By Count Friedrich von Olsen

On Monday, Christopher Lee, the public affairs officer for district attorney Mike Ramos sent me a rather terse message telling me that the the “DA [is] to seek [the]  Death Penalty in [the] McStay family murders.” Mr. Lee told me, “Today, district attorney Mike Ramos filed notice in San Bernardino County Superior Court that his office will seek the death penalty in the case of Charles Ray Merritt, who is charged with the murders of the four members of the McStay family.” Mr. Lee abruptly ended the message with the following sentence: “No further comment or information will be provided at this time.” Well, I have mixed feelings on all of this…
I think someone is putting the cart in front of the horse here. Isn’t there a presumption of innocence in the American system of justice? And if Mr. Merritt’s guilt has yet to be established, isn’t it premature to be seeking the death penalty? Isn’t this tainting the jury pool, prejudicing the public against Mr. Merritt before the trial has begun?
As to the death penalty, I again have mixed feelings. Four-year-old Gianni McStay, who could have offered no meaningful offense to Mr. Merritt or anyone else, sustained seven blows to his head with a small sledgehammer. Being beaten about the head in this way was the last thing that poor little fellow experienced in his too brief life…
This was the act of a depraved, deeply antisocial, psychopathic individual. The outrage of that act alone – not even considering what was done to Gianni’s father, mother and younger brother – conjures in me a near apoplectic anger, one that drives me toward wanting to plunge the needle into the perpetrator myself…
Still, there are other considerations, not the least of which is that death by lethal injection is too good of a fate for the McStay Family’s murderer. I happen to think a lifetime of imprisonment would represent a far more miserable circumstance for this purveyor of evil, one that will drone on interminably, as the pleasures of the world pass him by and freedom itself is denied him. Executing him will merely provide him with an exit into peaceful, anxiety-free and untroubled oblivion…
I mean not to hash out a pro and con treatise on the death penalty here, but while we are at the subject I would briefly say that the best rationale for capital punishment is the assurance it provides that a murderous sociopath hell bent on further mayhem will no longer walk among us, victimizing us at random or purposefully, thoughtlessly or diabolically. Laying such a person into his grave ends the possibility that he will lay any others, innocent or guilty, into theirs. At this late stage of human development, with prisons and detention facilities that are for all practical and realistic purposes impregnable from inside and without, although there may be the exceptions of a few breakouts to prove the rule, relieves us of the concern that such monsters will loiter among us on this side of the prison walls. That would, it seems to me, obliterate the best justification there is for the application of the death penalty…
The deterrent argument, one that holds that we execute a particular class of criminals not so much to punish them but to dissuade others from imitating them, is, I believe subject to question, as well. No doubt the death penalty scares people and it would certainly make those contemplating, or at least some of those contemplating, a heinous act think twice. But as noted above, a lifetime in prison is every bit as undesirable of a fate as an early exit to the afterlife, if there is such, and emphasizing life terms without the possibility of release would very likely have the same deterrent effect…
There is, some proponents for the death penalty insist, a moral imperative that we utilize it. I find such an approach deeply troubling. This presupposes our own personal moral rectitude, our collective moral rectitude, societal moral rectitude and governmental rectitude. Perhaps you are convinced of your own and my own personal moral rectitude. I am not convinced of such, neither yours, gentle reader who I hope will not take offense, nor my own. If we are to act in unison on this, using our collective moral authority, how can we be certain that somewhere among us – the 40 million of us who live in California – is not someone who is, or several someones who are, morally suspect? As to our society and government, what of the Dred Scott Decision? The Dahlgren Affair? The state of California’s eugenics program in which it forcefully sterilized those it defined as mental defectives? The firebombing of Tokyo? The atomic bombing of Hiroshima? Of Nagasaki? Are we without sin and eligible to cast the first stone or any stone at all? Have we not engaged, as a collective community, as a state, as a nation and as a society in reprehensible action? Have we not murdered? Have we not mass murdered? Sure, one part of the Bible says, “An eye for an eye.” Another part proclaims “Judge not let ye be judged…”
And how certain can we be of guilt? With some of the rather slim detail the district attorney’s office let loose last month, I am inching away from my doubt about Mr. Merritt’s guilt. Let us even say that after a full rendering of the facts, I am convinced of his guilt. And let us assume I join with the multitude and call for Mr. Merritt’s head upon a platter, i.e., the injection of sedatives and poisons in sufficient quantity that will convey him from this world into the next. Our blood lust will have been sated then, right?  I think not…
The McStays will not come back, this we know. And then what if we learn that some major element in the case that convicted Mr. Merritt was false? I know of numerous times in my too-long life there was something of which I was absolutely convinced. But then I learned that I was mistaken. Many of these were trifling matters. Others were more meaningful. Some were quite important with tremendous implication, and my error entailed expense and loss. Let me ask you, good reader, have you never thought something to be the case and learned later it was not? Have you ever taken deliberate action which you believed safe, or sensible, or justified or prudent, only to learn it was neither safe nor sensible, neither justifiable nor prudent? So, if we put Mr. Merritt to death and then learn, belatedly, that there was some error or mistake in his conviction, would we all not then be guilty, at the least, of manslaughter? Or would that actually be collective first degree murder? Are we to lock ourselves away, every last one of us? Are we to see our entire population executed? I know, most would say such talk is absurd…
Let us return to Mr. Lee’s statement: “No further comment or information will be provided at this time.” My question is, “Why not?” It has already been close to eight months since Mr. Merritt was arrested and charged. In a previous column I laid out why I believe the district attorney’s silence on this case does not stand scrutiny. Hiding information from the public has no conceivable benefit. Revealing information about the case will result in no conceivable harm: If the case is as strong as the district attorney implies, then sharing details about it with the public will not compromise it. The district attorney’s office has now upped the stakes by declaring it will seek the death penalty for Mr. Merritt. Such a declaration should be met with a demand as to why. And that question should include how it is that the district attorney is so convinced of Mr. Merritt’s guilt. Laying these facts out now will allow, perhaps, some yet unknown individual with knowledge of Mr. Merritt’s guilt or innocence to see the significance of the information in his or her possession and perhaps be inspired to come forward, to either solidify the district attorney’s case or prevent a miscarriage of justice. The district attorney cannot plausibly argue that continuing to hide the ball will further the cause of justice or ensure a fair trial by not prejudicing the juror pool: The jury pool was already tainted when district attorney Mike Ramos publicly declared Mr. Merritt guilty and when his office on Monday announced it was seeking the death penalty…
We are not the fools we are being taken for. The district attorney should have more respect for the people of this county than he does…