Howard Cooper, Contributor

Personal security and the preservation of life and property is a major reason why individuals come together to form nations, of which the 'cells' may be called families, tribes, communities, clubs, associations or gangs.

Each of these 'cells' will have their rules, regulations, by-laws and code of ethics by which the members are constrained to conduct themselves (behave), so as to contribute to the common good of all the others and to promote and enhance that feeling or fact of 'personal security'.

The individual in our nation has the right to protect his life and the life of his dependants and family, to the point where he may take the life of another member of the nation, if he justifiably perceives that such a person is acting in such a way to take his own life or the life of his family member or dependent. This is regarded by the laws of our nation as 'killing in self-defence'.

It is my view that when an individual's life is threatened and is taken, since he failed to defend himself from his assailant, the nation has an obligation to take the life of the original assailant who killed this individual, as an expression of the right to preserve the life of the law-abiding individual who failed at self-defence.

'A RED HERRING'

The considerations of the effectiveness or not, of capital punishment as a deterrent to murder, are of no significance whatsoever. It is a 'red herring'.

If the processes of crime detection, prosecution and judgment is flawed, then all efforts must be made to fix this problem in the shortest possible time. This will entail serious reforms in the efforts of the Jamaica Constabulary Force at evidence-gathering and presentation, witness identification and protection of witnesses, and also the Ministry of Justice's persistent efforts to improve the number and quality of persons available to serve as jurors, and other legal administration improvements.

I will concede that some efforts are being made here, but they are not delivering the improvements as fast as they should.

When, however, appeals by convicted criminals are exhausted and produced in court-compelling evidence of murder, and, in some cases, plain wickedness (abuse of elderly women by the murderer), the murderer should be killed as soon thereafter, as is possible.

The nation has an obligation to its law-abiding citizens to kill those persons, who murder any of them, because the law-abiding citizens were not able to kill their assailants in self-defence before they were killed, even as it has an obligation to provide a defence force, comprised of trained killers, to protect its citizens from attacks on their lives by foreigners.