There’s a FoxNews minipoll up right now that asks:
Should prison guards have taken extra care to protect convicted child molester and ex-priest John Geoghan?
The possible answers and current percentages (12:37 EDT) are:
a. Yes, he was vulnerable. (23%)
b. No, he didn’t deserve special attention. (73%)
c. I’m not sure. (4%)
People disgust me. Personally I think that no punishment was harsh enough for what Geoghan did; but look. The state has a duty to protect those who are in its care, whether or not they are criminals. It’s well known that rapists and child molesters are not well thought of by the bulk of the prison population. So you have to ask the question “why didn’t Geoghan get more consideration?” At the very least putting him in a solitary cell and making sure he had plenty of guards around him when he had to be in contact with the general prison population would have been in order.
Not protecting a prisoner of whom there is reason to believe other prisoners may be a threat to his life is a serious failing of the responsibility of the state. I don’t care if he did molest more than 100 little boys — the state, having convicted him and sentenced him to prison, has a mandate to protect him while he’s there. The 73% of people responding to this Fox poll who say he didn’t need any special protection are either living in a dream world or are seriously in need of a compassion transfusion.
If the state wanted to execute John Geoghan, it would try him on a capital charge, and execute him if it got a conviction (simplistic; we all know it would be appealed ad nauseum, but still). It is not the job of some scumnut fellow prisoner to decide that this man’s life is forfeit, and it’s the job of the state to ensure that said scumnut fellow prisoner doesn’t get a chance to suit action to words or thoughts.
Even the man’s victims don’t think this was right:
The former priest didn’t deserve to be killed, some victims and their advocates say, but his death probably won’t bring much comfort to survivors of clergy sex abuse.
Paul Baier, president of the victims’ group Survivors First (search), said only the courts had the right to decide the fate of a criminal.
“He wasn’t convicted to death and if he was murdered in prison that was more than he was sentenced to,” Baier said. “(But) I don’t think this brings any more solace to his victims.”
(…)
One of those victims, Ralph DelVecchio, said Geoghan deserved prison time but didn’t deserve to be killed.
“I wouldn’t say he deserved to die, you know?” DelVecchio said. “He was in jail – that’s where I believed he should be.”
DelVecchio said he didn’t wish ill on Geoghan.
“It’s over with,” he said.
How can one disagree with that? Certainly having him serve out a term of 9 to 10 years, which was basically a life term for a 68-year-old man, would have been more satisfying to his victims. Hopefully the man thing that killed him will get a nice lethal injection as a result.