Thursday, December 21, 2023

Some people are simply beyond human redemption

 

Two ghastly crimes caught my eye among the news headlines this week.


Murfreesboro man sentenced to life for rape of 5-year-old boy

Dad who drowned 3 kids to spite estranged wife pleads guilty: ‘If I can’t have them, neither can you’


I won't publish details of them here.  If you want to know more, click on either headline to be taken to the article concerned.  Be advised, the details are not safe for work, family or children.

I saw a lot of that kind of attitude when working as a prison chaplain.  An individual with that sort of mindset - "What I want is all that matters;  if you won't let me have it, or won't do as I say, I'll destroy you" - is as unsafe to handle as old, sweating dynamite.  Anything can prompt an explosion, and there's no telling when or where it might happen.  There's no sense of morality on the part of the perpetrator except "I want it, therefore I have the right to take it/do it/make it happen, no matter what the cost to you".

I wrote about a man like that in one of the "Convict To Chaplain" vignettes in my prison ministry memoir.  WARNING:  If you're squeamish or easily triggered, you don't want to read any further.


Yeah, you ain’t seen me before ’cause I just got transferred here, Chaplain. Why am I inside? I killed two old ****s. Didn’t mean to, though. It was their own stupid ****ing fault. Should never have happened.

**** it, man, I needed a car to go see my woman, and they had one. I jumped ’em as they stopped at the corner. Hadn’t even locked their doors, the dumb ****s! If they’d only listened and showed sense they’d have been all right, but that old **** started acting up when I hauled his woman out in a hurry. ****, he musta bin eighty years old, a real feeble old ****er. I punched him. That’s all — I just hit him. He fell down and hit his head on the curb and went real quiet. Out like a light. Then his damn fool bitch started screamin’ and hollerin’ that I’d killed him. I had to shut her up — people were startin’ to look outta their windows. I tried to put my hand over her mouth, but I musta twisted her neck somehow. There was this funny crackin’ noise, and she went limp. I didn’t stop to check, man — I dropped her and jumped into that old car and burned rubber outta there. Damn thing even smelt like old ****s inside.

The cops stopped me before I got halfway to my woman’s place. Those ****ers were mean, man! They ****ed me up real good. Rights? What rights? If the cops want you, they park their cruisers so those dash cameras don’t see ****, and they walk you down the road a bit so the mikes won’t hear the noise, and they go ape**** on your ***, man. They took me back to town and threw my *** in a cell, still bleeding and hurting bad, and those ******s wouldn’t even get me to a doctor for almost a whole day. Mother******s!

****in’ DA charged me with murder and I drew life twice. Murder? **** no! I didn’t mean to kill either of ’em. Those two old ****s were on their last legs anyway. I only did what they made me do with their damnfool hollerin’. Hell, I probably did ’em a favor! No pain, no waiting to die while their minds went crazy — just a quick, easy out, both together, no mess, no fuss. At worst I shoulda got five years for each of ’em. It’s all they had left! ****in’ judge an’ jury didn’t see it that way, of course.

I’m twenty-five years old, and they tell me I’ll live another fifty years or more in here. No way, man. I’m not taking this **** for the rest of my life. I’ll be outta here one way or another. Either I’ll escape, or they’ll kill me when I try. They’ll have to, ’cause I’ll sure as hell kill them if they try to stop me or bring me back here. No other way, man. You watch. You’ll see my name on the news one night. I’ll be dead, or I’ll be out — and either way I’ll be ****in’ free.

Now, what about that phone call, Chaplain? I gotta talk to my woman. Word is she’s goin’ with some other ****. Can’t have that, man, her dis-ree-spectin’ me like that. If she don’t listen to me, I’ll have to get my homeys to take care of the bitch — and her new guy. I mean, you unnerstan’, right? A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Right, Chaplain?


Want another example?


