NORWAY DID THE WRONG THING BY GIVING BREIVIK ONLY 21-YEAR SENTENCE

            On this date, 24 August 2012, Anders Behring Breivik was sentenced to 21 years of preventive detention on 24 August 2012. We, the VFFDP, would like to respond to David Dow’s article, ‘Norway Did the Right Thing by Giving Breivik 21-Year Sentence Aug 27, 2012 6:21 PM EDT’

Americans are happy to see convicts receive life sentences at the drop of a hat, but we refuse to understand that our vengeance doesn’t make us any safer, writes David Dow.

REBUTTAL: Really? Our vengeance does not make us any safer? What will happen if all criminals were not given life sentence or put to death? It will lead us to vigilantism or more chaos in society.

The point is that while American criminal law remains stuck in medieval times, and our philosophy of punishment mired in a rationale that never made any sense, Norway recognizes that we don’t need to lock people up forever and throw away the key in order to express our abhorrence at what they have done. More important, it’s not the best way to keep society safe.

REBUTTAL: Not the best way to keep society safe? European Criminal Law does not believe in life without parole, that is why there are recidivist offenders. They do not believe in punishment at all, they do nothing to take murder seriously.

While my clients await their fate, they sit locked in tiny cells 23 hours a day. They have neither computers nor TV. Breivik will have access to exercise equipment and be able to watch television. He will be able to work on a laptop (without Internet access).    

REBUTTAL: We, the VFFDP, know that in European Countries, criminals will go to a hotel prison instead of a harsh one.

So what? you might say. This just reveals the soft heads that define the European stance on crime. But which continent is drowning in a sea of gun violence and weekly bloody massacres?

Norway isn’t the outlier here. The sentence Breivik received may make jaws drop here in Texas, but it reflects an approach to punishment common across all of Western Europe.

Theoretically, of course, the U.S. and Europe punish people for the same two reasons: to keep society safe, and to inflict pain on people who have hurt others. But while Western Europe has kept sight of both objectives, America has become consumed with the latter.

REBUTTAL: Western Europe has done none of the objectives. They are actually a land fit for criminals. The own European people are also disgusted by their justice system where there are much more criminal rights. Why not Professor Dow move to Norway and defend criminals there, since he claims they want to keep society safe.

The New York Times quoted the father of a young girl killed by Breivik as saying he means nothing to him, and now that Breivik is prison for decades or longer, he can stop thinking about him and get on with his life. As the father of a young boy, I doubt I would have that father’s magnanimity, but like me, he is a product of his culture. Norwegians believe in moving on, while Americans would still be calling for Breivik’s head. We seem to believe that we are dishonoring the memory of the dead unless we dehumanize the criminal and inflict maximum pain on him. 

But it would be a mistake to think the European model cares any less about victims than we do. If anything, Europe is more sensitive to victims than we are. Although the court gave Breivik greater leeway to expound his demented ideas during the trial than he would ever have had in an American jurisdiction, the court also heard from every victim or victim’s survivor who wanted to testify. Seventy-seven separate autopsy reports were introduced into evidence. The judges indulged Breivik’s twisted ideology, but they also invited stories about his victims. The many injured were not remotely lost or overlooked in the proceedings. 

REBUTTAL: << But it would be a mistake to think the European model cares any less about victims than we do. If anything, Europe is more sensitive to victims than we are.>> No, not at all, Europe focuses and care more for criminals than victims. Please see this article, ‘Triple murderer becomes first Briton to challenge his 'life-means-life' sentence after Strasbourg ruled it was 'inhuman' for prisoners to die in jail’. Please also hear from victims’ families in Europe.  

In the U.S., meanwhile, family members of many of the victims of my clients complain that their pain is ignored even as we foam at the mouth to string up the evildoers.

There’s also the sheer amount of time we invest in these cases. Breivik’s prosecution took barely a year to reach its conclusion. While the appeals drag on in death penalty cases, family members of the victim never know whether the killer of their loved one will be spared. Many of them hope the execution will finally allow them to move on with their lives. You’d have to ask them whether that’s how it turns out. 

In the meantime, government lawyers in America spend a decade defending a death sentence, and lawyers appointed to represent the murderer spend a decade trying to save him. In Norway and the rest of Western Europe, those lawyers too are moving on. 

REBUTTAL: The Anti-Death Penalty Activists led by the A.C.L.U is to be blamed for all the delaying tactics. Sometimes, the death penalty can be used as a plea bargain to allow the killer to plead guilty and save trial costs. Even when the killer is sentenced to a life sentence, they can also appeal and appeal, look at Charles Manson who is still alive, he had been denied parole for 12 times. What a mockery of justice!

