Crime and punishment

By DAVID EPPS
Contributing Writer

I read in a local newspaper recently that a Coweta County woman had been exiled by a judge. I didn’t know you could do that anymore. The Shah of Iran was in an involuntary exile at the end of his life and the practice was common long ago, but it’s the first case I’ve heard of in a long time. It seems the woman was continually in trouble with the law and had been arrested 79 times and charged with 117 crimes. The clincher was when she made a terroristic threat and threatened to kill a magistrate judge. Judges do not take kindly to such actions.

The woman pled guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with two years to serve. In addition, she is “banished” from five counties for the remainder of her eight-year sentence after she is released from custody. If she violates her exile, back into the slammer she goes! So, I got to thinking: Why not revive some of those old and ancient punishments and implement them in the modern era? Flogging, for example. The definition of flogging is, “To beat severely with a whip or rod.”

A few weeks ago, I was in a bookstore when a small boy erupted in horrific screaming. It seems he wanted his mother to buy him something and his mother told him, “No.” Evidently the kid was unused to being told “no” and expressed his displeasure in a way that knocked the shingles off the roof of the high school across town. Every adult in the place stopped in their tracks and winced. The mother, of course, bought him the item and the diabolical wailing ceased. She looked over at me and said with an embarrassed grin, “Well, what can one say?” I replied, “I used to say to my kids, ‘The beating will now begin.’” She glowered at me as though I were a Neanderthal, scooped up her kid, and stormed out. So, I recommend flogging — not for the kid, but for the parents who inflict such misery on the innocents around them by refusing to discipline their little terrorist.

Water torture is another old method of punishment I might consider recommending. Every time I go to the movies, somebody gets up, slides in front of me, and squashes my toes on their way to the restroom. And, in some churches, you’d think that half the congregation was in kidney failure by the number of people who stream to the restrooms during important parts of the service. This is more information than you want to know, but I got to the restroom before the movies and before church. Thus, I can actually sit through a two-hour movie without popping up in front of someone and interrupting their concentration. So, here’s my proposal: Following a few weeks of warning, after the movie starts and after church begins, lock the restroom doors. Yep, lock ‘em tight. It’s not exactly “water torture” but it’s close enough.

I do think some sort of appropriate punishment should be meted out for certain crimes against humanity. For example, I think that the engineers who designed the coach seats on passenger airplanes should be punished. Maybe stuffed into a sock drawer and held there for however long the average cross-country airline flight is. And they should be fed stale peanuts and be offered bottles of warm water. They should be allowed to go to the rest room during the punishment period but the rest room should be the size of a sock drawer and always have long lines of people waiting to get in. And before they get into the rest room, they should have surly security guards pat them down and make them take off their shoes and coats.

But I like the exile thing. I think that former presidents, of whatever party, who, after leaving the presidency, and who try to speak to national issues, should be exiled to Cuba or North Korea. If they wanted to do something, they should have done it while they were in office. It just seems small and petty for the ex-prez to start lobbing verbal stones at the guy in the White House. If you didn’t get it done when you had the chance, you should sit down and just be quiet. In fact, exile all former office holders who heckle those who now occupy their former jobs. The only problem is that Cuba and North Korea probably wouldn’t want them.

Now it never fails that after I write an article such as this, that someone actually takes me seriously and writes in to tell me how horrified they are that I advocate flogging, water torture, exile to Cuba, or confining someone to a sock drawer ... they should be flogged.