A second look at the death penalty

With special reference to the son who stabbed his two parents at Kissy, we want to establish the intent to the crime and its repercussions to argue whether people who kill others in unforeseen circumstances deserve to live or be punished equally for their iniquities.

Here is a case wherein the son was hurt and simply took offence because he was to be given or paid the sum of Two Hundred Thousand Leones. His resolve was to engage and stab his mother to death, hide her in a container and wait for the father who later came home and also met his sudden death with the same stabbing tool their son used against his mother.

From the neighbors’ point of view, they only came to know of the incident when the mugger son was dragging his late father’s corpse to another hideout and got to inform the police.

Beyond legal reasoning, one thing was established which was the intent and actualized plan he mustered to wipe out the lives of two important Sierra Leoneans – the mother who was lecturer and the father a medical doctor. We begin to ask was the perpetrator in his normal status of mind on doing what he did? Was he under the influence of narcotic drugs or intoxicants? Was he having a mental disorder history or was he suffering from a clinical depression? Better still was he a secondary wounding experience survivor? These questions and lots more are required to establish the rationality behind the actions of the mugger who is not resigned to fatalities of such nature – now leaving the police to investigate its bulk.

Let’s assume that he is proven guilty of masterminding his sadist action, what would the laws of the land proffer on him – because these are clear cases wherein manifest examples are required to toll the line of moral judgment and the law of natural justice.

Here we are shouting at the death penalty which to some extent is suitable in addressing some of these bugging trends of happenings. Again one would want to look at the social history of the mugger. Was he that petty type of a son whose ego was tolerated by his two parents? This question is the stereotype one would be curious to ask because if it happens that the deceased parents were at any point in time encouraging him into petty stock-fillings this result is attesting that their son understood them differently; because our little research tells that the perpetrator was frustrated by the alleged decision of his parents to deport him from abroad were he was to reside due to the same suspecting bad habitual attitude.

The police and the alerting neighbors must be given kudos for at least belling the cat which now deserves the two departed souls befitting burials.

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