Posted on 08/24/2003 8:30:56 PM PDT by hole_n_one
washingtonpost.com
Geoghan's Death Is Described
Fellow Inmate Jammed Cell Door During Attack
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 25, 2003; Page A01
BOSTON, Aug. 24 -- John J. Geoghan, the former priest and convicted child molester killed in a Massachusetts prison Saturday, was followed into his cell just after lunch by a fellow inmate who bound and gagged him before strangling him with a bed sheet, according to a union representative for prison guards.
The attacker, whom authorities identified as Joseph L. Druce, jammed the electronically operated cell door to prevent guards from opening it. He tied Geoghan's hands behind his back with a sheet and gagged him. He then repeatedly jumped from the bed in the cell onto Geoghan's motionless body and beat the defrocked priest with his fists.
Only one correction officer was on duty in the protective custody unit at the time, according to an account of the attack provided by Robert Brouillette, an executive of the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union, who interviewed correction officers for seven hours Saturday. State and county officials involved in the investigation would not comment on Brouillette's description.
Druce entered Geoghan's cell just before noon, Brouillette said, when the prisoners left their one-person concrete cells to return their lunch trays. The solid cell door has a chest-high window that guards can look through as they pass by. When the officer on duty heard noises coming from Geoghan's cell but could not open the cell door from the control panel at his station, other officers were summoned by walkie-talkie. It took several of them to pry open the door.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I would say the state of Massachusetts is culpable in its failure to execute a convicted murderer named Druce. Now, I might be in favor of Geoghan's execution, but few juries in America execute rapists and/or pedophiles unless they also commit murder or attemped murder at the same time (or some other special circumstance).
Because the state of Massachusetts failed in its moral responsibility to execute Druce, it will most likely be sued, by some group, for its failure to protect one piece of offal from another piece of offal.
I'd say those who support the re-establishment of the death penalty in Massachusetts may garner more support because of this wonderful little morality play....
Legal justice also includes a COMPETENT AUTHORITY.
The Nazi who killed Geoghan was just a Nazi, a lifer who gets prison cred for taking out a weak pathetic old man.
Who is free to live out the rest of his life, on taxpayer money, without having to answer to men for committing murder.
Justice may or may not have been served by Druce, but Druce should be made to pay for his crime, too.
Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock.
(Olbermann was not hosting....some Jessica Savitch looking type person was)
I merely quoted what the article said that Druce's father said about him.....I was not expressing an opinion.
Did Geoghan trespass against you? Then by all means forgive him.
But you have no right or authority to forgive him of trespasses he committed against others.
This incident is about the failure of the criminal justice system--not a morality contest to see who can most magnanimously and posthumously forgive Geoghan of the sexual abuses he committed against 150 young boys.
For the sake of his soul we may hope that he tried to find forgiveness. But that's about it.
The attacker was obviously not a big fan of the sodomy-without-consent crowd. For every other horrible thing he's done, at least this one wasn't so bad. It's win-win-win, really: Geoghan dies, the Nazi murderer gets punished (he's a murderer because he strangled another person, not for killing Geoghan), and the media focuses on a real issue, which is that prison conditions are unacceptably bad.
That's not true. He was serving 10 yrs for a single groping incident. Had he lived he would have faced many more trials in more judrisdictions.
I never claimed that right. I merely make the point that Geoghan was murdered in cold blood and that murder is always a crime and never justice. Just as I have no right to forgive for what he did to others, nobody has the right to commit cold blooded murder...and nobody should cheer such a crime as justice.
lookie here.
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