September 4, 2017

"The Hand of Vigilance"

By Jim Culp

 

I was recently roped into a conversation about the subject of vigilantism, because a woman (who I won't name) had suffered the loss of her daughter through rape culminating in murder, and had, in turn, murdered the perpetrator by her own hand.

The question posed to me was, "should she be cleared of all charges, and set free?"

I didn't answer, because I directed the questioner to this article, wherein I want to explain my positions on this highly critical subject.

The world, let alone this nation, grows increasingly more and more lawless everyday. There are more brutal beatings, more savage rapes and murders, and more car and purse jackings per day than you can count.

I spent my early childhood in West Texas, and then was raised to early adulthood in Southwest New Mexico. I witnesses criminal activity many time, mostly on a low scale. When I was only 12, the conflict in Vietnam was winding to a close, and thousands of men that had just left a brutal war in a far away jungle were roaming the streets, clueless of how to rejoin society. The Black Panthers, the Ku Klux Klan, and hundreds of other hate groups were the item of the day. I used to hear the old folks say on a daily basis: "take 'em out and shoot 'em!" They were referring to persons of every age, creed, color, and sex that had committed crimes, both small and heinous, and had not been punished, or in many cases, not even arrested. The same thing goes on today, 40 years later.

Our society is slightly different, but there are still thousands of crimes committed on a daily basis, and no one is held accountable for them.
People commit crimes that are, in most our eyes, punishable by death; some are less heinous and not at that level, and we accept the lesser sentence of life imprisonment or some tally of many years as a punishment.
There are many times in my life that I have been one of these persons that watch the evening news, and sees someone acquitted of a crime that they were well known to have committed, but the evidence just isn't there. OJ Simpson comes to mind. Then there are crimes so violent that a family seeks to take out vigilante style justice, as the woman did in the story that I started this article with, and thousands of people cheer it on, and say that justice is served.
But as I have grown up; I have realized, more than ever, that the sixth amendment to the US Constitution is more important than ever, and a guardian of light that we just don't want to see disappear from our laws.
The Amendment, first proposed in 1789, was ratified in 1791 as Amendment VI.

It reads so:

"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense."

 This means that any person accused of a crime has the right to be tried. Now, it's easy for anyone to "jump that gun" and say "but we know he's guilty!!"

That always sounds great, unless you are the one that is being accused.
My grandfather WB Bristow (Birdie) was a soldier for some of his life, and a range cowboy and loving father for the rest of it. He lived in a rugged part of West Texas where "old justice" was carried out many times.
He told my mother a story of a woman that was raped in the little town of Sierra Blanca, Texas in 1928. The woman was raped, and then beaten to "insure her silence."
The rapist, a transient, was long gone hours after the rape. A drunken man in a saloon, who was annoying a group of wives at a dance, was named the rapist by a group of cowboys that didn't care for him in the first place.
He was apprehended by a "posse" with no official purpose, and after a severe beating in a barn; he was hung by the rafters until dead.
It was forgiven and forgotten, and a year later, the actual rapist confessed his crime to a priest in Van Horn, Texas. Grandpa told Mom that although no one really cared for the "old boy", he had died for a crime he never committed.
That story rings true with me today.
Do we need a quicker judicial system? Yes.
Should we sentence more people to death for heinous crimes? I say absolutely yes.
Is our system broken in many areas? Most assuredly, yes.
But I caution anyone that entertains the notion that the Sixth Amendment gets tossed out with last week's meatloaf. We are a nation of laws, and if we are not going to abide by those laws, we are no better than the posse that hung the drunken cowboy by mistake.