Another Kind of Justice
As noted in a previous entry, Edgar Ray Killen has been given the maximum prison time for each of the three charges of manslaughter that he faced. I wished him health so he could face a long time behind bars, but I have a real problem with him still being alive at all. He should have been fried. Alright, alright, so the court thinks otherwise. Put him in jail, if you must, but let's not be profligate with the taxpayers' dollars. The old bastard has been put into a cell alone, instead of with a cellmate, and is being held in an area set aside for those considered to be at greater risk from the other inmates. This all costs extra money.
Send the old Klan member out there among the others. Let him take his chances on their mercy, just like he sent those three young men out to face the tender mercies of the mob he masterminded to orchestrate their final hours. His actions during the "summer of freedom" obviously indicate that Killen believes in a kind of justice other than that dispensed by the courts, the kind of justice he would encounter out there among the other inmates, in the prison yard.
Let me share with you a few stats announced by the U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. First, the increasing number of violent offenders accounted for 63 percent of the total growth among state inmates from 1995 to 2001 in the most recent available data. Second, among the 1.4 million inmates sentenced to more than one year at year-end 2003, an estimated 44 percent were black.
Now I think that those two stats taken together would seem to point to a happy possibility, a conjecture that does the heart good to imagine. Would it not be proper for Killen to find himself surrounded by a circle of faces the colour of those he persecuted all his life? Would it not be merely payment of a horrendous debt for Killen to face final moments orchestrated for him by some righteously angry black inmates? Why should society pay even one penny extra to safeguard this evil old piece of filth? Send him out to face the wrath he spent a lifetime fomenting, but send him out alone.
Send the old Klan member out there among the others. Let him take his chances on their mercy, just like he sent those three young men out to face the tender mercies of the mob he masterminded to orchestrate their final hours. His actions during the "summer of freedom" obviously indicate that Killen believes in a kind of justice other than that dispensed by the courts, the kind of justice he would encounter out there among the other inmates, in the prison yard.
Let me share with you a few stats announced by the U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. First, the increasing number of violent offenders accounted for 63 percent of the total growth among state inmates from 1995 to 2001 in the most recent available data. Second, among the 1.4 million inmates sentenced to more than one year at year-end 2003, an estimated 44 percent were black.
Now I think that those two stats taken together would seem to point to a happy possibility, a conjecture that does the heart good to imagine. Would it not be proper for Killen to find himself surrounded by a circle of faces the colour of those he persecuted all his life? Would it not be merely payment of a horrendous debt for Killen to face final moments orchestrated for him by some righteously angry black inmates? Why should society pay even one penny extra to safeguard this evil old piece of filth? Send him out to face the wrath he spent a lifetime fomenting, but send him out alone.
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