The Chronicle ponders the Scott Peterson case
There's plenty of Houston news out there, but the Chronicle editors felt the need to give us an editorial about Scott Peterson:
Yet the Petersons' story differs only in slight detail from other cases all over the country. A man desperate to end his marriage and switch partners acts on the impulse to murder rather than divorce. Recently a coach in a Houston suburb was charged with a similar crime.
There's nothing like painting a broad section of the populace with the sins of Scott Peterson and David Mark Temple.
A show of remorse might have won Peterson the unenviable penalty of life without parole. However, moralists can argue that the display of an emotionless shell by a man who has forfeited any life worth living is more understandable than the tasteless cheers and applause of courtwatchers when the death sentence was handed down.
The media's obsession with this case turned it into a circus. Look at your own industry, editors.
Many commentators talked of closure, showing their ignorance of California's populous death row. California's system guarantees decades of appeals, ensuring that hundreds of death row inmates have only a slight chance of being executed. Most will expire in prison from natural causes or suicide. Some murderers will be murdered by fellow inmates.
I'd watch that talk of commentators and ignorance. Pot and kettle, you know.
But, back to California's little-functioning death row system. The editors should love that, with their opposition to the death penalty. Well, they are opposed to death for murderers. They are in favor of death for unwanted babies.
Finally, the editors veer off into another topic:
Unrelated to the lurid carnival of coverage given the Peterson case, a more significant story was reported Monday. The FBI announced that murders in the United States declined during the first six months of this year, as did all violent crimes.
Crime rates rise and fall in cycles that closely follow population bubbles and the relative number of young males in society. However, a sharp drop in the number of murder victims in the United States is a greater cause for comfort than the abysmal fate, well-earned though it might be, handed Scott Peterson.
It's always interesting when the media talk about falling crime rates, because this usually stumps them. Why do crime rates fall? One reason certainly is that the bad guys who tend to commit violent crimes are locked away in prison.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 12/15/04 12:50 PM | Houston Chronicle | Print | Comments (5)
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