The ongoing O.J. Simpson saga makes me want to puke. I had just started the Ph.D. program (or was at least in my first year or two) when the verdict came down that the jury had acquitted O.J. of murdering his wife and her friend. I was sitting in my car, having just arrived at school, on the top floor of the Conley parking garage, and as I sat there and listened to the radio, I shook with fury. Then, still furious, I walked over to the English building (Tate), only to hear one of the secretaries defending O.J. and saying he didn't do it, and she knew he didn't, and that the right verdict had been achieved. What?!!! I think I sort of yelled at her.
Of course the world knows what went on after that. And on after that. And on after that. Now we're back with this jerk, on this armed robbery charge. I honestly don't care whether he knew there were guns or not. He should have been in prison all this time anyway. Normally, I'm pretty rational about these kinds of things. After all, I'm a die-hard detective fiction fan, and I know emotion can't be used to justify a prison sentence. (At least, it shouldn't be.) I'm just fed up with this creep and want him to go away. So why am I even writing about him? I guess it's because there is so much murder and crime on my local news, and then the national news focuses on this asshole.
Two kids (teens) from the Detroit area, I think, killed a man, cut off his head, tossed it in a river, burned his hands and feet, and otherwise maimed and mutilated the guy, all for a so-called "thrill kill." I hope it will be equally as thrilling when they become some guy's girlfriend in prison.
A cop is a suspect not only in the possible murder of wife number 4, but now the body of wife number 3 has been exhumed and autopsied because he may have killed her, too. Why there wasn't more suspicion at the time, I don't know. I seem to recall that her death certificate listed drowning as the cause of death--yet she was found in a dry bathtub. I guess it's true that cops can get away with murder, since they apparently do it all the time.
A local woman, mother of five, has been found murdered. Unfortunately, this woman is a cliched victim--her children had different fathers, she was out drinking and partying the night she disappeared, and she apparently had a taste for the wild side. It's like the moment in a teen slasher flick when the blonde turns her big blue eyes to the camera and announces that she's going into the haunted house alone. Can you say, "Victim?"
I used to be a die-hard proponent of capital punishment. Then I got in touch with my liberal side and realized that a lot of people sentenced to die were being sentenced more for their skin color and socio-economic status than for their crimes. DNA testing has been used to prove the innocence of so many people on death row that it's easy to believe that a whole lot of people have been arbitrarily murdered by the state.
But then another crime gets reported that is even more horrible than the last crime. A little blonde girl, age 11, was found recently in a graveyard. She'd been murdered. I don't know many details--I suspect that the police know a lot more than they're saying. They tend to be really close-mouthed if they actually have evidence and a suspect, for fear of jeopardizing the prosecution. Sadly, it's likely that the little girl was murdered by a relative or family friend. I'll report more about this as the facts are released.
As a murder-fiction buff, I confess to an intellectual curiosity about crime. But part of that curiosity is my deep-seated inability to imagine why anyone would kill someone else. Yes, I've had moments of anger so red-hot that I could have struck out at someone at that time, but I don't think I could ever deliberately (with pre-meditation) plot and kill someone. There are people that I've hated, or at least felt as if I did, but I never thought it would help for me to kill them. Why destroy my own life just to destroy someone else's? Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose? I'm kind of like Hamlet, maybe, when he hesitates to kill his uncle Claudius because he thinks he sees Claudius at prayer. Since he believes that Claudius killed his father without letting him have a chance to ask for God's forgiveness for his sins, Hamlet doesn't want to kill Claudius at a time when Claudius could receive forgiveness. His father presumably was in Hell or at least purgatory, so it wouldn't be fair for Claudius to achieve heaven.
I'm not a believer in heaven, hell, or life after death, but I am a believer in fairness and justice. Lately, the news isn't helping me reaffirm my belief that fairness and justice prevail. I was teasing my students yesterday, saying that one day some genius would invent a device that could test whether they knew the subject matter by just pointing it at the student's head. The scale that registered (like fever levels on a thermometer) would be the student's score. Maybe one day that same genius will invent a foolproof determiner of guilt. I suspect that our current jury system of determining guilt will someday be seen as flawed as the old test of a witch's guilt--if the accused drowns, she was innocent. If she floats, she's a witch, so they burn her at the stake.
Now that I have thoroughly put myself into a dark mood, I'll stop. Dr. S.
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