The D.C. Sniper, John Allen Muhammad was executed at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia. Unlike other States in the America, he was executed in seven years after his murders and six years after being sentenced to death on 17 November 2003, he was not executed ‘voluntarily’ (state suicide assist). We hope that other states can follow Virginia’s example, as they did it with Michael William Lenz.

We, the VFFDP, prefer the justice system in pre-World War II era, where they can execute those guilty in a swift and sure manner. We got this information from Lester Jackson’s article: The Modern Elite Ruling Class Notion of Justice:Cruel and Unusual Punishment of Victims.

President William McKinley died on Sept. 14, 1901, eight days after being shot by Leon Czolgosz, who was caught in the act and confessed. On Sept. 23, Czolgosz went on trial and was sentenced to death three days later. He was executed on Oct. 29, 53 days after the crime and 47 after the president’s death.

Unable to get near his first choice (75), President Herbert Hoover, Giuseppe Zangara settled on President-elect Franklin Roosevelt. On Feb. 15, 1933, Zangara’s errant shot hit Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who died on March 6. Caught in the act and having confessed, Zangara was executed on March 20, 1933 after 10 days on death row and 14 days after his victim died.

On July 2, 1881, Charles Guiteau shot President James Garfield, who died on Sept. 19. Immediately caught, Guiteau boasted of his deed. He was placed on trial for murder on Nov. 14 and found guilty on Jan. 25, 1882. After an appeal rejected May 22 and a denied request for an orchestra to play at his hanging, Guiteau was executed on June 30, 1882, nine months after his victim died.

William Kemmler murdered his wife on March 29, 1889 and was sentenced to death 45 days later, May 13. He appealed the new execution method, electrocution, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court May 23, 1890. Even with the aid of high-priced lawyers hired by George Westinghouse, his execution occurred August 6, 1890, 15 months after the murder.

On March 20, 1927, Ruth Snyder, aided by paramour Henry Gray, strangled and bludgeoned her husband to death to collect insurance. In fewer than 10 months, January 12, 1928, they were both executed.

Another capital case which had a swift and sure execution was that of Rashid al Rashidi, which the execution took place on 1 year and two months from the murder.

Do you notice that this terrorist in Egypt was executed 9 months after being sentenced to death and 1 year and 9 months after the murders, swift and sure!

The cruelest irony of all is that America’s harsher attitude toward criminals does not translate into greater safety for the rest of us. It turns out that the two objectives of punishment can be at war with one another, and in America we are giving up greater security to indulge a vestigial instinct. Criminal penalties in Europe are substantially shorter than they are in America, yet Europe has fewer repeat offenders. In Germany, for example, prison sentences are a third as long as they are in America for equivalent crimes, yet the rate of recidivism is twenty-five percent lower than on this side of the Atlantic. More severity, it turns out, does not reduce crime, and might even increase it.

REBUTTAL: It is useless to compare a European country with the United States; Germany has a smaller population than the U.S.A. Why not compare Japan, United Arab Emirates and Singapore with America, they have the death penalty and harsh sentence and lower crime rates too.

If the aim of the criminal-justice system is to protect society, ours is failing. By thinking we are being kinder to victims by punishing their wrongdoers more severely, we may actually be creating more victims.  

Which leaves only one justification for America’s approach: The visceral belief that people who do something bad should suffer terribly, and for a very long time. As a homegrown member of this culture, I can sympathize. It can be emotionally satisfying to see a cruel person suffer. But what Europe recognizes that our own justice system stubbornly refuses to is that some people who do something unspeakably vile can change.

REBUTTAL: Creating more victims? Just the opposite, by being kinder to evildoers you are creating more victims. They can change for the better? Recidivist murderers are proving all the abolitionists wrong.

Based on his statements in court, I doubt Breivik will ever change, and I doubt he will ever see the light of freedom, and I’m not troubled by that. Once his sentence ends, judges can keep him in prison for an endless succession of five-year terms if he is deemed a danger to society, which seems likely. But the premise of the sentence—that the best way to put tragedies behind us is to end them quickly, and that the infliction of maximum pain does not make us any safer—is an idea that America’s vengeance-centered culture could learn from.

REBUTTAL: <> Of course, once the killer is dead and gone. The VFFDP can move on with their lives.

           

           Here are two quotes, one from Edmund Burke and George Orwell to let David Dow know how wrong he is in letting evildoers live.