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Last year I posted a list of ten things that I hoped to hear or read about during my lifetime.
This last week-end, one of the things on my list came true.
Clifford Olson died.
Because he is Canadian and we do not have the death penalty,
he wasn't executed.
Protected during his
incarceration, he wasn't murdered by
another inmate.
He died of natural causes.
As natural as cancer can be, I suppose.
The child torturer/rapist/murderer is gone.
The tormentor of the families of his victims is gone.
Long years of incarceration should have been a terrible
punishment for him, but by all accounts he thrived in prison.
And that isn't right.
But I'm grateful to be living in a country where the state
does not have the right to execute any of its citizens.
If the cost to us is the continued presence of psychopaths
like Clifford Olson in our penal system
so be it.
