John Walsh Needs to Keep His Mouth Shut. It’s not that his crime-fighting endeavor “America’s Most Wanted” hasn’t proven to be successful — it has, most recently with the capture of Jupiter massacre suspect Paul Mehinge — but rather that he, in his position of influence as a popular television host, should stop trying to be judge, jury and executioner, as he did recently when he called for capital punishment for the above suspect.
During Walsh’s tenure as host, AMW has directly led to the capture of about 1,100 suspects. This is no small feat, and Walsh, along with all of those involved with the show’s production, should be lauded for their efforts. However, Walsh needs to realize his influence must be curtailed at capture.
In consideration of some of his past opinions concerning the punishment of sex offenders (which have touched on rectal explosive devices, for example), it seems he deems himself the ambassador of justice for heinous crimes.
Moreover, he is regarded publicly as an expert when it comes to such matters, stemming from both his position as host of AMW and his son’s highly publicized kidnapping and murder in 1981.
However, neither he nor any other indirect victims of such atrocities are in any position to decide the fate of the offender, as such acts leave victims’ families emotionally compromised when it comes to resolving such an issue, hence the existence of a fair and just (in theory) legal system as a more civil proxy for self-administered justice.
If I’ve come off as callous, I won’t apologize, but it was not my intention. Rather, I’ll take this opportunity to throw in my two cents as a proponent of abolishing the death penalty.
It is inherently contradictory to condemn someone for killing and then subsequently kill them. However, because the responsibility for such acts is diffused through both the entirety of society and the executioner-less means of capital punishment, such policies are considered morally tenable or at least deluded enough to be permissible.
That notion is an illusion: If the laws upheld by a society are a reflection of it as a whole, then we all share responsibility for such acts.
For those who brush off claims of responsibility because such people deserve to die, let me say this: No one — not even those responsible for the most horrific things you can imagine — deserves to die.
From a different angle: There is no act a person can commit that is terrible enough to merit their life being ended by an ethical society.
Essentially, this has less to do with the nature of their actions and more so with the blood left on all our hands from allowing such a response to them.
Anyone who cites the “humane” way in which these people are “put down” is naïve to the fact that softening and ritualizing killing with euphemisms and the legal system is entirely sadistic.
My line of reasoning is explicitly not an appeal to any metaphysical moral code, but rather an assessment of consequences, which suggest we shouldn’t hold our heads so high when we speak of capital punishment. But if we can live with that, as we have, we do so at the expense of our ethical integrity.
Ryan Spencer is a psychology senior.
