Justice and Life

What is the value of a single human life

in a judge’s sentence of a serial killer?

How many days do you subtract from

the life expectancy of the murderer

to pay for the extinction of his victims?

How many days per body do you estimate

before the killer should be eligible

for a parole hearing? Should he be eligible?

What is a parole hearing in aid of

that would justify consideration

of such an unholy candidate?

What’s the release date? How long does a killer keep

in a can? How do you refrigerate evil

when you can’t define or contain the germ?

What’s a bad person got that isn’t a disease?

Should it be quarantined? Can it be caught?

If it’s not a disease and the killer

is most at ease and organized and deliberate

in his acts, is not sick or deranged -

at least not in any accepted way

that could be called mental illness

and eliminate rational behaviour, will, and choice;

he is not neurotic or psychotic;

he is psychopathic ...

(Subtract empathy, add caution.);

he doesn’t want to be caught

so he’s got a kit and a script

(Add deliberation, malice aforethought.);

he is dangerous and devious,

deliberately deceitful and adept;

he has programmed himself

to various pseudo- and paraphylia;

cares not a jot for the lot of others,

only in how a body can be used and abused:

how long and at what temperature

and under what conditions do you

quarantine such a creature?

Bend or break, the body is expendable,

something to use up in a burning bush of malevolent

neural delight, whenever, however he likes.

What does sequential sentencing mean then?

What is your duty? How serve and protect ... ?

The guy would make lousy fertilizer!

What would grow then?