Okay, I want to see the DC Sniper(s) brought to justice. Heck, I want it to be hard justice. I want a case so rock-solid, the Devil himself couldn’t argue it away.
And I want a case so rock-solid, that the death penalty is the penalty.
I’ve had some qualms about my support for capital punishment over the past few years. Not that I think it’s not a valid, defensible form of penalty, but because there’s been increasing evidence that too many cases for comfort turn out to be just flat wrong — shoddy arrests, shoddy prosecution, shoddy defense, shoddy judicial review.
It’s not the practice, it’s the implementation that’s bothered me.
All that having been said, I think it’s just a little — well, unseemly is the best word I can think of — that all the argument over who gets to prosecute the current accused first isn’t about whose jurisdiction is most appropriate, where most of the deaths occured, or even who has the best case. It’s been about who has the most “effective” death penalty. As though the penalty were the goal, not the establishment of guilt, or the service to the public.
It’s shenanigans like that which make capital punishment even more of an endangered species.
(Yes, some of the debate is also driven by folks wanting the national prominance of being the DA to nail these SOBs. That’s always to be expected. It’s just the public debate seems to be focused more on in which state/county, if not at the federal level, it’s most likely that the initial prosecution will result in a death sentence. Again, unseemly, folks, not to mention a little scary.)