The Responsibility Project^®. Exploring what it means to do the right thing

Redefining Compassionate Release

34 Comments

September 29, 2009 by Kathy McManus

Should a prisoner’s terminal illness be a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card?"

Two of the world’s most notorious murderers—a Manson follower and a terrorist bomber—recently requested “compassionate release” from prison because they are dying of cancer.

61 year-old Susan Atkins--serving a life sentence in a California prison for her role in the Charles Manson cult killings--petitioned authorities for compassionate release. Diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, she believed she should be allowed to die at home.

In Scotland, the man known as the “Lockerbie Bomber”—convicted in the terrorist deaths of 270 people aboard Pan Am Flight 103—sought compassionate release as doctors declared he had only three months to live. He has terminal prostate cancer, seven years into his life sentence.

In each case, relatives and supporters of the victims opposed release, saying murderers who showed no compassion for those they killed should receive no compassion now.

But the prosecutor who originally put Atkins behind bars almost 40 years ago argued in favor of her death-bed freedom, saying it was wrong to believe that “just because Susan Atkins showed no mercy to her victims, we therefore are duty-bound to follow her inhumanity and show no mercy to her.” Atkins’ husband said California should consider the $17,000 a month they’d save in medical bills.

Atkins’ request was denied, and she died less than a month later. However, the bomber, Abdulbaset al-Megrahi, was released from prison and flew home to a hero’s welcome in his native Libya. Scottish officials said they were “bound by Scottish values” in making a morally responsible decision. “Our justice system demands that judgment be imposed, but compassion available,” said the country’s senior justice official.

A life sentence in prison “ought to mean until you’re dead, which neither Atkins nor al-Megrahi is,” countered an American newspaper columnist. “It’s hard to see why people who have committed violent crimes deserve any consideration beyond fair trial and sentencing they have already gotten. Compassionate release is compassionate only to criminals, not their victims.”

Tell us what you think: Do we have a moral responsibility to release terminally ill prisoners? Should a life sentence be commuted for any reason other than the innocence of the convicted? Should state-financed medical costs ever play a role in the decision for compassionate release?

34 Comments

What do you think? Leave a comment

• October 3, 2009 by Joseph Watson-EL

  I think we have gotten away from allowing God to do His job. At will, man continue to destroy life as God saw fit for it to be.We as humans take everything personal; yet when it comes to us we want mercy. No man is without sin ( be it big or small ). I am neither with it or against it.

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• October 3, 2009 by donnalynn migliaccio

  i work all day average 91/2 hours a day and never was paid for it . i hope that that the prisons keep their crimminals in prisons if no second repeat offenders i hope they all are in probation

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• October 4, 2009 by Michelle Titus

  I think the issues are getting confused here. It really has nothing to do with mercy or no mercy. The prisoners have been convicted to a life sentence. The only thing that should ever affect that is evidence proving they ere wrongly convicted. Life if life.

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  • October 11, 2009 by lili

    Who ever is serving a life sentence in prison because of a violent crime they have committed and that is what the law we stand by has decided. Allowing them to be released is forgetting the pain they caused to the family and loved ones of their victims. A life sentence should only be cut if they are proven innocent. Allowing them to be released is allowing them to potentially hurt others all over again. I am completely against their release!!

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  • December 22, 2009 by JOYce Weatherford

    I think when someone is sentenced to life for a crime they recieved a conviction on, they should be made to stay in prison. If cancer is going to end his life, we are not the ones to reduce his sentence. His life will be ended by cancer, but he should not be allowed out of prison to promote or incite more violence or mayhem before his death. Our laws were founded on JudeoChristian values and these say that when convicted by a jury of your peers, you must serve your time. Those peers obviously did not feel like prisoners recieving a life sentence should ever have a second chance to do their evil deeds in our country. Perhaps we ought to not try second guessing, unless there is a question as to whether this person is really guilty. Having an illness makes them no less guilty, and their sentence should not change. My husband has COPD, a life changing and altering disease, would we let a prisoner out early because of COPD or congestive heart failure. PErhaps we should address societal changes on the outside, not on prisoners.

