Daniel G. Seguerre, III
Back in 1948, Hawaii abolished its use of capital punishment for criminals. In 1995, there was a movement to try to get it reinstated but ultimately failed. I wish it hadn’t, because if anybody deserves it, it’s this man, Daniel G. Seguerre, III. And while I don’t believe that everybody who murders deserves to die – actually, Seguerre didn’t kill anybody – I believe that this man would be a prime candidate and a good reason to bring it back.
The question is, is there a crime so horrendous, so vile, that the perpetrator should be killed? In ancient Greece, execution was widely employed for crimes such as treason, arson, rape, and murder. Even in modern Somalia a 13-year old girl was buried up to her neck and stoned for adultry as recent as 2008, and Iran currently has 140 people on death row for crimes they committed as juveniles. Our own Constitution lists treason as a capital offense. Are these laws outdated? Currently, fifteen states and the District of Columbia in the U.S. have abolished the death penalty, including Hawaii.
I am not here to argue that that thirteen year old Somali girl should have been executed for adultery. I don’t believe anybody should. However, I do believe that there are some crimes to which an appropriate punishment is death. Now before any of you bleeding-heart liberals stop reading, hear me out. I believe that capital punishment, like everything in life, has a time and a place. It’s something that should not be abolished completely, just very carefully used. As much as I wish that every cold-blooded killer and rapist would drop dead, I don’t even think capital punishment is appropriate in most of those circumstances. It should be saved for the worst of the worst – the criminals who outright and blatantly disobey the law and harm other people so much that society would truly be a better place without them.
So if Daniel Seguerre didn’t kill anybody, why does he deserve to die? Well, according to the Honolulu Advertiser, this dude went on a peer-to-peer filesharing program and distributed and sold videos of himself sexually abusing his own children, including a prepubescent boy, a girl less than five years old, and another baby girl. Yeah, they are his own children. According to the affidavit, Seguerre is quoted as saying “”that it is easy to get the children to comply with the abuse by giving them candy,” even though the children in the videos are reported to be screaming in pain, to the FBI. I could go on about how much of a dirtbag this guy is, but to me this is a case where he didn’t kill anybody, but he may as well have, because he has no doubt ruined the lives of these three kids.
Another recent story here in Hawaii involves a mother and father who let their twelve year old daughter nearly starve to death. She would have died, had it not been for the girl’s aunt who dropped by one day and saw the condition she was in. This girl, who weighed 29 pounds (which is the average weight of a toddler) was laying sideways with her eyes rolled back in her head when the paramedics got there. The girl has since recovered, but during her starvation her brain stopped developing, and now at age 15 she has the mental capacity of a seven-year old. The mother and father are currently on trial for attempted murder.
Cases like this really make me so irate that I wish the perpetrators would simply drop dead. I’m not sure if the parents of the starving girl deserve capital punishment by the court’s hand, but I believe it should seriously be considered, because they too have, in essence, taken the life of this girl away from her. Daniel Seguerre, however, should be hanged from the Aloha Tower and set on fire in public for his blatant disregard of the human condition. He is clearly an unemotional, predatory monster that society would truly be better without.
I’ll admit that my own views on what deserves death are fairly conservative, and cruel by some standards. Most would even likely argue that these people, who didn’t even kill anybody, don’t deserve capital punishment. But what about the person who does this to your kids? Or murders one of your family members? Could you honestly say that they wouldn’t deserve it? I know I’d hope the death penalty was not only an option but the only option if I was ever in that situation. It would absolutely have to be used sparingly, and on a case by case basis, which makes many arguments moot to begin with. Osama Bin Laden? The DC Sniper? Charles Manson?
Not using the death penalty is fine, but I believe it should not be completely written out of the books, because you never know what type of heinous crime monsters like this may someday commit, and when we’re all shocked at the brutality or the vileness of these crimes, capital punishment may be the solution that everybody agrees they deserve, but won’t be an option.
These arguments are largely emotional, I see very little rational base to these. The fact that these convicts are removed permanently from society is functionally the same as killing them, and I would argue that the state-sanctioned death of such killers would bring some degree of vindication, a flavor of tit-for-tat that leaves the State just as guilty as the individual of such brutality. Not to mention the FALSE conviction rate. No human being should be deprived of their constitutional right to life for faulty evidence or antiquated procedures or shoddy defense in a court of law. I used to be a strong death penalty advocate making the same arguments that you make a few years ago, but really I thought about it long and hard and determined that life imprisonment, though not nearly conferring the same as Old-Testament-Justice flavor that the death penalty does, is a far more civil and humane solution than the alternative, especially for a large, arbitrary, constantly changing set of rules and authorities as a Common Law state with constantly advancing forensic methods has.
