Every time I rethink my position on the death penalty — i.e. that maybe I should reconsider my support thereof — I somehow stumble across a story like this one:
A convicted killer who had already murdered one girlfriend was left free to kill a second following a catalogue of police and probation service blunders, a jury has ruled.
Paul O’Hara, 48, was on life licence after serving 15 years for killing a former partner when he met businesswoman Cherylee Shennan.
They began a relationship but within weeks manipulative O’Hara, who had been diagnosed with psychopathic traits in prison, began controlling and beating the 40-year-old mother of one.
Over the following months police missed several chances to stop the ‘high-risk violent predator’.
When unprepared and unarmed officers did finally go to Miss Shennan’s home, O’Hara attacked them before stabbing his girlfriend to death.
So basically, this murderous asswipe was out on parole when he killed Victim #2.
Everyone who favors the abolition of execution for murder is all “O noes, what about the innocent people wrongly convicted?” when in fact they should be all “O noes, what about the innocent people killed by assholes wrongly freed?”
It’s bullshit. Anyone convicted of murder should be locked away forever while the appeals process grinds on, then executed. There should be NO parole (or “life licence” — what a crock of shit) for convicted murderers, ever.
Unless, maybe, we go all Hammurabi and if a parole board releases a murderer who then goes on to murder someone else, then the members of the parole board responsible should also face life imprisonment (or execution — a.k.a. Full Hammurabi) for having allowed Murder #2.
And while I’m still in a charitable mood, why hasn’t convicted cop-killer Wesley Cook (alias Mumia Abu-Jamar) been executed yet?