Finally, let’s take Howard. He got drunk one night and began to smash the furniture and fittings in his uncle’s home. His uncle tried to stop him… a fatal mistake. Howard beat him until he collapsed, then for two days and nights drank himself into a stupor, periodically getting up to kick and stomp his uncle as he lay moaning on the floor. Howard eventually passed out. He was found next morning, unconscious at the table, with his uncle dead on the floor beside him. He’d been in enough trouble with the law on previous occasions that this crime earned him a life sentence without parole. He’s still a relatively young man, and still just as violent. He’s been known to get bombed out of his skull on prison hooch (of which more later). When he gets that way, everyone steers clear of him, even the prison ‘hard men’ — all except the reaction squad, who have to subdue him and put him in the Hole to sober up. He’s quite capable of killing anyone who crosses him.

Howard’s eyes scare me. They’re pitch-black and utterly lifeless. When one looks into them, one strives to detect a spark of life, of humanity, of the person inside the body… but it’s not there. I’ve never looked into the bottomless pits of Hell, but I’ve got a good idea what they must be like after working with Howard. He’s one of the few convicts who genuinely frightens me. I take care not to show it, but I also try to have support available if I’ve got to see him about something. He could snap at any moment (and has in the past). I want to make sure that if he does so while I’m around, I have the best possible chance of coming out of it relatively unscathed.


There's no point in my saying, "Don't get involved with people like that".  All too many victims do, because such people are past masters at hiding their warped, twisted, self-centered evil until it's too late to avoid crashing headlong into it.  Please join me in praying for the mother who's lost all three of her children, and the five-year-old boy who's had the innocence of childhood ripped away from him.  They may never recover from such trauma.  A lot of people don't.

As for the guilty . . . we're supposed to leave open the possibility of Divine intervention, of repentance and genuine conversion.  However, in my experience, once one is so steeped in evil, it's almost impossible for the person concerned to turn around.  It's not altogether impossible - I've seen a few conversions that I can only regard as miraculous - but it's very, very difficult and, sadly, very, very unlikely.

You'd be horrified to know how many people like that are out on the streets around you every day.  I'd guesstimate that at least one out of every hundred people is a genuine danger to those around them, and perhaps one in a thousand is so psychopathic as to resemble the individuals mentioned in the headlines above.  In a United States with about 330 million inhabitants, that works out to three million, three hundred thousand seriously dangerous criminals, of whom three hundred and thirty thousand are psychopathic and/or potentially violent to an extreme degree.  I'd say the odds of any one of us running into one of them at some time are so high as to be almost guaranteed, over the course of a lifetime.  The fortunate among us won't even realize their presence, and will go away undisturbed.  The unfortunate . . . not so much.  Go click on those headlines and read for yourself.

I've said for years that the most die-hard opponents of the right to keep and bear arms should work behind the walls of a high-security penitentiary for just a day or two.  They'd come out with a completely different outlook, and head straight for the nearest gun shop to equip themselves for defense, because their eyes would have been opened the hard way.

Peter


13 comments:

  1. Years ago a civilian went into Leavenworth Federal Prison in Kansas to interview inmates for research for a book. He had to sign a waiver taking all responsibility if he was killed of injured. He said that when asked, many inmates said the first thing they would do when they got out would be to get a gun. Not to commit more crimes, but because many of their fellow inmates scared them senseless and they j=knew there were more like them on the outside.

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  2. Dang. I carry, often including a bug. I'm gonna suggest that everyone be Spiritually Armed, too. satan is here. demons are among us. Kind of like "A bullet may "stop" them, but only God and Jesus can Truly Kill them.
    Peace and May God be with you

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  3. Dr. Martha Stout, PhD, psychologist estimates that 1 person in 25 is a sociopath.

    https://www.amazon.com/Sociopath-Next-Door-Martha-Stout/dp/0767915828

    That's lots of folks, if accurate.

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  4. 1 in a 1000. That mean we have between 65 and 75 certified psycho’s living in my town. And about 700 I would not want as neighbors if the 1 in 100 number hold out. Or are those stats from the prison population which would bring the numbers down drastically in a law abiding town? Personally I think the 1 in 1000 hold in a law abiding population.

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  5. i've seen some of those people...had to deal with them...there are people on this planet that don't need to be here...they are pure predator and we are the game...

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  6. One-in-twenty is energized by 'stirring-the-pot' and seeing people in pain.

    You can have 19 people working on a project and it is going great...and then that one guy or gal shows up and progress slows to a crawl and everybody is in misery.

    I am so happy that I no longer have to supervise people!!!