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• October 5, 2009 by Keesha Del Nagro

  I feel that there are two sides to this story and they must be considered on an individual basis. Firstly, showing compassion and forgiveness to some individuals may actually cause a deeper repentance from their actions as they feel the true and unconditional love being shown to them that they were unable to have. But what about the sociopath, who, by their disorder, can never feel remorse or compassion for another no matter what mercy is shown to them? Justice demands that there is a balance. Their sentences should be carried out if that is what a fair trial awarded them. I, myself, have experienced how the attitude of forgiveness/mercy when not balanced by justic allowed my daughter's child molester to go free with little time incarcerated and no supervision of his being around other children. Justice without mercy is not right but neither is mercy without justice. I feel that the fact that people who commit heinous crimes ,when proven to be sane in their actions in a court of law , are already being shown mercy by not having to endure the same act being done to them or death when proven guilty. The mercy being shown is the fact that they are allowed to live in modest safety and living conditions where they are kept somewhat comfortable--if you look at certain prison conditions. That is the mercy being shown. I feel the sentence should be carried out. In the case of those who committed a heinous crime while not in their right mind could be an exception to this case as in a mother who killed her children under a hormonal psychosis. No amount of worldly justice could ever do to her insides what she must already be feeling. This type of a case should be shown all the mercy we have as the person who committed it was 'possessed' somehow and not under control of themselves. In their right minds, they are just as sickened and unable to be consoled by their own actions. Repentance is clear in these cases and therefore justice is already served, as the person would never have done these things under normal circumstances.

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• October 8, 2009 by anna allen

  i feel that it is wrong for a person to die behind bars. they are not going to hurt anyone if they are released. everyone makes mistakes, in a life time no one is exempt. did you see "sling blade " movie?

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  • May 17, 2010 by tenitta epps

    get your head out of t.v. and into real life situations. would you want your childs murderer to go free just because he or she was dying? would you put a 22 year old rapist or molester back out on the streets if he or she had been sentenced to life and had only spent 2 years behind bars and found out they had a fatal disease? think clearly about this. what do you think someone like that would want to do before he or she dies? do they want revenge? to take out as many people with them as they can because of how life has treated him or her? it matters not in my opinion as to if they are in or out. we the citizens are more than likely going to have to pay for their medical care. the God that some individuals speak of as having us show mercy to these people can not control what they may or may not do when they are released. not doing anything is just as likely for them. sit around, no job because of their disease and collect, collect, collect. so..........leave them where they are. we will foot the bill either way and I would just as soon pay for their stay behind bars as to pay for them to be out doing what ever they feel like. maybe the person they commited their crime against was fatally ill also! did they care? noooooooo. so....... leave them be.

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• October 14, 2009 by Chris N

  I think if you're going to have a conversation about compassionate release, you need to have a conversation about what a death penalty means. Is it a crime deterrent, a punishment, or a means of removing a killer from the streets. Because for each of these possible explanations, there would be a different view on what place compassionate release has in the justice system.

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• October 16, 2009 by Geoff Wolfe

  Sadly, there are criminally insane individuals who are deeply disturbed to the degree that they can not be allowed to free range in society. If you need proof, visit the mental and violent offender blocks at your local penitentiary. That said, no individual, regardless of the crime they commit, should be treated as poorly as we treat the inmates in our "correctional" facilities. The behavior of any "criminal" can be traced to very real environmental and psychological causes. No incident, however vile, is disconnected from the larger environment. Compassion demands we account for the cause of the problem, not just it's most persistent symptoms. When we do that, account for the cause, we find our hand in the problem. We turn our head as children in the "hood" grow up in fear. We allow racist, violent people to raise children with no supervision, and so forth. These children do grow up. They grow up ready, able and willing to commit a crime. Then, they're locked up. Should we let them out? At this late stage, we've so badly missed the point that the question has no easy answer. When I was in California I had the privilege to interview several individuals in max-security prison. One was in for possession of cocaine. Another shot and killed a baby while on PCP. Guess who's still in jail today? (If you guessed the murderer, you are wrong.) We need a system that understands why people are desperate and how they become deranged and one that aims to help us get better. Job training, mandatory education, drug rehabilitation, learning conflict management skills, and on and on. We shouldn't wait until our fellow humans are dying in jail to be compassionate, we should start when they are born. We have turned our collective head for too long. The old "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" bit means nothing to the man with no shoes.

