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When my kids do something wrong, I’m quick to respond by pointing out the problem and doling out the appropriate punishment. As a parent and a dad, I am the judge and jury. No habeas corpus, no fair trial, no jury of your peers. Discipline and punishment pretty much goes like this: you mess up, you accept responsibility, now carry on.
Take that a step further where someone harms your child in some way. Would you feel an urge to extend your vigilantism and deliver the verdict on your own? Personally, I don’t know how I would restrain myself if I was put in the situation, even knowing that the results of my vigilante behavior might ultimately put me in jail. Crimes of passion may seem unreasonable from the outside, but they begin to appear almost logical if placed in a personal and subjective context. Even then, it doesn’t excuse the crime or the offender.
What if a heinous crime occurs within the family among your own children? Like a page taken from Steinbeck’s classic novel, Of Mice and Men, Jamar Pinkney, Sr. decided to play the role of executioner after learning that his 15-year-old son had been molesting his 3-year-old half-sister. Pinkney, who has no previous criminal history, learned of the confession from the boy’s mother, Lazette Cherry, who stated that the confession wasn’t “something you sweep under the rug.”
Unfortunately, Pinkney agreed too much.
After pistol whipping his son repeatedly, he forced the boy outside where the boy was stripped and then shot execution-style in the back of the head, despite pleas by both the boy and his mother. Pinkney later turned himself into authorities and is apparently expressing grief over the whole incident.
I’m not sure how I would respond to news that one child was hurting another, but I can guarantee that execution would not cross my mind. Did the father think that the justice system would do more harm than his own immediate justice? Did this rationale lead Pinkney to believe that killing his own son was more humane than putting him through years of legal proceedings and the stigma of being a sexual offender? More importantly, what should Pinkney have done instead?
The prosecuting attorney said in a statement: "No individual has the right to exact the death penalty on another no matter how reprehensible the behavior. That is why we have laws." Now that Pinkney has taken the law into his own hands and murdered his own son in retaliation for harming his sister, how do you prosecute? Are crimes of passion at all valid in Pinkney’s case (or any case)? What would drive a father to do something like this?
View more news on Pinkney via Google News.
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written by Joeprah, November 20, 2009
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written by Daddy Files, November 20, 2009
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written by pjmullen, November 20, 2009
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written by Patrick D., November 20, 2009
Suppose that you replace son with unidentified 15-year-old hoodlum in the house molesting his daughter. See how the scenario changes? Suddenly, someone unknown to you has molested your daughter and you've caught him. You pistol-whip him, but you can't get the image of your barely talking daughter out of your head. You flip and pull the trigger. Immediately, you regret it, but the gun is in your hand and the kid is dead.
(Maybe I should have been a defense attorney? Nah. Couldn't sleep at night.)
For the record, I think he screwed up. Had he just pistol-whipped and then turned the kid into the cops, this would be hardly worth a blog post. Yes, he should probably go to jail for a very long time.
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written by ciara, November 20, 2009
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written by WeaselMomma, November 21, 2009
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written by Zerzix, November 21, 2009
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written by PC NenaX, November 30, 2009
My heart hurts for the kid, I cannot imagine what his last moments and thoughts were.
Now I can understand this had it been a grown man was doing this to your child, but not a child to another child. Serious anger management issues and people like that do not need firearms in their home. Mom must have been just as nuts to tell him this and not get the boy out the house into a safer place. She would have had to have known this man was capable of acting this way, perhaps not as extreme but I cannot imagine any mother wanting their child to be pistol whipped or beaten by their spouse or boyfriend.
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