The Expansionist

Saturday, February 05, 2005

Punishing Juries. Perhaps the most disgusting news story today is the report that an Idaho criminal who killed two state wildlife officials in cold blood and escaped from prison and evaded recapture for almost a year is to be freed after only 22 years in prison — for killing two men to evade prosecution for poaching wildlife, and escaping prison. Even more disgusting is that he was not even convicted of murder! but only of "voluntary manslaughter", and that he:

might have been freed outright if he hadn't used his .22 caliber rifle [to shoot the victims in the head after they were down]. Moore [foreman of the jury that coddled him] said testimony about [one of the victim]'s reputation as a tough-guy lawman influenced the verdict.

"We felt it was self-defense up to a certain point [resisting arrest for poaching is "self-defense"?!?]," Moore said in a recent interview. "Had he not shot them in the head, it would have been a different verdict."

Still MORE disgusting is this fillip:

The case has been among the most polarizing in Idaho history, with some expressing disgust at how Dallas has gained a measure of folk-hero status among those who rally against the establishment. * * *

"Claude Dallas," a ballad written by singer-songwriters Ian Tyson and Tom Russell, and sung by Tyson, romanticizes Dallas' lifestyle and life on the lam, saying: "It took 18 men and 15 months to finally run Claude down. In the sage outside of paradise, they drove him to the ground."

Idaho has an apparently deserved reputation for harboring violent extremists, the kind of antisocial, "mountain man" scum that filled too much of the West during our frontier era, people who couldn't abide being required to be civilized back East, so fled civilization and lived as savages out West. Such barbarians are still admired by some Red State Westerners.
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The jury that handed down this insane and evil verdict should be hunted down, rounded up, and shot in the back of the head, every last one. Their various body parts, to the extent usable, should be redistributed to decent people waiting for organ transplants. The same fate should meet the scum who wrote a BALLAD praising a double-murdering poacher! Kill them, and chop them up for parts.
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Today's U.S. military death toll in Iraq was 4, bringing the total to 1,447. I guess they're dying to preserve the "freedom" to kill game wardens in Idaho.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:16 PM

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