Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Honolulu Lite
JUDGE sentences killer to be strangled, then dissolved in acid. Uyesugi is lucky
he lives HawaiiNow there's a headline that catches your attention. It came over the wire recently and, not surprisingly, had nothing to do with Xerox mass murderer Bryan Uyesugi.
While we in the United States debate capital punishment, there are other countries where killing a killer not only is supported but relished.
It was in Pakistan -- that enlightened country where plea negotiations with authorities consist of WHICH eye will be poked out with a stick -- that a judge handed down the strangulation/dissolved in acid verdict. The judge was a tad upset with the defendant, who admitted to murdering 100 children. He wanted to fashion a punishment that would drive home the point that murdering 100 children is a bad thing, while giving the relatives of the victims "closure." And, boy, did he.
"Javed Iqbal has been found guilty of 100 murders," Judge Allah Baksh ruled. "The sentence is that he should be strangled 100 times. His body should be cut into 100 pieces and put in acid, as he did with his victims."
And, just to make sure people won't think he's a softy, the judge ordered the strangulation be done with an iron chain.
When people worry about how fair the American system of justice is, they ought to think about the Iqbal case. I don't think Iqbal was even given a defense attorney, although, even if he had been, I'm not sure what the guy could have done. ("Your honor, my client will agree to plead guilty to the lesser included crimes of 100 counts of manslaughter by reason of insanity if the court would see fit to only strangle him half a dozen times and forgo chopping him to bits.")
UYESUGI was lucky he killed his victims in America, and specifically, a state where there is no capital punishment.
Of all the challenges to executions in America, the biggest should not be over DNA tests, but geography. How can it be fair for an American who kills in one state to be executed and an American who kills in another state to get life in prison? That's geography, not justice.
But, we've always been schizophrenic about life and death in America. There are people who think it's all right to kill a baby as long as it is done inside the mother's body, but they are against an adult serial killer being put to death. I don't get it. I've never understood how someone can be pro-abortion and anti-capital punishment. I've suggested that if the term "capital punishment" were changed to "extremely late-term abortion," more people would be for it. ("The prisoner was aborted in the 105th trimester of gestation.")
Now, if you want to talk schizophrenic, look at how things have changed in just seven years on the execution front. In the 1992 presidential election, Bill Clinton raced back to Arkansas and executed a man with the IQ level of a child. He did it to show he was tough enough to be president.
Just a few weeks ago, presidential candidate George W. Bush granted a death row inmate a reprieve in order to look sensitive enough to be president.
That's pretty weird. Also pretty unfair. The poor retarded man in Arkansas -- the prisoner, that is -- died simply because he got caught in in the wrong state in the wrong election cycle. Had he lived in Hawaii, he might be sharing a cell with Bryan Uyesugi. Then again, if he had been in Pakistan, he'd be mulch.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
https://archives.starbulletin.com/lite