A Houston mother (if she can be called that) named Abigail Young was recently found guilty of reckless bodily injury in connection with the brutal dead of her four-year-old daughter named Emma Thompson. She was given the maximum 20 years allowable under the law. She had faced a possible life sentence for failing to protect her daughter from fatal abuse. The Houston Chronicle reported that when little Emma was taken to the hospital in June 2009 she had 80 bruises on her body, including vaginal tearing, three broken ribs, a busted lip, and a split in her skull. All of this horrific damage was inflicted upon the child by Lucas Coe, the live-in boyfriend of Young.

            The day before Abigail Young’s conviction was reported in the Chronicle, the newspaper carried another “front page” story about a 35-year-old father named Alex McGowen Duncan who beat his six-year-old son, Tekerrious Jackson, to death because the child wouldn’t fall asleep. The beating was so horrific that the medical examiner’s office would later compare the child’s injuries to those incurred in car accidents. Sgt. Brian Harris, a detective with the Houston Police Department Homicide Division, told the Chronicle: “The saddest thing is, that because of the unconditional love he had for his father, the child would often tell him, ‘I love you daddy.’”

            How could a mother let some low-life boyfriend rape and beat her child to death?

            How could a father force his son to get on his knees, make him raise his hands above his head, and repeatedly punch the child in the chest until he killed him, just because the child wouldn’t go to sleep?

            Lucas Coe is awaiting trial for the rape of little Emma. He will not even be tried for her murder. Sure, he will get life but not for killing the child—which he surely did. No one will be held responsible for the murder of little Emma. The sorry-ass mother walked away with a conviction for “reckless bodily injury.” I wonder what kind of verdict the jury would have returned had they been subjected to the same terrible physical and sexual abuse Coe put Emma through. It makes your heart want to say, “get the fucking rope”—not just for Coe and Young but also for that irresponsible jurors who placed absolutely no value on Emma’s life with their tragic “reckless bodily injury” verdict.

            And as for the scumbag Duncan, he will never see death row either. When all is said and done, the district attorney’s office will let him plead down to a reduced charge. He may spend the rest of his life in prison—and the only hope is that he does not know “how to do time” and will be the target of the same kind of physical abuse he inflicted on his son by some vengeful cons.

            There is nothing “good” about the taking of human life—not even in war or self-defense. Sometimes events in life make it necessary, both for a country and the individual. But that doesn’t make it good. And, then, there are “evil” people who take human life as casually as one takes a piss: serial killers, terrorists, gang-bangers, drug dealers, and contract killers. But none of these people compare on my scale of evil to parents who kill their own children, often with years of physical and sexual abuse before death finally gives the children a permanent reprieve.

            Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who was a famed liberal activist and death penalty opponent, once said that the only fair way to carry out the death penalty would be to place a chair in the public square and every time someone killed put them in the chair and put a bullet in their head. Keep repeated the process until there were no murders in the community of man.

            I agree. But I would take it a step farther. Place all the parents who kill their children at the front of the line. You visit any death row in this country and you will find very few parents there for killing their children. This despite the fact that, according to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, nearly 2000 children die each year because of abuse and neglect—almost all of it inflicted by natural parents.

            So don’t look to me for sympathy for people like Abigail Young and Alex Duncan—I only hope that if Hell does exist, they will have front row seat for eternity sitting next to each other “suffering for their sins.”