Posted on 01/25/2006 11:35:12 AM PST by US admirer
WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) - A jury rejected an insanity defense and found prison inmate Joseph Druce guilty Wednesday of first-degree murder in the strangulation of pedophile priest John Geoghan, a central figure in Boston's clergy sex abuse scandal.
Druce admitted sneaking into Geoghan's prison cell in August 2003. He jammed the door shut with a book, then beat and strangled the 68-year-old before guards could stop him.
The defense had argued that Druce was mentally ill and under the delusion that God had chosen him to kill Geoghan and send a message to pedophiles around the world.
Prosecutor Lawrence Murphy presented another picture of Druce, describing him as a conniving killer who planned the murder for weeks so he could be a "big shot" in prison.
"He was not a mentally ill person, raging out of control," Murphy said. "He's a calculating individual who waited for his opportunity."
The jury of five women and seven men deliberated for about six hours before reaching the guilty verdict.
Druce, 40, is already serving a life sentence for killing a man who allegedly made a sexual pass at him after picking Druce up hitchhiking. He unsuccessfully used an insanity defense during that 1989 trial.
With the new conviction, he'll face another life sentence without the possibility of parole.
On the witness stand, Druce described a troubled childhood in which his father beat him and his mother. He said he was physically and sexually abused at a residential school for troubled children.
Druce said he killed Geoghan to avenge the innocent children the defrocked priest was accused of molesting. He said he overheard Geoghan advise other inmates on how to molest children and say he planned to move to South America after prison so he could resume working with children.
"I had seen myself as the designated individual who had to put a stop to the pedophilia in the church," Druce said.
Geoghan was in prison for fondling a 10-year-old boy, but he was accused in lawsuits of sexually abusing some 150 children.
His case helped spark the clergy sex abuse scandal that spread worldwide after church personnel records revealed that the Boston Archdiocese had transferred Geoghan from parish to parish, even after allegations of abuse surfaced.
Private killing, except in self-defense, is murder (cf. St. Augustine, Contra Faustum, XXII, 70: "In the light, then, of the eternal law, it was wrong for one who had no legal authority to kill the man, even though he was a bad character, besides being the aggressor"). I hardly see why society should laud those who commit this act.
Good point.
The only harm he caused was taking justice into his own hands. Nothing of what he actually did was an injustice though, unless we are going to start throwing out Leviticus.
He did nothing worse than burning down a porn shop or shooting an abortionist.
A sane society would have already done these things though.
not all prisoners are in for horrible crimes...many in for drug possession or property crimes....they don't deserve to be beat to death....
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He was picked up as a hitchhiker by a man who turned out to be a sodomite. I have no trouble seeing it as self-defense when he killed the sodomite for propositioning him in an isolated place where he found himself powerless to escape (a moving vehicle he was not driving). Given his history of being assaulted physically and sexually by men in power positions over him, this fear was quite understandable. Ergo, in my view, he did nothing worthy of a conviction in his first offense, and he was defending himself from possible harm.
Druce is in jail because he killed a protected minority who was actually attempting to harm him physically and spiritually, not because what he did was wrong given the circumstances.
On one hand, two wrongs do not make a right. On the other...
The man who killed Geoghan, had a horrible past. His conviction for killing someone who tried to sexually assault him, while hitchhiking kind of troubles me. Number One: no one with a brain cell hitch hikes these days. Number Two: pedophiles have a rather short life span in prison. Number Three: A troubled sexually abused person has a tendency to off a symbol of the person who abused him/her.
I'm not real concerned. I almost feel like sending the guy a thank you card.
Hey now! I'm excusing the man because of his issues of being abused as a child. Burning down a porn shop, or shooting an abortionist makes one just as guilty as the other. I cannot find it in my heart to blame the guy for offing that POS, but I am disgusted by people who go around playing vigilante out in the "free world".
Burning down porn shops and shooting abortionists are crimes only in the sense that they are illegal.
The action is forbidden, but it is not unjust.
But everyone does have a right to be treated in accordance with the law. Even in the case of a murderer, e.g., an abortionist, he has a right to a fair, speedy, and lawful trial by a jury of his peers. One who "takes the law into his own hands" by killing him is in a real sense committing an injustice, both against the abortionist and also against society whose social coherence depends upon justice being administered through an orderly and hierarchical system. Therefore such an action, even if it provides some benefit to society, can hardly be considered laudable or unworthy of at least some punishment.
This also suffices for the case of Geoghan.
Geoghan had already been tried and convicted by the normal process.
What Druce did was to administer the actual justice a modern judge is no longer allowed to.
And I don't see where a jury trial is a universal human right. It is a right in Anglo-Saxon Common Law, but that merely addresses Anglo-Saxon nations. There is nothing necessarily unjust about other methods of trial being used.
Furthermore, the tacit approval of the authorities of extra-curricular punishment of child molestors in prison could be seen as a proper authorization of these actions occurring. If they didn't want it to happen, the Dahmer's and Geoghan's would be purposefully isolated from other prisoners. That they are not, even though it is well known that many felons have violent reactions towards child molestors, seems an approval of the punishment they mete out.
“Personally”, I think pedophiles should be put in incinerators regardless of who they are and what they’ve done to these child victims!
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