Warren Lee Hill was scheduled to be executed in Georgia last
night, but he has been granted a stay of execution because the courts are now
convinced he might be retarded. Apparently, Georgia passed a law in 1988
prohibiting the execution of the mentally handicapped, and the Supreme Court
has also ruled that this would be unconstitutional. I didn’t know the
Constitution talked about mental health issues (must be in the interstate
commerce clause), but…
Warren Lee Hill was in prison originally for murdering his
girlfriend. He shot her 11 times. While in prison, he killed again, beating
another inmate to death with a nail-spiked board. Was he messed up in the head?
Clearly. Was he stupid? Undoubtedly. Does this mean he shouldn’t be executed? I
don’t think so.
If we can for a moment assume that execution is a valid form of
punishment for certain crimes (and murder would definitely be on the list), I
fail to see how someone’s mental capacity before or after the crime matters at
all.
Let’s take the materialist position briefly and say the man is no
more than a mass of tissue and chemical interactions. No different than an
animal, according to the materialist. Well, do you put down a rabid dog? It’s
not the dog’s fault that it’s a danger to society, but you still kill it before
it can do any more damage.
And there will be people that say, “How dare you compare these
people to animals! They are human beings!” I agree. And execution has more
human dignity than imprisonment, just ask Michel Foucault. You put a man in a
cage and feed him dog food, and you force his victims to pay for it. I would
have him pay with his life for a life he took.
Well, two lives now.
Which reminds me. If they had executed Warren Hill for the first murder he
committed, he never would have committed the second. That’s the first benefit
of capital punishment. Even if it didn’t deter other people from committing
similar crimes (which it does), it at least prevents the executed person from
committing any other crimes.
But let’s assume Warren Hill has a soul, (which I don’t believe,
but for the sake of all religious which is an overwhelming majority of you, let’s
say you’re right). Then his soul must have some culpability for these murders.
If not, how can you blame anyone for anything? How intelligent do you have to
be to be culpable for your actions? And why does a person have to understand
what he’s doing in order to be responsible for it? I don’t think most big
government advocates understand fully how absolutely evil their political
schemes are. They are, shall we say, a bit retarded. Does that mean they’re not
responsible?
I can’t seem to find the logic in this. Should punishment depend
on the understanding of the perpetrator? If you made it so, criminals would
suddenly cease to understand anything. “What? Stealing is wrong? Who knew? I am really, really sorry. I know nothing.” This method of escaping punishment is ancient.
This has been the problem with measures like this from the beginning.
Insanity pleas are a sliding line, far too easy to manipulate. And this is no
different. Warren Hill loaded and fired a gun. He spiked a board with nails. He
was competent enough to kill. He’s competent enough to be executed. Whether or
not he understood the full import of what he did is immaterial. The crucial
thing here is not what he knows, but what he did. The punishment should fit itself to the crime… not
the criminal.
