Murder And Mayhem - The Cumbersome, Belabored Legal System And Time To Hang 'Em High

Frank P. Bailey was a Wyoming cattle rustler who had evaded justice for years, always out of reach of the law.  He was a canny thief, stealing from just the right herd at just the right time, moving across the state in mobile sweeps that surprised both the law and cattlemen alike. 

 

He was the kind of criminal that had a wide reputation, a folk hero among the cowboys and range riders, a man like Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, John Dillinger, and the famous gangsters of Chicago who roamed free, were frequenters of the city's best nightclubs, were doomed from the start, but led their lives with confidence and panache. 

Bailey operated in the old days of the Wild West before the law was organized and when prairie justice was the rule. If you were caught with another man's cattle, you were strung up, hanged by the neck, and left for the vultures.  What more proof was needed other than the telltale branding on the flank of the beeves to prove that they were stolen?  What mitigating circumstances, explanatory conditions, and other justifying conditions? None at all.  Hang 'em high. 

Bailey continued his rustling until he was finally corralled in a box canyon near Laramie.  The posse of ranchers and lawmen surrounded him but did not shoot, so intent were they to see him hanged and picked dry by the vultures of Dry Gulch.  He met his maker on February 3, 1858. 

The Wild West has been recalled by many during the current trial of a woman who has admitted strangling her three children to death but claimed temporary insanity due to postpartum depression. Despite the fact that she planned the murder, going online to see how long such strangulation would take, inventing a plausible reason to send her husband out on an hour-long errand in a decidedly premeditated act, the jury, but for one holdout, was ready to acquit her of first degree murder, a verdict likely to send her to the electric chair, and render one of insanity. 

As of this writing a mistrial has been called by the judge in the Lindsay Clancy case.  The foreman of the hung jury, eleven against one, has said that the one holdout has disregarded the judge's instructions, has violated his contract as impartial juror, and is obstructing the true cause of justice.  The holdout, however, a man defiantly standing his ground against eight angry women (two other men capitulated to their demands and voted for acquittal), is reported to simply refusing to give in to their demands. 

The woman in an admittedly premeditated way, barbarically killed her baby and two toddlers, one by one as the others watched.  This cannot stand, said the juror.  No matter what mitigating conditions - in this case it was severe hormonal dysfunction which caused the killer to hear voices and act out her violent fantasies - such a heinous crime must be punished to the full extent of the law. 

The insanity plea by serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, a psychopath who tortured and mutilated seventeen men and boy in grotesque, horrific ways was rejected by the jury.  The murders he committed demanded conviction, punishment, and retribution.  Dahmer was convicted of premeditated murder, spent years in federal prison until he was murdered by fellow inmates. 

The very idea that this evil, barbaric man could be sent to a mental institution, cured, and set free was unconscionable. The jury advocated the death penalty but was denied by state law. 

The Lindsay Clancy case is notable not for the evil nature of her crime, but that so many women - not just the eight on the jury but thousands in the American public- are on her side.  They have suffered postpartum depression, most often provoked by indifferent, emotionally abusive husbands, and sympathized with a woman who is a victim.  Since the holdout is a man the national debate has turned political, a test of feminism, women's rights, and male patriarchy. 

If there was ever a case that demands prairie justice, it is this one.  She admitted murdering her three children, and should be summarily strung up, hanged, and left for the vultures; and yet the cumbersome, laborious process of criminal justice continues.  Retrial is possible but so is a plea bargain.  The woman may get off far more lightly than ever deserved. 

In some countries were murderous violence was rife, El Salvador, Colombia, and the Philippines, their presidents turned to extrajudicial governance.  President Bukele of El Salvador when challenged over his roundup of MS-13, Mara Salvatrucha gang members and the deprivation of their civil rights, he responded with, 'What about the civil rights of ordinary Salvadorans to live in peace and security?' El Salvador is now one of the most peaceful countries in the hemisphere and Bukele enjoys overwhelming popularity.  

 

Had Bukele not done what he did, Salvadoran courts would have been choked with unnecessary trials, leaving accused criminals free on recognizance or bail, free to continue their bloody, anti-social acts. He refused the plaintive cries from the international liberal community, and never once capitulated to their demands. 

Former President Duterte of the Philippines did exactly the same thing and rid the country of Islamic terrorism in the south, and crime in Manila.  The newly elected president of Colombia has vowed to destroy the last remnants of the terrorist FARC movement, no questions asked. 

President Duterte ran on his tough stance on crime during his tenure as mayor of Davao. Popular with the locals due to his successful zero tolerance policies against criminals, he earned the nickname "The Punisher". Vigilante groups tied to Duterte are thought to be responsible for the execution of drug traffickers, criminals, gang members and other lawless elements. Over a period of 20 years, he turned Davao City from the "murder capital of The Philippines" to what tourism organizations now describe as "the most peaceful city in southeast Asia," and what was ranked in some analyses as the world's fourth safest place

Duterte focused on another problem often cited by Filipinos – corruption.  Transparency International ranks the Philippines near the bottom of its international list, and corruption is felt at every level of society.   Building on his reputation as a hardliner against crime, Duterte promised to apply the same no-holds-barred approach to corruption.

Islamist insurgency in the southern island of Mindanao has resulted in thousands of deaths, and Filipinos are weary of decades of civil strife.  Duterte, who comes from the region and has established lines of communication with rebel groups promises to bring the conflict to an end either through negotiation and reason or through force.

Colombia has been beset by insurrection, terrorism, and drug-related violence for decades, and new President Abelardo de la Espriella has vowed to end it once and for all and by any means possible.  The electorate is fully behind him.  

Brazil's federal police under former President Bolsonaro used similar extrajudicial procedures to rid or drastically reduce the endemic violent crime in Rio de Janeiro's favelas, violence which had necessarily spread beyond the borders of the slums and affected ordinary citizens. 

Donald Trump has spoken in similarly harsh and uncompromising terms about immigration and the Islamist threat.  While few Americans take him at his word about deporting all Muslims and forbidding any to enter the United States, they understand the meaning behind the rhetoric.  He is willing to take drastic means to keep illegal immigrants out of the country.  

Although some measure of due process applies to anyone residing in the United States, many Americans are crying “Enough”.  The shilly-shallying of self-serving politicians and their refusal to confront an issue which – like that in Western Europe – threatens not only jobs but culture, must end.  If the so-called ‘rights’ of those here illegally are abrogated, so be it.

Is due process an absolute right? Or is subject to conditionality?  Might a country's conditions be such that abrogation of such process to protect millions is right, moral, and ethical?  More and more besieged citizens are agreeing. 

And what of the famed American jury system?  In the Clancy trial it seems subverted by radical feminist polemics, and the immeasurable evil of her crime overwhelmed by a politically inspired righteousness.  An open and shut case was distorted into one about misogyny and women's presumed rights. If such a crime had been discovered in the days of frontier justice, the woman would have been strung up just as quickly and handily as Frank P Bailey. 

Politics and procedure have eroded the basic sense of right and wrong at the heart of the new American Republic two hundred a fifty years ago.  A society corrupted by identity and fractured into interest groups based on race, gender, and ethnicity has lost its moral sense of direction, and has changed the definition of 'rights' into a catch-all, facile one. 

Extrajudicial governance in all its forms might never have been considered by exceptionalist Americans, but the time to reconsider American-style democracy may well be here.