Justice system at fault for murders

By William Chamberlin
The Guardsman

The mishandled cases of Amy Bishop, who killed her brother, and Rodney Alcala, who raped a child, led twenty years later to a murderous professor and the conviction of a serial killer.

Bishop, 44, killed three of her fellow biology professors in February. In 1986, at age 21, Bishop shot and killed her brother with a shotgun, but was released without charges.

Alcala, 66, was found guilty in a series of murders that he committed in the 1970s, including
those of four women and a child. He was tried twice for the rape and murder of Robin Samsoe, but was acquitted both times based on technicalities.

I guess that’s sweet home America, where our citizens pay taxes to keep the prisons full of drug violators while murderers get the chance to roam free.

Both Bishop and Alcala were recently apprehended and will have to face up to their crimes. They probably won’t be able to go out on any more killing sprees, but we’ll see. There has been a lot of slapping on the wrists recently in our justice system.

Justice is not too much to ask.

Bishop shot her brother in the abdomen after they had an argument, the Boston Globe reported. The police chief at the time ordered that the paperwork be stopped and Bishop released to her mother; that paperwork has been missing since 1987.

Bishop killed her brother. She admitted it, and they let her go home to her mother.

A revolutionary technique the respective authorities could try to implement would be to prevent preventable tragedies! Let’s just make some basic across-the-board rules, like if you kill your brother or rape a child, you go to prison for a long time.

The current system of filling over-crowded prisons while more mass shootings and serial killers are materializing is faulty at best.

Now, to say that any law enforcement agency should be able to anticipate all serial killers and psychotic breaks of professors would be unfair. In fact it’s impossible. The only way to anticipate such a thing is if there were slight warning signs which drew attention … like fratricide or child rape.

When two stories of this nature are in the news in a month, maybe it’s time to analyze the processes by which we are pursuing and prosecuting our criminals.

Take the recent December exoneration of James Bain, a man who innocently served 35 years for the alleged kidnapping and rape of a boy, as reported by CNN.

Donald Gates was also released last December, after 28 innocent years of incarceration for the murder of a Georgetown University student, according to the Washington Post. DNA evidence proved Gates did not kill the student.

And good job on cracking down on the grandma with the ancient marijuana charge a few weeks back. Homenella Cole, 74, who caught a marijuana charge over 30 years ago, was recently jailed while committing the terrible crime of visiting the U.S. from her Canadian home. Oh, the lives that were saved in that epic apprehension!

The criminal justice system in this country is a sad joke at times and all at the expense of the citizens. Whether it’s spending an absurd amount of tax dollars to house “criminals” like Bain and Gates or the total absence of justice in the case of Seth Bishop, the system has big cracks.

Recently, the California prison system was ordered by three San Francisco federal judges to release up to 40 percent of its criminals due to overcrowding, which they ruled “violates the rights of prisoners,” according to the Examiner.

The criminal justice system in this country having its weak moments is fair. The criminal justice system in this country having its Johannes Mehserle moment: completely unacceptable.

Let’s keep it simple; put killers and rapists in prison. The concept is not that difficult.