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• October 16, 2009 by Geoff Wolfe

  Sadly, there are criminally insane individuals who are deeply disturbed to the degree that they can not be allowed to free range in society. If you need proof, visit the mental and violent offender blocks at your local penitentiary. That said, no individual, regardless of the crime they commit, should be treated as poorly as we treat the inmates in our "correctional" facilities. The behavior of any "criminal" can be traced to very real environmental and psychological causes. No incident, however vile, is disconnected from the larger environment. Compassion demands we account for the cause of the problem, not just it's most persistent symptoms. When we do that, account for the cause, we find our hand in the problem. We turn our head as children in the "hood" grow up in fear. We allow racist, violent people to raise children with no supervision, and so forth. These children do grow up. They grow up ready, able and willing to commit a crime. Then, they're locked up. Should we let them out? At this late stage, we've so badly missed the point that the question has no easy answer. When I was in California I had the privilege to interview several individuals in max-security prison. One was in for possession of cocaine. Another shot and killed a baby while on PCP. Guess who's still in jail today? (If you guessed the murderer, you are wrong.) We need a system that understands why people are desperate and how they become deranged and one that aims to help us get better. Job training, mandatory education, drug rehabilitation, learning conflict management skills, and on and on. We shouldn't wait until our fellow humans are dying in jail to be compassionate, we should start when they are born. We have turned our collective head for too long. The old "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" bit means nothing to the man with no shoes.

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  • May 17, 2010 by tenitta epps

    very well said. my sentiments exactly.

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• October 20, 2009 by Doris Huey

  Why should they get released and my son cannot get out of jail to be with his family while he is sick? He has not even been convicted of a crime he was accused of 6 months before he was arrested for it. He has been sitting in jail since Feb/ 2009, because the public defender he has will not put in for his trial date as he was supposed to. He will not visit my son in jail. He will not let him know what is going on. My son has undergone two surgerys, chemotherapy, and radiation since he has been in the Houston County jail. He has witnessed all kind of abuse to the prisoners. He has no money for a criminal lawyer to defend him in a she say, he say, case. They have no evidence against him. Yet these murderers can go free to be with there families? No, I don't think they should.

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  • November 22, 2009 by Debra Smith

