Taking Out The Trash

Given how several of my most dearly loved friends are all opposed to capital punishment, I was idly thinking the other day about how maybe I should reconsider my very much in favor of it position. Being such an enlightened person and all.

Then I saw this and decided I’d been right all along.


New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

Jury says death for cops' killer

BY KERRY BURKE, TANYANIKA SAMUELS and JOHN MARZULLI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Tuesday, January 30th, 2007

An unrepentant cop killer was sentenced to death yesterday by a federal jury in Brooklyn, setting off a chaotic scene of jubilation that quickly gave way to a dramatic courtroom explosion.

After deliberating for one day, the jury unanimously decided that Ronell Wilson should die by lethal injection for murdering NYPD Detectives James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews—the first federal execution ordered in New York in more than 50 years.
The verdict prompted raw cheers of “Yes!” from the slain detectives' friends and relatives.

The jury concluded that Wilson remained dangerous even in prison, and lacked any remorse for the cold-blooded killings.

It didn’t take long for Wilson, 24, to prove the jury correct. He looked in the direction of the victims’ widows and stuck out his tongue.

“You're a dead man!” cried Nemorin's mother-in-law, Nicole Eduard. “This man is going to die.”
“You all are the murderers now!” Cheryl Wilson, the defendant's mother, shot back.

As the jury was leaving the packed courtroom, Wilson's younger brother Daniel shouted at them, “You motherf-----s!” and Cheryl Wilson immediately clapped her hand over his mouth, muzzling him.
U.S. marshals surrounded the youth and escorted him out of the courtroom.

Nemorin and Andrews, beloved family men revered for their bravery by colleagues, were each shot in the back of the head by Wilson during a gun buy-and-bust gone bad on March 10, 2003, on Staten Island.

Prosecutors argued that Wilson knew the victims were cops and killed them anyway to steal the $1,200 in buy money. Their bodies were dragged out of a blood-soaked auto and dumped in the street like garbage.
"If any case screamed out for the penalty of death, it was this case," said Detectives' Endowment Association President Michael Palladino.

A gantlet of detectives gave a thunderous ovation to prosecutors Jack Smith, Colleen Kavanagh and Morris Fodeman as they left the courtroom.
"I just want to say 'Thank you' to God and to the jury and the prosecutors who worked so hard. James and [Rodney] can rest in peace," said Nemorin's widow, Rose, whose powerful testimony about the impact of her husband's death on her and their three young children clearly helped seal Wilson's fate.

Andrews' widow, Maryann, who also is an NYPD detective, added: "At last we have some closure. Our prayers have been answered."
"We won't have full closure until the sentence is carried out," said Andrews' cousin Derek Williams.

A sob story that panel didn't buy

They didn't want to hear any excuses of a poor upbringing—or any element of his sob story, for that matter. In the jury's eyes, Ronell Wilson's troubled life didn't measure up to the two lives he took.

Not a single juror accepted Wilson's claim of remorse, offered in a brief statement he read in court last week. It contained no mention of what exactly he was sorry for and appeared to have been crafted by his lawyers.

Defense attorney Kelley Sharkey clearly hit all the wrong notes in her mushy argument to judge Wilson "by a different standard" because of his chaotic past. In contrast, prosecutors pointed out how thousands of kids grew up in the tough Stapleton Houses, including Ronell's sister, and did not grow up to be cop killers.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Smith said Wilson would say anything to the jury because he was scared of being executed. Another prosecutor, Colleen Kavanagh, added that the defendant was merely saying he's sorry "because he knows that's what good people want to hear." The jury of seven men and five women heard Wilson say it, but didn't believe a word.


Now, I know lots of people think capital punishment is barbaric and doesn’t deter future criminals and is merely institutionalized legal vengeance. Well, that cuts no ice whatsoever with me.

Sometimes vengeance is the only way to go. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord? No, vengeance is ours. If the crime is incontrovertibly correctly fixed on the individual(s) who committed it, with no possibility of error, and if it will give families and friends of the victims some comfort and closure, and if it will serve as a warning to others even though others are too stupid/bent/evil/steeped in corruption to profit by such a warning, I see nothing whatsoever wrong with it.

If it’s “barbaric” in some people’s eyes, what about the barbarity of the crimes that occasion it? Crime, meet punishment. What a concept.

As for those who piously blether that it's just lowering ourselves to the vile base level of the criminal to require a life for a life, to them I say: Piffle! and you need to have some sense installed between your ears. What it is is speaking to these thugs in the only language they understand. SImple, really. You Kill = You Die.
(Again, if it's beyond not just reasonable doubt but ALL doubt that you in fact did kill. Too many mistakes get made, I know, and if there's any chance of error, then just toss 'em in a cell and hope DNA or other evidence will sort it out after not too many years. Justice is complicated.)

I'm just glad they didn't try to play the race card on this one. At least, they haven't yet. And while I'm thinking of race, where's the Big-Mouthed Bass of New York Race Relations, Al Sharpton? Usually he would have weighed in by now in no uncertain terms. Perhaps because both killer and victims are ethnic, and he can't figure it out if Whitey isn't involved? Well, maybe he'll go after the jury members. I'll keep watching.

In any case, this toxic creature’s family shares his vileness: Wilson's brother and mother immediately started blaming the cops, the judge, the jurors, et al. Anybody but their murderous relation and their own selves. He didn’t have to grow up to be a cop killer, as the prosecutors said. He CHOSE to. Knowing what the penalty might be.

“Just because one family lost a member, does that mean it's right that another family loses theirs?” Daniel Wilson told the Daily News. “If their families are hurting so bad, how the f--k could they stand by and say ‘Yes’ when another man's life has to be taken.”

Well, yeah, kid, it IS right, and those families have every right to stand by and say yes and watch. Because by his actions, Wilson forfeited the right to be considered a human being. Maybe Daniel can learn from his brother’s mistake. Probably not, though, considering his mother’s response: the apples didn’t fall far from that blighted tree. They didn't just "lose" their family members, moron, your damned-to-hell brother took them away. He, and you and your mom, should keep that in mind. If you actually have one.

I’m soooo sick of this pathetic old familiar argument to “a troubled past,” begging human mercy and forgiveness for pigdogs who show none. If you behave like an animal to other people, you have no right to complain when you’re dispatched like one in turn.
And that’s a libel on animals, anyway. Animals are WAY better than people like Wilson.

I say, send him back to the factory, as a defective piece of work. Void the warranty. Manufacturer's mistake. Maybe someone will learn from the example. Maybe he’ll even get it right next turn on the Wheel.

Because rehab for criminals of this caliber just doesn’t work. Why keep them around for thirty, forty, fifty years, in a place with comforts and benefits, TV and lawbooks, the chance to earn college degrees? They’re just festering leprous sores on the societal body. Punish the pieces of garbage for what they did, and punish them harshly.

All this forgiveness crap for creeps like this makes me sick. I don’t think I’m ready to go back to heads on pikes along Tower Bridge, or the Brooklyn Bridge…no, wait, I am, actually. Little object lesson for us all.

And yes, before you ask, I would absolutely have been one of those unanimous jurors. And I would have absolutely no problem pulling the switch myself.