There was an incident that happened in a rural community here several weeks ago that has made international headlines.
A man was arrested and charged with possession of child pornography. He apparently had around 900 pictures depicting minors in sexual acts on two CDs. The CDs wound up in the possession of his wife's family members, who reported him to authorities. After an investigation by an Internet Crimes Task Force out of neighboring Knoxville, he was arrested. He had prior convictions from several years ago from Ohio, where he was charged with sex crimes against his wife's sister's one-year-old and four-year-old daughters. He was not on a sex offender registry in Ohio or Tennessee, for whatever reason.
After a few weeks in jail, he was released, presumably on bail. The explanation given by our local sheriff's department was that he had been released because he was in the final stages with a plea deal with the D.A.'s office. Since they let him out, we assumed that plea deal included no jail time . . . and, in fact, this past Monday he pled guilty and received five years probation. Whether he should've received prison time is another argument entirely.
Four days after he was released from jail las month, two of his neighbors got together and decided to burn his house down to chase him out of the neighborhood. Investigators say that several other neighbors in the extremely poor neighborhood urged the two men to go ahead with their plans. Shortly after midnight, a fire began at the front of the residence. The rear door of the residence had been nailed shut sometime prior to all of this happening, apparently by the home's owner. The fire quickly engulfed the front of the home, trapping the man and his wife inside. They would've both died, but a neighbor kicked in the rear door, allowing the sex offender to escape. His wife had already collapsed at this point. The husband and an officer arriving on the scene revived her, but she died a short time later.
From the men's statements to investigators, they did not intend for anyone to be hurt in the fire; they simply wanted to run them out of the neighborhood. But Tennessee law says that if someone dies in a fire, it's murder if you intended to set the fire, whether or not you intended for someone to be killed. So both men are charged with first degree murder.
Last night, Nancy Grace "” who is to journalists as Michael Moore is to Democrats "” featured this on her program. I was invited on as a guest, but did not have the time to leave home and drive to a television studio. It's probably a good thing for her, because I wouldn't have played along with her sensationalizing, embellishing style . . . and I don't think she would've liked that.
Anyway, Grace says that an innocent woman died because of what her husband did. In fact, I think her exact words were, "She lost her life because of more of [his] behavior."
What do you think?
My thinking is that I wouldn't want this guy living next to my children. But we have laws and a judicial system in this country for a reason. The way I see it isn't that an innocent woman died because her husband was a pedophile, but that an innocent woman died because two criminals figured they would decide for themselves what punishment is appropriate for this guy. Another line of thinking seems to be that if the woman had lived and her perverted husband had died, it would've been okay. Well, no, it still wouldn't have been okay. It still would've been murder.
Now, if one of these two men had a child who was a victim of the sex offender, then I would find it harder to blame them.
Vigilante justice or murder?