    A court of law has up until a year to set a trial date. Please get you family,friends and community to try to do some type of fundraisers to try and get enough money to hire your son an attourney. A court appointed attourney (using the term CAA for short) is not going to waste their time on your son accept to get him sent to prison. If the CAA ever does go to see your son he his going to tell him things that he (the CAA) will think your son wants to hear. My son was arrested on April 4,2003 and his CAA finally came to see him in jail April 2,2004 the day before his trial was to begin. In my sons case he was 27 his wife had just divorced him an was refusing to let him see his two year old daughter. He was living with his father and I at the time when our nightmare began. He decided to go out riding by himself one night about 1:00am. About 1:30 I got a call saying that there was an APB going over the scanner looking for him. They were saying he had shot and injured 2 cops. Picture this in your mind for me please. He is in his truck 10-12 miles out in the wilderness. No houses or street lights for 3 or 4 miles. Pitch black darkness. 2 cops in 2 seperate cars pull him over for a routine check as they called it. The cops said that why they were questioning him, he ask them if he could turn around and urinate and they said ok. When he turned he took off running through a wooded thicket were you couldnot see your hand in front of your face. The cops said that he had a 9mm pistol firing shots at them over his shoulder as he was running off. He did have a gun but it was a 357mag. 1 cop was shot in the upper shoulder and the other in the lower back.He took off running because they were threatening his life. We live in a Louisiana community so small that it only has 2 stores,post office and 1 gas station. So you can just about imagine everyone knows everybody in town and all about their business. The cops here have their certain few that they pick on all off the time and my son happened to be one of them, only because the sherriff dislikes my dad because he is big into politics and vowed he would get the sherriff out of office if it was the last thing he ever done. Well my dad got a man to run against the sherriff (and put him out of office) a year after my son was sent to Angola State Penitentiary with a sentence of 65 years with no possibility of parole for 2 counts of attempted murder that they put off on him. Everyone from our little town knows that 1 of the cops was fooling with the other ones wife and they decided to have their own little smoke out in the woods and blamed my son for it. They could not find my sons fingerprints on any guns. The cop that was shot in the back walked out of the hospital the same night an refused to let them take the bullet out. My son ran for 4 miles to get to my nephews house, who was off in another state working but he found a window open and got in. When they told me were it happened I automatically knew were he was so I called my nephews house and the answering machine came on. I pleaded with him son if you are there please pick up the phone and he did. My parents and I were listening to everything going on the scanner. I told him that a helicopter was fixing to hover over the top of the house and there were about 25 cop cars fixing to surround it an all of the deputies had been ordered to shoot to kill if they saw him. I told him when they come in the house to get you just lay face down on the floor and he did. When they said they were fixing to enter the house they killed all of the radios and it was total silence for about 10min. The radios finally came back on and they said we now have the suspect in custody. In that 10min time limit they beat him almost unrecognizeable and let the K-9 dogs almost eat his side off. I dont care what anyone says anytime there are cops involved the judge is going to take their side. We have appealed it 3 times with no luck and we learned the hard way that a CAA will do nothing more than send you down the road as far as he can. My heart goes out to you Doris and I am going to keep you and your son in my prayers. I am a firm believer in god and my god does not like people with ugly and evil ways, because it will come back on you ten fold. One day the truth will come out about the cops having their private shootout and my son will be freed. It may be on one of their deathbeds when someone really does shoot one of them that the truth is told but it will come out one day. Right now all I can do is just continue to pray that the sooner it happens the better. God Bless You Doris and you tell your son to fight his case till the bitter end.

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  • November 22, 2009 by Debra Smith

    Doris it would not hurt to try going to talk to some of your local politicains and try to get some of them backing you to try and help your son out. Nowdays they have work release programs for inmates were they are out in the daytime working and are locked up at night. Try and get a petition going in your town for a sick leave program. It could be done I am just not sure how many signatures you would have to get before you send it in to your governor. Then it would be were you could pick your son up in the morning and bring him back at night. It would be worth a try and it beats him being alone by himself going through his sickness. Don't sit by and depend on that public defender for any kind of news about your sons concerns because I am afraid you will be waiting for eternity. They could care less about you or what your sons feelings are concerning his health problems. Please just try to do anything you can before his year is up. When you think of his Public Defender with no news just look at it this way. No news is good news and this is just giving you some extra time to try and get something done for your son. Whatever you do just dont give up. God Bless P.S. Remember Doris we have to remain strong for our sons.

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• October 22, 2009 by Wolf87

  Hmm, this guy is civil and polite. ,

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• October 23, 2009 by Geoff Wolfe

  Because your son is not receiving compassion from society, is that grounds for not being compassionate to others? Just think about it. The sentiment you're voicing is as the heart of why so many people are, well, angry and incapable of felling mercy toward others. In our sorrow we sometimes find it difficult to care about other people's pain, regardless of the similarities (in cause or form) to our own. It's very sad to read about your son. I am glad to hear he is, at minimum, receiving medical care. I agree, he should be with you and the rest of his family through this. I can't imagine having to go from chemotherapy while having to endure all of the stresses of life in jail. Good luck and I hope he comes home to you soon.

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• November 14, 2009 by salimah adams

  FREE HER..LET HER HAD THE PEACE SHE ASK GOD FOR...

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