Dennis Prager: The death penalty, a defense.

[billc]

Dennis Prager on a recent show talked about Norman Mailer and how he helped free this convicted killer...who killed another person six weeks after being released...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Mailer

In 1980, Mailer spearheaded convicted killer Jack Abbott's successful bid for parole. In 1977, Abbott had read about Mailer's work on The Executioner's Song and wrote to Mailer, offering to enlighten the author about Abbott's time behind bars and the conditions he was experiencing. Mailer, impressed, helped to publish In the Belly of the Beast, a book on life in the prison system consisting of Abbott's letters to Mailer. Once paroled, Abbott committed a murder in New York City six weeks after his release, stabbing to death 22-year-old Richard Adan. Consequently, Mailer was subject to criticism for his role. In a 1992 interview with the Buffalo News, he conceded that his involvement was "another episode in my life in which I can find nothing to cheer about or nothing to take pride in."[SUP][12

][/SUP]

 

[elder999]

Mailer screwed up. He took a man who was basically institutionalized, and planted him in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where a confrontation like the one that led to his stabbing the waiter was inevitable-making the stabbing inevitable. While the altruism of his gesture, and the recognition of talent that motivated it were admirable, his execution was not, and it was his execution of this that led to Jack Abbot's return to crime-something that wasn't necessarily inevitable, and should have been anticipated and mitigated.

Of course, In the Belly of the Beast was well written, but naive-and Jack Abbot was also naive about the world outside of prison, and should have had more supervision. It being New York in the 70's, he was never really subject to the death penalty-and maybe didn't have to spend the rest of his life in prison, if not for Norm's negligence....