No, I’m not talking about Wills and Kate.
This is too much. Just too much.
Murderer Registry? How About Life In Prison Instead?
Earlier this month, the Illinois House of Representatives passed a law creating a “murderer registry” that would require criminals convicted of first-degree murder to check in with the state for 10 years after their release from prison.
The bill was named for Andrea Will, a young Batavia woman who was strangled to death by her boyfriend in 1998, when they were both students at Eastern Illinois University.
The boyfriend, Justin Boulay, was set free last year after serving only half his 24-year sentence. For taking away an estimated 70 years of his girlfriend’s life, Boulay did just 12 years in the joint.
Here’s an even better plan for keeping an eye on killers: don’t let them out of prison. I was all in favor of repealing the death penalty, but if Illinois isn’t going to have capital punishment, we should have another method of permanently removing murderers from society. The penalty for first-degree murder should be changed to a mandatory life sentence, with no chance of parole. It’s a lot easier to keep track of people in prison. Instead of asking murderers to check in with the state, we’ll have prison guards check their beds every night.
I don’t know if Mr. Boulay was a beneficiary of the Pat Quinn Open Jail Cell Policy. He might have been released just because Illinois has permissive murder laws.
Missouri, on the other hand, only has two possible punishments for a Murder 1st conviction: Death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Then there is the matter of pardons.
There’s a good reason why Presidents and Governors have the absolute power of pardon and commutation, because sometimes prosecutors and juries screw up, or get it wrong, or are just plain devious and evil. Sometimes, the law is an ass. Sometimes, the law is arcane. (Frank Sinatra was once arrested for “carrying on with a married woman.” The charges were dropped because the prosecutors didn’t think they could prove that Sinatra knew the woman was married.) Sometimes, we just want to forgive.
However, I think that a pardon or commutation that results in someone being released from incarceration should be treated differently than pardoning someone whose conviction was long ago and punishment was served long ago. Personally, I think a pardon or commutation that results in a release from incarceration should be approved by the relevant legislative body before happening. The U.S. Congress if it’s a Presidential pardon, the state legislature if it’s a gubernatorial pardon.
