A Willful Killer Has No Expectation Of Mercy Under The Law

Driving down the high­way one has cer­tain respon­si­bil­i­ties, you try as best you can to obey the speed lim­its, you are required to stay in lane.
If you decide to change lane, it is high­ly advis­able that you indi­cate your inten­tions using the indi­ca­tor on your vehi­cle, then you make sure you will not be cut­ting before anoth­er dri­ver in the lane you wish to enter before you do so.

You fol­low the instruc­tions and do not stop in the mid­dle of the high­way if at all pos­si­ble but con­verse­ly pull over on the shoul­der if you have to stop.
If all users of the roads obey the rules of the road the dri­ving expe­ri­ence can be a relax­ing enjoy­able experience.
Nore than any­thing else it can be a safe experience.

If we jux­ta­pose the for­gone with a sit­u­a­tion in which no one obeys the speed lim­its, they change lanes with­out indi­cat­ing, stop in the mid­dle of the high­way dri­ve across the dou­ble yel­low or white line to get to the head of the line, effec­tive­ly plac­ing every­one’s lives in dan­ger and dis­obeys all of the rules the result is chaos.
But it’s not just about chaos, it is about the con­se­quences of that chaos which is usu­al­ly the tragedy of the loss of limb and life.

We could rea­son­ably apply the lat­ter to the Jamaican streets.
Or we could apply it to Jamaican life.
In each sit­u­a­tion, the lat­ter sce­nario would be appro­pri­ate and of course the con­se­quences of indis­ci­pline is quite obvious.

There is a type of coarse­ness which has char­ac­ter­ized our Jamaicaness for a while now.
The per­son who yells the loud­est gets heard and is uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed as the per­son who is right.
The least informed view­point is accept­ed because it is gen­er­al­ly what the crowd wants to hear.
The man or woman walk­ing into a place of busi­ness by default places his/​her cell phone on speak­er and blares out a con­ver­sa­tion in the crass­est man­ner to the dis­com­fort and cha­grin of others.

A dis­sent­ing voice which does not agree with a pop­u­lar point of view is not respect­ed with a view to learn­ing from the dis­senter how he arrived at his point of view, he is labeled and dem­a­gogued, reviled and ostracized.
As a con­se­quence meet­ing places have become echo cham­bers for views that mir­ror each oth­er, the result is that no one learns any­thing new.

LIFE

How we behave indi­vid­u­al­ly is reflec­tive of the homes in which we live. Each home impacts the com­mu­ni­ty, each com­mu­ni­ty impacts the parish or state, each parish or state reflects what kind of coun­try we have.
Every per­son has a choice to make in what kind of coun­try we have. Whether that per­son is a Lawyer, Dance-hall-DJ, Police Officer, Politician, Doctor Farmer or Priest.
We can choose to observe the rules of the road or we can decide to break the rules and suf­fer the consequences.
In my adopt­ed home state of New York, the rules are clear “do not drink and dri­ve” if you have to drink have a des­ig­nat­ed dri­ver if you do not have a des­ig­nat­ed dri­ver do not drink it’s real­ly that simple.

Your friends do not get to sub­mit ref­er­ences of your sup­posed good con­duct to the court when you drink and dri­ve and end up killing someone.
You knew before you decid­ed to take that first sip of alco­hol that you would be break­ing the law.
Any per­son who in defense of his life is forced to kill anoth­er human being is ful­ly enti­tled to be exon­er­at­ed from the com­mon law con­se­quences of murder.

A per­son who will­ful­ly goes out and kills anoth­er human being has no expec­ta­tion of mer­cy in the courts and the courts should not be swayed by any peti­tion for mit­i­ga­tion in cas­es of that nature.
We can­not build a civ­i­lized soci­ety by allow­ing mem­bers of that soci­ety to kill each oth­er, then get away with a slap on the wrist.
The courts need to speak loud and clear in mat­ters of vio­lent mur­der. There are signs now that at least one judge is begin­ning to get that mes­sage to some extent.

I call on the leg­is­la­ture to cod­i­fy into law stronger and stiffer penal­ty for felony murder.
Since the Island declared a mora­to­ri­um on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment homi­cides has hit the roof. Those who make the argu­ment that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment does not work have not sup­plied a shred of evi­dence to back up their claim.
For starters, not one per­son to whom cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has been admin­is­tered has come back to kill again.

That is a 100% suc­cess rate. We know what the homi­cide rate was when cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was in the toolbox.
We also know what it is now with­out it. The empir­i­cal data is clear as to the effec­tive­ness of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as a puni­tive com­po­nent in the fight against crime. The evi­dence sup­ports those who believe that dan­ger­ous killers should be put down.
Some say it is vengeance, not justice.
I say whats wrong with vengeance?

It should not be left up to judges to deter­mine how long a mur­der­er spend behind bars. It is the pre­rog­a­tive of the peo­ple [who are now demand­ing stiffer penal­ties for killers], not unelect­ed judges.