THIS column isn't going to be "lite." In fact , it may bother a few people. So if you are looking for chuckles, you'd better hop to the comics page. ‘Lite’ gets heavy
on death penaltyNow, let's talk about how screwed up judges are.
It's obvious that we can't depend on our state court judges to keep predators off the street. The latest example is the guy accused of killing 59-year-old Bongak Koja.
There's a big difference between someone like Gabriel Kealoha, the 18-year-old who killed an off-duty police officer in a scuffle and Frank Janto, who allegedly killed Koja and left her body in a dumpster.
As shocking as the Kealoha case is, Kealoha is not a predator. He's a kid who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But guys like Janto are true predators. He has a history of arrests and was convicted of raping a 9-year-old girl.
I believe that if you rape a child, you forfeit your right to live on this current plane of existence. It's time for you to shed your earthly body with the help of a lethal injection or firing squad and move on to the next dimension, whether it be heaven, hell or coming back to live as an insect, which would be a step up on the evolutionary scale. It's not that I'm a total death-penalty fanatic. Legal systems around the country dispense justice so inequitably, I don't feel comfortable with a blanket death-penalty law for everyone convicted of heinous crimes.
BUT for those convicted beyond a doubt with raping a child, I have no problem with them being fried like malassada.
At the very least, they should be shut up in a windowless cell for the rest of their lives.
But a judge in Hawaii decided that not only would Janto not go to jail forever, he wouldn't go to jail at all. He gave him a suspended sentence and put him back on the street.
Janto then began a crime spree that included assault, DUI, parole violations and theft. It culminated in this predator apparently killing a woman whose final indignity was for her body to be fed into the H-Power plant.
It is just staggering that a judge would free a man who raped a child. I'd like to hear the judge's reasoning. Actually, no I wouldn't. It would just make me sick.
So. What to do? Obviously, judges are not going to keep predators in prison. The only answer is to fix it so that the individuals are no longer predators.
In the animal world, when does a predator become non-predator? Usually when it is injured in some way so that it just can't prey on others.
Would Janto have been able to prey on his victims if, say, he had no eyesight? If after his rape conviction, a doctor had removed the corneas from his eyes, would he have been able to drive drunk or assault someone?
I don't think so.
Some think rapists should be castrated. But that ignores the fact that rapists mainly are violent predators, not people seeking sexual gratification. They can still hurt people without all their reproductive equipment.
But could they remain predators if they couldn't see?
Ah. How barbaric! Intentionally blinding someone to keep him from committing a crime. What's next, cutting the hands off thieves? Cutting the tongues out of obscene phone callers?
Relax. I'm not suggesting the wholesale dismemberment of criminals. I'm just opening up a discussion as to how to deal with predators. Frankly, removing someone's corneas for a few years in return for allowing them to be on the streets instead of jail doesn't seem all that barbaric.
Something needs to be done to take away these people from preying on the public. We have prisons, but it's clear that judges like the one who left Janto on the street aren't willing to use them.