The Pitchfork Problem (Rated R)

This essay concerns the difficult issue of dealing with society’s most dangerous offenders. While everyone is welcome to comment, I’ll be especially interested to hear from a British lawyer with whom I’ve been communicating.

In one of England’s most famous criminal cases, an English baker named Colin Pitchfork was convicted of raping and murdering two schoolgirls in their early teens. The conviction was the first to be aided by DNA evidence and was the subjected of the Joseph Wambaugh’s book, The Blooding. Mr. Pitchfork received a life sentence in 1989. I recently learned that Mr. Pitchfork will be released in 2019. Does anyone think that is a good idea? Mr. Pitchfork will only be 57 years old. I think a 57-year-old man could still pose a terrible threat to any teenage girl unlucky enough to cross his path.

Isn’t it troubling to know he’ll be back out on the street?

If an offender makes a living as a purse snatcher, about the time he turns 40, he is going to conclude that he should get into another line of work. Likewise, some people argued that Reggie, the surviving member of London’s notorious Cray Twins could have been released before the end of his 30-year term without endangering the public. In his twenties and thirties, he and his twin brother Ronnie terrorized the city. In his sixties, he would have been good for a laugh.

Bottom line: I find the thought of Colin Pitchfork ever breathing free air again absolutely terrifying. I wish the ODCs would perform a PSH and make the world a better place.

There was a guy in Pennsylvania by the name of Joseph “Jo-Jo” Bowen who got a life sentence for killing a police officer. A few years later, he attempted to escape. In the process, he and his accomplice knifed a warden and assistant warden to death. What do we do with a guy like that?

The famous author, Joseph Wambaugh, who spend 14 years as a Los Angeles police officer, once spoke to a group of inmates at San Quentin. When asked of his view on capital punishment, he replied, “I think a man in prison ought to have the right to do his time in peace. I’ll give you all the crimes of passion you want, but if you contract a murder, both parties ought to be subject to the death penalty. Particularly if you get unanimous support from the inmates around.” (One inmate noted that his colleagues on death row wouldn’t like that.)

I am with Wambaugh on the death penalty. We have to be harsher when inmates kill each other.

Robert “Bonsai Bob” Vickers was serving time in an Arizona prison for a series of burglaries. One day, he discovered his cellmate had drunk his Kool-Aid. Mr. Vickers expressed his disapproval by strangling the man to death, then used a cigarette to sign his work by burning the word “Bonsai” into the sole of the late, lamented’s foot. When the guards investigated, Mr. Vickers ordered them, “Get this piece of shit out of my cell.”

After he’d been convicted of that murder, Mr. Vickers was on janitorial duty when another inmate made a lewd remark about his niece. (At this point, my collaborator asked, “Why would he DO that?” To which I replied, “I have no idea.” If I’d been anywhere near Mr. Vickers, I would have kept a low profile.) Mr. Vickers constructed a firebomb out of janitorial supplies and threw it into the man’s cell, with grisly results. While I believe it’s possible to strangle someone in a fit of passion, I don’t think that constructing a firebomb qualifies.

On trial for his life for the second time, Mr. Vickers made a partially successful escape attempt. He made it out of his cellblock onto the roof of a prison building, where he and an accomplish discovered, to their intense chagrin, that there was no way to get down off of the roof and the building was too high to take a chance on jumping. They consoled themselves by performing a striptease for the female tower guard, who was holding a rifle on them. After his second murder conviction, Vickers did not make things easy for his defense team. He sent a letter to the court, announcing that if the state of Arizona did not execute them, he would “spill more blood than they could ever mop up.”

When he learned that Governor Bruce Babbitt was considering commuting his sentence to life without the possibility of parole, Vickers wrote the Governor a letter, demanding to know what the holdup was. He said, “Hurry up, I’ve got a date with the Devil’s wife.”

The state of Arizona finally did get around to executing Mr. Vickers. Personally, I think he made a great argument in favor of the death penalty.

Remember the Shakespearean quote, “Beware MacDuff?” I’ll never forget the case of Kenneth Allan McDuff. In the mid-sixties, McDuff was convicted of raping and murdering a teenage girl, as well as killing two of her male companions. He was sent to death row. In 1972, the United States Supreme Court found the death penalty to be unconstitutional. McDuff served more than twenty years in a Texas maximum-security prison. Then, a Texas judge mandated that prisoners be released to alleviate overcrowding. McDuff was released, with predictably ghastly results. In a few years, McDuff was back on Texas’s death row, after having been convicted of murdering two Texas women. How many additional murders he is responsible for is a question for speculation. As I say to my English friends, I hope Colin Pitchfork doesn’t end up being another Kenneth Allan McDuff.