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of us with pronounced powers of empathy have been deeply touched
by New York Press writer John Strausbaugh, who recently instructed
the Grief Industry to shove it. His complaint, which resonates deeply,
is that the cry-on-cue crowd should can their street-corner weeping
over the 9/11 attacks. Quite so. These wet-cheeked spotlight-chasers
are yet another type of moral streaker, boldly standing against
mass murder. They desire our praise, but a flogging would suit them
better.
Our empathy
does not end there. We are also touched by the fact that savvy New
Yorkers recognize that their courts are not up to the job of bringing
justice to the people who committed mass murder in Manhattan. This
is a bitter truth, but an undeniable one. If justice is to be done,
suspects must be sent south — to Virginia, where we still know
something about settling scores in a reasonable and, when necessary,
fatal way.
And so, the
other day, Zacarias Moussaoui faced arraignment in a northern Virginia
courtroom for his alleged role in the September slaughters (which
included, to be sure, the Pentagon attack). Moussaoui was asked
to enter a plea and instead praised Allah. Because the Old Dominion
is still wedded to notions of fair play, a "not guilty"
plea was entered on his behalf. Meanwhile, the Boston Globe
reports that Richard C. Reid, who apparently hoped to bring down
an airliner with a shoe bomb — and who, according to the Washington
Post, had phone conversations with Moussaoui in late 2000 —
may end up in the same court. Some of us are hoping that John Walker,
formerly of Marin County, will also make an appearance, for the
hat trick.
Why Virginia?
Because, as several analysts have pointed out, the guilty are much
less likely to slip the noose than they would be in New York or
Boston (where Reid is in custody). Short of a military tribunal
— which should be handling these cases — Virginia's the
next best thing. Our ''rocket docket'' expedites trials, after which
our famed Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals takes over. The motto
of that court is, "Abandon your Twinkies, all who enter here."
Our justices brook little legal babbling. A Columbia University
study shows that last year, the Fourth Circuit overturned 15 percent
of the death sentences it reviewed — as versus 40 percent nationwide.
And death is
the crux of the matter. Virginia juries will sentence deserving
criminals to death, and our executioners will do their job with
understated nobility.
To be sure,
Virginia doesn't kill nearly as many criminals as some of our competitors
do. The Washington Post refers editorially to "Virginia's
hyperactive death chamber" even though we only executed a couple
of criminals last year, whereas Texas killed several times that
number. Old Sparky, as our famed electric chair is known, does not
get the traffic it deserves. Prosecutor requests for the ultimate
sanction are usually declined.
But the fact
is, Virginians will cut you but so much slack before they hang you,
and if Moussaoui is guilty, he's got as much chance of surviving
in Virginia as a poinsettia has surviving on the plains of Mars.
We understand that killing him can hardly atone for the enormity
of this crime, which is why one visionary has suggested we clone
him 3,000 times and kill all his descendants. That's not going to
happen, however. We don't believe in cloning down here.
But we do know that shipping a mass murderer off to prison is not
justice, despite what the Post argued on its editorial page
the other day: "Pressure in those cases for the death penalty
may be even stronger than in routine criminal cases. It is, therefore,
all the more critical to remember why capital punishment must be
abolished. The death penalty doesn't deter crime — much less
terrorism."
To state that
the death penalty doesn't deter crime is false on its face. The
condemned will never commit another crime. Besides that, we don't
know what effect executions have on impressionable terrorists. We
do know that Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar are quite vocal in
their demands to fight to the death — yet showed themselves
entirely committed to avoiding the same. More to the point, the
punishment must fit the crime as closely as possible, and execution
is as close as we can get.
Virginians
have always been happy to help out New Yorkers, even to the point
of opening our landfills to New York's trash — which then-mayor
Rudy Giuliani advised us was a glorious thing to do because New
Yorkers, in his words, are "the best people." Rudy's parochialism
will no doubt melt away when he decides to run for national office.
Likewise, we dismiss Jimmy Breslin's empty boast:
We know how
we acted in New York and doubt if it could happen anyplace else.
A woman from the University of Richmond, a psychologist of the
South, said, "If this was a NASCAR crowd, there would be
panic."
Jimmy, my boy,
your psychologist is nuts. As any fool knows, NASCAR fans pay $80
a head in the hope of seeing big crashes. These fans also recognize
that the first duty of the civilized state is to protect its citizens
from harm and maintain the integrity of the justice system. Mass
murderers should be executed (as should petty ones). Indeed, should
the executions be held at a NASCAR track, fans would pay $100 a
ticket in a New York minute. Send us your huddling predators, yearning
to be free. We know just what to do with them..
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