Or in giggle form:
http://www.flurl.com/video/32516843_penn_and_teller_death_penalty_pt_1.htm
http://www.flurl.com/video/33062646_penn_and_teller_death_penalty_pt_2.htm
Not to mention that many state governments have recently found it cheaper to keep death row inmates imprisoned for life than putting forth the legal effort to execute them. If from the plain dollars-and-cents point of view, it’s still saner to keep a monster in maximum security for two to six lifetime sentences than it is to try to pump their veins full of delicious deadly chemicals one night.
As a taxpaying citizen, I prefer NOT spending six times a much of my California tax wage garnishments on filling some dude’s veins with Potassium Chloride at 45 as I do on feeding him substandard ham sandwiches to the age of 60.
Of course these arguments are emotional – because this crap that people are doing nowadays is sickening.
When it’s cases like these where the guy is on video committing these sex crimes against his own kids, or the starving girl is locked up in the house that nobody else has been in except for her mom, there’s no other possible perpetrator. Especially with modern technology and DNA testing, we can narrow the odds down to 1 in millions that the suspect is the perpetrator. I’m familiar with all the arguments, as they were given to me in college by Richard Leo, who is a friend of Barry Scheck, founder of The Innocence Project, and I would agree that it would be better to set 1000 of these a-holes free rather than execute one falsely. I disagree with executing the mentally retarded, kids, and the criminally insane. I don’t even believe that every convicted killer should be executed. As for Penn and Teller, they rely too much on ad-homonym argument and such ridiculous hyperbole it’s laughable. Sure, they sometimes raise good points about stuff, but even if I agree with them they still lose credibility by having to resort to making fun of the unibrow or the funny-looking clothes of the “expert.”
That being said, I’ll reiterate the first sentence of my last paragraph: “Not using the death penalty is fine, but it should not be completely written out of the books…” I’m simply saying use it for the worst of the worst, the ones that do crap like that guy that rapes his three kids and videotapes it. Save it for the Bin Ladens, the Saddams, the DC Snipers. Just don’t be opposed to it because a situation hasn’t yet risen in which YOU think it should be used. I guess I’m just the type to keep my options open, because you never know when you might wish you had it.
And then I go for the dollars-and-cents issue: these people are monsters, but it’s cheaper to keep them in prison than to execute them. I am not a fan of putting chemicals into people’s veins if it makes a better use of my tax dollars to re-pave a section of interstate.
If it was used sparingly and in cases where the evidence was absolute, it could cut the average 20+ year appeal process down to about 6 months. This may also serve to boost any deterrence effect it could have. This would not only make it cheaper than life in prison, but it would cut down on the ham-sandwich production as well.
As far as basic right to life, I feel that when you take somebody’s right to live you’re relinquishing any right you have to your own life. Whether or not death would actually be the punishment, that depends on the specific circumstances and evidence, etc.
And one can’t honestly say that if and when Bin Laden is caught he shouldn’t be executed? I mean, if abolitionists had their way, we wouldn’t even have the option when it came to people like him.
My argument is as simple as this….
No one has the right to take anyone else’s life. If some one hurt my kids, for example by molesting them, to tell you the truth I’d probably kill them. Then I’d be put in prison. Why? Because it constitutes murder. I know that. I know that murder is murder, even if it’s done by the state. It’s a very archaic punishment that should be left for those folks who don’t know any better, like Somalians and Iranians.
I get emotional when I hear cases of child murders, and terrorism, but cooler heads must prevail, and we must acknowledge everyone’s right to life, even if that person refuses to observe someone else;s right to life.
By the way, in my home of Puerto Rico, there is a prison gang known as ‘Los ñetas’, who regulate all of the ‘true justice’ to child molesters, rapists, and other heinous criminals. To tell you the truth to me it’s a lot more satisfying to hear that they die at the hands of a like minded, nothing to lose criminal such as them selves, than being executed by the judicial system of the most developed nation on Earth.
I say kill the douchebag. In fact, give me the needle and I’ll do it.
Thanks for the replies – it is a difficult subject, and there is no easy answer. I do agree that it is a barbaric and archaic- type punishment, but I would also argue that the ones who deserve it are so barbaric and sub-human themselves it would be no different from killing a rabid dog.
The “Los ñetas” that you speak of is intriguing and reminds me of the movie The Boondock Saints – a movie that really makes one question morality and personal beliefs about crime and punishment.
Sure, the gang or the State for that matter, IS doing evil. But is it a necessary evil? I’d argue yes. Could I personally kill somebody who deserved it? I doubt it. That’s why I’m thankful for the courts (or people like Tom) who are willing to do the dirty work.