Capital Punishment

Some dear friends of mine have a blog that they argue on. This week they’re debating why the Justice system can’t deal with violent sex offenders, citing the case of Jerry Buck Inman, the sick fuck that murdered a Clemson student by strangling her with a bikini after he was released early from prison in Florida.

My niece went to Clemson, and lives in Anderson. She’s 25, beautiful, and lives alone with her two dogs. She called me last weekend to chat, and she mentioned that she was scared. They hadn’t caught this guy yet, and didn’t even have a good idea what he looked like yet.

“Come home.” That was my immediate response. Not only would she be safe from this nutball, I would be removed from any opportunity to be incarcerated should anything happen to her. I have to admit, I’m kind of a peaceable fellow, more of a lover than a fighter, but if something happened to any of my nieces I would happily pull a Jack Ruby on the motherfucker and call it done.

My family was touched by horrible murder before I was born. I had a cousin, a young lady in Columbia who was riding in a car with her fiancé when they were both abducted, raped, murdered, sodomized and raped some more. The men that attacked them took pictures as they stubbed out cigarettes on her naked body.

I became familiar with these occurrences when I was in middle school, when the men who were convicted of these crimes began to be executed by the state of South Carolina. I felt good about that, because they had done horrible things to someone who would have been my friend had she lived. Since then my opinions on the death penalty have flickered back and forth from support to opposition to grey. I’m hanging in grey right now.

I firmly believe that if Jerry Buck Inman (like Sondheim says, why do all the nutjobs always have three names!?!) did murder this young woman then he should never have the opportunity to hurt anyone again, and I’d rather not pay for his upkeep and cable bill for the rest of his life. But right now, he is an innocent man. Until a jury of twelve South Carolinians or his own confession tells me that he is guilty, he is innocent.

And there have been far too many cases lately of people being innocent regardless of the jury’s verdict, either through manipulation of evidence or simple lynch mob mentality. I cite the case of the West Memphis Three as one where the preponderance of evidence points away from guilt, yet three young men are in prison, two on death row, for a horrific crime. So I can’t quite be a hardliner on this issue yet. I stay grey.

But Jess is okay. And when it gets dark at night in Anderson, that’s all I care about.