Reading America’s Newspaper of Record over my breakfast porridge this morning, I saw this item. It describes a new bill before the New York state Senate, mandating life in prison without parole for parents who kill their children, as a New York couple recently did. “Evil deed inspires bill,” says the caption under a photograph of the father.

Now, though no jurisprudential superbrain, I understand why bills are introduced in legislatures: Circumstances arise in which existing law proves inadequate, so that new law is needed. OK with that; no problem. But what is so new about parents murdering their children? It’s been going on for millennia. Why does New York State need legislation to deal with this?

“[The couple] have been charged with [the child’s] murder, which carries a penalty of 25 years to life, with a chance of parole even earlier.”

So apparently, under existing New York State law, if you murder a child, you can be out on parole after a decade or so. This is OK with New Yorkers?

<blockquote”[The new bill] was hailed by Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, who has expressed frustration that the law limited what charges he could bring against the girl’s killers.”Again I must ask: Is the murder of a child by its parents such a new thing in the world that we still haven’t worked out appropriate statutes and punishments?

“Under existing law, he has said, the only way someone can be sentenced to life without parole for a child’s death is if they relished the pain or torture, which is all but impossible to prove.”

So what is the point of this “existing law”? Well, this one I know the answer to: It got some politician a few votes somewhere.

All right, I’m a reactionary. But it used to be that, if you wilfully killed another human being, outside of certain situations commonly agreed to be exculpatory (self-defense, war, etc.), you yourself were killed by the state. I wish this were still so. I really, really wish that.

Of course there are cases–though I doubt there are many–where reasonable doubt about guilt exists. That’s why we have courts, juries, and judges. There doesn’t seem to be any doubt in this case, though. Why shouldn’t these people be killed? How has our jurisprudence got so tangled and over-refined that our legislature needs to pass a new bill every time a child is murdered?

Murder is a pretty straightforward business. A sets out to kill B, and does so, with none of the justifications approved by society in general. If, after a millennium or so of common law, and billions of hours of deliberation by judges, scholars, and legislatures, we still don’t know what to do about it, then our civilization is in a mess.