Premeditation, Randomness and Cultural Values.

In the news this morning there are several interesting murder cases.

One clearly involves premeditation. A mother and daughter were arrested for offering the daughter's boyfriend twenty grand to kill the woman's unsuspecting husband. Several days of activity, several text messages, arranging a meeting, showing up at the meeting ... all of these are clear evidence of premeditation.

One case in South Carolina was pure and simple whimsical spontaneous action. Even though all persons involved lived in a world of drugs and gang activity, it was just a randomly selected victim, not someone selected due to his gang affiliation or prior interaction or anything.

And ofcourse we have that recent murder of a nine year old girl by a fifteen year old girl who had already dug a grave because she knew she wanted to find out what it was like to kill someone. Digging a grave a week early is definitely premeditation no matter what some defense lawyer may later try to tell the jury.

We like to think that we are not really subject to being randomly selected to be shot by someone who is merely curious or bored. We like to think there is no one lurking atop a nearby hill observing our children through night vision goggles. Yet these things do indeed happen. It is a rare enough event that none of us really lose any sleep at night. After all, our daily lives do require us to take some risks.

In law, taking but one step towards a weapon and then picking it up can constitute premeditation. A purposeful action based on malice aforethought even if the time interval is short and the thinking is a good deal clouded by alchohol and emotions.

But what about real life? Here we consider premeditation not from a legalistic standpoint. In real life, the murder of JonBenet Ramsey was clearly premeditated. No one sits down and pens a lengthy note and hides himself in the home and then tries to claim it was a momentary impulse. No one carefully fashions a garotte and then has their mouthpiece utter some nonsense about irresistable impulse. So it is clearly premeditation, but was the victim selected randomly? Did someone want to kill a little girl and merely select someone on some whimsical basis? I would tend to think that a carefully concocted note indicates action that is more targeted than random. Did someone have a fuse that smoldered for years? Did someone feel offended at some slight? In gang territory, the slightest disrepect often leads to a shooting. However, the Ramseys did not live or work in gang territory, but that does not mean they did not interact with people of gang mentality who simply happened to not be wearing their colors at the time.

We often wonder what is appropriate retaliation? Logan of Logan's Lament fame is known to have been a peaceful Mingo who was indeed friendly to all white men. After members of Logan's clan including all of Logan's blood relatives were massacred at Yellow Creek it was considered appropriate for him to require of himself a measure of revenge. The resulting small raids against white settlers in the area were however not viewed as acceptable by Lord Dunsmore and the result was The Dunsmore War which caused great losses amongst the Mingo and the Shawnee. We may respect Logan and see his point of view as expressed in Logan's Lament, but we do not really accord him the right to have sought a retaliatory raid to avenge the massacre of his unarmed women and children. We only accord him a great measure of respect in our history books.

Amongst the Cheyenne, murder was a disgraceful affront to the entire tribe requiring purification ceremonies. When Walking Coyote, a man of great standing in the community, murdered White Horse it was an incomprehensibly heinous crime. A man was expected to remain unfazed in any manner by a personal loss and the most that could be expected when White Horse stole Walking Coyote's wife was for Walking Coyote to declare that a dog had pissed on his tipi. The crime was viewed as a shocking symptom of moral atrophy and the shattering of cultural values. We view the Cheyenne civilization as primitive yet our culture tolerates far greater violence in such situations.

I wonder if the some of the incidents from our headlines reflect a change in our values or encounters of different cultures. The pervert atop that hill in between sessions with his night vision equipment was blogging about morality and his absolute certainty of his inability to be a repeat sexual offender. These are not people incapable of considering the moral aspects of their intended actions. Its simply that they are not constrained by their moral awareness. Its present in their culture and their minds but is unreflected in their actions.

In the JonBenet Ramsey case there appear to be certain "teaser" aspects such as minimal and unnecessary use of a stun gun as well as perhaps minimal penetration and the use of the mere trappings of bondage. The fashioning of the garotte appears to be done carefully and perhaps we can even imagine a skilled craftsman having respect for his tools. The use of the garotte is by no means minimal. Anyone viewing the photograph of the deeply embedded garotte in a six year old girls tiny neck would be revolted by the deed and also by the use of the word minimal to describe it. We don't know what implement was used for the final blow or the exact manner in which it was struck but we do know that it was a massive blow and the word minimal is hardly appropriate to even be considered.

So does our crime news reflect a fundamental change in our values, the interaction of different cultures or simply the interaction of a deviant sub-culture with our own culture. Our media make a big thing about child molesters being considered the lowest of the low in a prison system but in reality it is simply that they are likely to be easy marks with no gang affiliation and no one to back them up. It does not take much in the way of smarts to have noticed that although there were a few notable exceptions most of the men who inadvertently met Chris Hansen were not particularly big and strong and clearly would have been of considerable interest to an endocrinologist. Shanking of a child molester is not a noble way for a prisoner to gain a reputation, its merely an easy and relatively safe way to do it. The sub-culture merely adopts the mantle of shock and indignation at the crime of child molestation. Perhaps there is a similar dichotomy between being a randomly selected victim of a heinous crime and being what we might consider to be a more predictable victim. Are we simply more comfortable when we consider risks? Do we tend to act differently when we think we are still in Kansas?