A Hideous Dilemma

How does a decent society deal with the monsters among them? Those pathological and inhumane specimens of human detritus incapable of compassion for others, who prey on the most vulnerable in society? Most developed countries have long ago eschewed capital punishment as an acceptable form of justice to deal with the capital offences and unspeakable crimes foisted on their communities by marginal members of society whose psychopathy marks them as incapable of living among normal people.

And although most members of society shudder at the very prospect of agreeing to enable their government to enact capital forms of punishment in response to truly egregious crimes against humanity, there are times when even the most ardent anti-capital-punishment supporters have cause for second thought. The moral reality is that to take a life under any circumstances as a just penalty by the state imposed upon nightmare offences does reflect our humanity.

Yet, there are times when we want to distance ourselves from the state forgiveness we offer to those whose crimes transcend the darkly menacing passage between wrong-doing and downright evil, and in our sorrow would briefly accept the unthinkable of a life for a life. Take the example of a murderer of three generations of one family, a predator who, in the deliberation of cold blood, murdered a set of grandparents, their two young grandchildren, and the childen's parents.

In a secluded backwoods area, in Alberta, where the entire family of six had embarked on a camping expedition. This degenerate monster of whom we speak tracked the family, and with calibrated intent, murdered the adults to enable him to capture the children, two young girls, aged 11 and 13. He planned to murder the grandparents and the parents because their protective status with their children interfered with his intent to abduct the girls.

The children became his playthings for a week. A week of unspeakable agony for the children, witness to their parents' and grandparents' murder, and then to become the horribly obscene subject of this monster's sexual fantasies and gratifications. It's impossible to visualize the extent of their terror. And then it was the girls' turn to be murdered. This disaster occurred in 1982, and the murderer, David Shearing, has been incarcerated with a life sentence since then.

After serving society's deemed appropriate punishment for his unspeakable crimes, this pitiless man felt it would be appropriate for him to be discharged back into the free world. That quarter-century of imprisonment, he felt, discharged his obligations to society, his crimes paid for, himself now washed clean of responsibility. He should be free to resume his place in free society.

And so he sought day parole. After serving a 'life sentence', it becomes an automatic process to apply for a review after for parole. He deemed it timely, having served the obligatory 26 years in prison for his crimes to apply. He was, he said, deeply ashamed of himself for killing the family, and now was seeking the opportunity to forge a new beginning for himself. A new beginning.

He wanted, he said, the opportunity to be loved and to be with caring people, to share their lives with him and him they. His ungovernably cruel passions had led him to destroy a loving and caring family, so they could no longer share their lives with those who cared for them. Amazingly, at the hearing of the National Parole Board of Canada, the man sat with his wife, to await the parole board's finding.

It's beyond belief that any woman could have any emotional investment in a man so obviously incapable of returning meaningful emotions other than how to appease the beast in himself. That said, there are such women: Karla Homulka with her husband Paul Bernardo, for example. Whose punishments for their unspeakable crimes would never suffice to wipe their personal record clean of guilt.

When his appeal for parole was denied - "The board's decision today is to deny both day and full parole", no reasons given by any of the three members who reached that decision - the murderer expressed no emotion on the board's decision.