, serial rapists, and any other sociopathic criminals. A two-stage legal process that would convict the murderer, verify the conviction to remove any concerns of a “wrongful conviction”, and dispense the appropriate justice:
1st – Follow the standard legal process using a trial by jury. If convicted move to the next step.
2nd – Use truth drugs or other non-tortuous coercive methods on the convicted murderer to validate the above conviction with a confession.
If both steps are confirmed then determine a sentence consistent with the level of the crimes and skip the decades of circus appeals.
Yes, I absolutely believe in vengeance for the kind of heinous crimes being considered here. “Justice” for Annie Le and the other tortured dead should honor the victims, console the grieving and calm the community. Eradicating our society of sociopathic, predatory murderers provides a necessary retribution and protects potential future victims. We cannot bring back those innocent young lives taken with such brutality but we should strive to cull our society of the monsters in our midst.
I almost hesitate to say it, but this is one area where we could take a lesson from some cultures in the Middle- and Far-East. I believe that a beheading, executed properly, delivers instant death–no suffering.