Commentary
An Eye For An Eye? Punishments To Fit The Crimes
- by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, May 2, 2014
In fact, that’s what I would have suggested the state of Oklahoma do: Shoot and bury Clayton alive. I think a painless death by injection (however botched) is not worthy of the crime. Let him slowly smother under mounds of dirt like his victim. This is not some biblical rant about an "eye for an eye," but I have a really hard time feeling sorry for murderers who callously slaughter others, then expect "civilized" treatment from the system.
In a similar vein, I think that in business, when you commit a heinous crime like making someone sit through a 35-slide PowerPoint, your punishment should be to sit through it 10 times, or until you break down sobbing for forgiveness -- whichever comes first.
If you bore co-workers with stories about 1) golf; 2) fishing; or 3) your kids, you should be strapped to an iPod that plays the same moronic story about someone else's vacation on a loop that runs nonstop for 36 hours. Simultaneously, you have to look at the same photo of the family posed in front of the Eiffel Tower or Trevi Fountain until you hallucinate.
If you invite others around you to examine and admire your new phone or tablet, the device should be immediately rendered inoperable, and you have to spend five hours on the help queue at a Best Buy store, or 12 hours on a phone line being passed from help desk to help desk, being intermittently cut off and having to dial back into the "our menu has changed" warning.
If you say out loud things like "traction,” "open the kimono," "jumping the shark,” "customer-centric" and "disruption," you should have to take Amtrak from Boston to Miami sitting with three teenage girls, a bored housewife from Queens, and three foreigners whose only volume setting is SHRILL, all drunk and talking loudly on their cell phones for the duration of the trip. You will learn as much as folks learn from you when you use those words.
When you are over-served at a company or business event and proceed to tell it like it is in the boorish, emphatic tones of a drunk in love with your own cleverness, you should have to listen to a recording of yourself the next day, and every day after for an entire week. Then you can start your apology calls.
If you can't be bothered to help a kid trying to get his or her first job, or listen to a former co-worker or colleague who is out of a job and looking for help, then within 12 months you should lose your job and have to reach out to people like you. Good luck.
REALLY? Is MediaPost even checking these articles any more for sanity? Comparing HUMAN DEATH to making LinkedIn connections and bad PPT presentations?
1) Regardless of the status of the murderer, it wasn't that he expected "civilized treatment", it was that it is a constitutional right for death to be administered without undue suffering. Whether he deserved the fate or not is irrelevant; the fact that, in order for this country to take lives, it must do so in a humane manner, is what most people took out of this horror show.
2) George Simpson should have used everyone's civil liberties and constitutional rights as the theme to explain why everyone deserves civil treatment. Because we're all people, equal under the law, that's why.
Seriously, can we get some editorial control at MediaPost before we disgrace our industry further mouthing off about something controversial like the death penalty?
"..making LinkedIn connections..." even I can't (and didn't) joke about that.
When you use a business forum to spread extremist political philosophies, misogynistic invective and self-love of your own cleverness you should be sentenced to being considered a boor that no one will do business with.
you forgot xenophobic....
George,
I am with you. So a mistake was made and Lockhart suffered a bit, but much less than what he did to his victim which was much worse than what happened to him.
Hanging and a firing squad was too good for this fiend because it would have been over in a hurry. William Wallace did not deserve to drawn and quartered when he fought for Scotland's freedom several hundred years ago. This bad guy was out for pain and pleasure and drawing and quartering is still letting Lockett of easy since he buried his victim alive and she suffered mentally and physically for a long time.
To make this fair for all why not give the murderer the same death they gave the victim after of coarse a fair trail and solid DNA evidence, after all we do not want to make a mistake. Seems even handed to me - the perpetrator has the same pain as the victim. That would be equal justice. Also it should not be spectacle. The witnesses should be the defense and Prosecuting Attorneys and the Judge not the families or the media.
Steve Douglas
Glad to see someone is contributing to Mel Gibson's Braveheart royalties. We certainly haven't had any good martyr cases since them worth referencing.
OTT, even for snarky you. There are so many diseased people, they would follow Peter Piper into the grave without question. (Note: The tale of Peter Piper was an allegory.)