If you asked me: "Should child killers, serial rapists, serial killers, torturers, terrorists and cannibals be executed?" I would always say yes. They are monsters among us. They are without cure and they live to commit their deeds. When prevented, they fill waking moments with fantasies of the atrocities they've committed and the joy they experience as a result.

Had my kid been in that daycare center in Oklahoma City, I would have said kill Timothy McVeigh. But when the day of his execution came about, I felt ashamed of the hype. I wondered why we jumped up and down when his heart stopped. While the international courts try remorseless megalomaniac, Milosovic, Americans regard it with the same feeling as they might toward a guest on The Jerry Springer Show who says, "I ain't no whore." We don't even gag on our cereal in the morning when millions are macheted to death in Congo.

I watched the people in the United Kingdom demand the true locations and new names of Jamie Bulger's child killers, now 18, while they called Americans barbaric for killing McViegh with fanfare. Feisty patriots say the former FBI agent Robert Hannsen deserves death. But they know that to kill him is to lose any information he might hold. O.J. Simpson is linked to his wife's death; he's slammed in civil court and pays not one dime. David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, sits in prison exploiting rumors of conspiracy and uses his time to play born again Jewish Christian while we forget the names of the young hopeful people who wound up with his bullets in their heads and faces.

People who brutalize, rape, beat, torment, stalk, menace and generally threaten society are routinely set free on bail and probation. They wear ankle bracelets that go unmonitored for hours at a time and move from state to state with impunity. They get out on good time and unless reformed they kill or maim again.

People who committed acts of racial violence and intolerance 30 years ago are 'forgiven and forgotten' while their life long victims have to try to remind the public of what it all means, but unfortunately get no where. The nephew of a rich family, clearly guilty of a horrible murder, is still free after 30 years because the investigation was manipulated and bungled. He is treated like a child and gently taken along the path to a plea bargain or acquittal. Someone of lesser income and status wouldn't have had so many years to enjoy family, trust funds, tennis, yachting and green grass any time they want.

Victims of crime tell stories about how the execution of their offender did not bring them. Are we really so sure that the death penalty as a tool of authority available at any time is such a great thing?

There are monsters among us who are beyond redemption. They are truly insane and evil. There are people whose acts are so brutal, atrocious and vile they don't deserve so much as a trial. There are miscreants who serve no purpose on this planet but to destroy. They should die.

Overall I felt ugly and queasy as the nation cheered over McVeigh's last heartbeat. I saw the Oklahoma City Memorial far more representative of human dignity. The massive and potent display includes only two notations of McVeigh. The mug shot detailing his capture and conviction and the newspaper headline that said he died. They chose to ignore him.

The U.S. legal and criminal justice system is poised on a case-by-case situation. You can't watch every state in the country, and every county in the state, and every trial in the county for short changes in legal representation, political bias and socio-economic disparities.

I can't think of a more horrible punishment than being left to rot in hell with other vile humans in prison forever. Some of the most horrible criminals caught in England actually disliked imprisonment. The Moor Murderer suffered so much he went on a hunger strike. Poor thing, imagine being that miserable.

There's a man imprisoned under Riker's Island, New York. Like Hannibal Lecter, he lives in a cell, observed 24 hours a day by camera and constantly lit. Despite being in the highest maximum-security prison in the nation he managed to assassinate a guard who was only weeks from retirement. He told a reporter, years ago, that its best not let him out because he is no longer remotely human. He doesn't care. He doesn't feel. He'll kill just to kill.

What can be done? What do we do now?

We can stop having children without a plan and when we are incapable of being adults. We can try to support and revitalize communities that are left to decay like cavities. We can encourage education in a meaningful way. We can stop giving benefits of fine living to people who live irresponsibly. We could promote good, long and real marriage and not make divorce and marriage equally easy and ugly.

We can make insurance companies provide care for all people and allow customers to sue when they're screwed out of benefits or life saving treatments. We can begin to deal with death and treat hospices as importantly as we regard day care. We can respect our planet, atmosphere and natural resources. We can stop giving free passes to rich privileged kids who don't care and bestow opportunities on poor kids who do have dreams.

We could, but we don't. Our actions prove otherwise.

We don't pave the roads in poor parts of town and we don't do anything to encourage poor white trash to get off welfare. We hold different standards to different colors of skin and we allow one cop to bring down the entire L.A. police department. We vote in a president that was supported and elected by corporate lobbyists and we complain about a redneck president who added diversity to the White House but couldn't keep his pants zipped.

We spill oil into the water affecting hundreds of generations of wildlife. We know the removal of a single species as lowly as the ant could cause the demise of humanity. We set fire to a building filled with children in Waco, Texas, but kill McVeigh for doing the same. We allow the IRS to ruin hard working people and reward wealthy people with great financial advisors. We pay hospital physicians an average of $5 an hour and encourage private physicians to more.

We watch bad TV and have finally reached an era where most people don't know who the Beatles were.

Our children can have the same education as we did but only if we pay for private. Public school students are likely to be ignored, abused and placed in an inconsistent system without even so much as a blade of grass or a whiff of hope.

We allow morticians to charge thousands of dollars for wooden boxes that will decay within years to house dead people in plots that are costly to rent. We ignore old buildings of grandeur and erect plaster mansions with Jacuzzi baths. We destroy neighborhoods by building mini malls, fast food joints, parking lots and storage spaces. We promote individual gas guzzling cars and the use of cell phones while depleting and ignoring acceptable public transportation and the safety of others.

Road rage is nothing more than a cold to us, even though it kills.

We promote logging and fishing without doing much to compensate for what we over consume. We shoot bears, bobcats, deer and other wild life that were here first and we build our townhouses, hillside homes and wilderness retreats in their habitats.

We let cops and servicemen slide when they punch their wives in the face. We allow gays and lesbians to be bashed, discriminated and tormented--not accepting that they are a part of us. We allow religions to condemn them as if they don't exist.

We kill each other over the refutable concept of God.

All said who are we to lay the death penalty on anyone?

Copyright © 2001 Viki Reed. All Rights Reserved.