ReaganSauce

written by KLK

Dear President Obama,

On Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 9:00 pm EST, the D.C. Beltway Sniper of Fall 2002 fame was put to death by lethal injection.  Good riddance.  I must commend you for not thinking that you needed to voice your opinion on this matter.

I remember the insanity and the fear that gripped the region when John Allen Muhammad and his accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo went on their shooting rampage.  High school activities were cancelled (including my senior year Homecoming football game!) and elementary children had to run from their drop off vehicle to get into school safely—it was an all around scary story.

As the execution loomed near, I begin to wonder whether Muhammad really deserved the death penalty, or if he was as mentally incapacitated as his lawyers alleged.  As I pondered it, I suddenly flashed to the new “hate crime” bill that the Senate approved that would expand the current hate crimes law.  I thought, “What makes anyone shooting someone else more “wrong” than another?”

I understand why everyone thinks that stiffer hate crime legislation is necessary—however I would argue that to say it is “more wrong” to beat up someone because of their religion, sexual orientation, color of their skin, or gender (etc.) is discrimination.  In the hypothetical, if I was walking down the street and was beat up by someone (anyone, it doesn’t matter) why should the punishment for that be different than if a homosexual woman was beat up?  The crimes are the same.  

I think that the failure of the justice system now is that we have judges like Sonya Sotomayor who believes in “sympathizing” with the defendant.  If the defendant had just grown up in a poor neighborhood and didn’t know better, somehow that crime is far less heinous than someone whose crime was hate motivated.  

In reality, anyone who commits a violent crime has some sort of hatred in their heart—why else would they think it acceptable to violently assault another human being?

With the passing of this legislation, we have opened our selves up to further stratification in the justice system.  All violent crimes should be treated equally.  Instead of the “temporary insanity” plea, it should be “guilty by insanity”.  Just because some people don’t have the self control to contain their emotions doesn’t mean they get to say they are “insane” and have a lesser punishment.

Does this mean that a murderer of a homosexual can say they are “more of a murderer” than someone who just committed murder?  Does this mean that someone who rapes a Black woman is “more of a rapist” that if they raped a White woman (if the rapist held some contempt for the specific race they committed the crime against)?

No one is considered “more of a _insert violent crime conviction here_” than someone else.  A felon is a felon all the same.

If you commit a violent crime, the punishment should be the same if you came from a white collar family or a blue collar family.  The punishment should be the same if your Black, White, Hispanic; it should be the same if your homosexual or heterosexual; it should be the same if you’re a man or a woman; it should just be the same.

The fact that a victim was of a certain race or sexual orientation is immaterial when looking at the crime that took place.  Yes, it is extremely unfortunate that someone would be singled out because of their race, religion, etc, but the fact is that all victims suffer the same.  Homicide victims suffer the same fate, so what does it matter what their characteristics were in life?  What does it matter why the perpetrator committed the crime?  The perpetrator committed the violent crime that resulted in death.

The reason behind why someone commits a violent crime, in my opinion, is obsolete.  The fact of the matter, and what they should be judged on, is that they committed the crime.  They decided, for whatever reason, to attack someone.  An attack is an attack.  

All punishment for violent crimes should be equal.  At the end of the day, the victims are all equal in their suffering.  A Catholic victim of a violent rape suffers just as much as a Muslim victim.  A Black man beaten for his wallet suffers just as much as a Hispanic man beaten for his wallet.  A homosexual man murdered just because he is gay is just as dead as a pretty heterosexual woman who was murdered because she was pretty.  And all of their attackers should suffer the same fate.

I urge you to realize that this type of legislation doesn’t deter anything—it just makes the criminal justice system even more problematic.

All victims should be equal as they have suffered immensely and equally.  All perpetrators who commit violent crimes should be treated equally because violence is just plain wrong.

I hope you can understand that all crimes are equal and that this legislation doesn’t make the suffering of the victims any better.

Respectfully,

Kate