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  7. Corrie ten Boom, in a chapter of her book A Tramp for the Lord, recounts a visit to a prison in Africa that she was told was "the darkest place on Earth" by other mission workers. She reluctantly went and....well, you just have to read it. The Holy Spirit still works miracles.

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  8. Read the Holy Bible to see how wicked and downright evil men can be.

    For years I have played a game of trying to detect the psychopath when shopping, traveling, stopping at a filling station and what not.

    Some are easy. Many are difficult if at all possible to tell.
    But how would I know if I can't tell?
    Because its a numbers game. In any group they are there. The addition of epidemic drug use - evermore plentiful, increasingly toxic -, lax policing, soft on crime policied all act to increase the numbers of unpredictable dangerous people.

    Too, the nutters are getting better and concealing the telltales in their behaviors.

    I do fervently believe all human life is sacred. But I am not dumb and unaware. I know there are people so deep into evil that they are 'given over', no hope except from Christ Jesus. Truly, they are beyond human redemption.

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  9. Those excerpts are why all prison sentences over five years for violent crimes should be commuted to immediate execution. Call it mercy killing. For both the inmates, and society.

    Sally Softheart will shriek that this will make people fight imprisonment more at arrest.

    1) Challenge accepted, and
    2) Wiping out the violent 3% already in the jug will stop literally billions of future offenses, and recidivism is 0% under that plan.
    3) It's green, as the remains can be safely composted, and contribute to growing grass and trees to combat CO2. :)

    I'm also strongly in favor of changing three strikes to one strike.
    Second offense, if either #1 or #2 was a violent felony, is riding the needle. Gas, electrocution, or hanging at the discretion of the state.
    Put a three-judge appellate panel behind a mirror at the primary trial, and once a verdict is reached, all appeals concluded in an hour, same day. If guilty, take the convict out behind the jail, and end them, NLT the end of the next month.

    If anyone is still too squeamish, start turning abandoned mines into Chateau D'If: like the roach motel, once you check in, you never check out. Weld the door shut, and slide a food tray in twice a day. One day when the food is untouched, brick up the door permanently.

    The improvement to societal DNA alone would be an absolute boon.

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  10. Roughly 5 to 10% of society is irredeemable, flawed, broken beyond repair. In a simpler more straightforward time we accepted that fact and when these defective animals were identified they were permanently removed from civil society. We've lost our way as a society. We refuse to acknowledge this ugly reality and act accordingly. The result of this societal insanity is a long list of victims. People unnecessarily harmed by these pathological parasites. Instead we now grant these oxygen this thieves special dispensation. They frequently get rights and preferential treatment at the expense of productive citizens. The only thing we as an individual can now do is understand this reality and be properly prepared to react when confronted by one of these predators. Because they are out there, in large numbers, and they have absolutely zero qualms about harming anyone they cross paths with.

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  11. > "What I want is all that matters; if you won't let me have it, or won't do as I say, I'll destroy you"

    Envy. Also, democracy. A republic has one level of indirection, but contrary to the sales pitch, it appears to have the same performance as a democracy, and decays at the same rate.

    > You'd be horrified to know how many people like that are out on the streets around you every day.

    The average voter has the same morals as the criminal. 'Somebody else has money, and it belongs to me, and if they'd given it to me like I asked then they wouldn't have forced me to hurt them.' When they gang up, they enslave innocents and start colonial wars. Maybe the diagnosis "psychopath" means a person who doesn't mentally shy away from their experience hurting people?

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  12. This "life without parole" stuff is BS. Hang'em high, in front of city hall at noon on Saturday.

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  13. These people are irredeemable. They need to be ended.

    But thanks to the Quakers we have a system that emphasizes rehabilitation over punishment.

    Child molesters cannot and will not be cured. They can hold back, but will eventually snap and repeat. Ending their lives does two purposes, clears the world of their individual sickness and provides a firm example of what will happen to other Chesters in the future.

    And to those who say "Punishment doesn't work, especially the Death Penalty" then why oh why do criminals fold under the pressure of long, life and death sentences and plea to lesser punishments?

    Kill them. Kill them all. Once they've been properly tried, found guilty and had their appeals.

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