Legal Commentary

Does Arsonist Deserve the Death Penalty?

By TChris

Is anyone else troubled by the notion that an arsonist has been sentenced to death because firefighters died trying to protect property from the fire he set?

Raymond Lee Oyler set a number of fires (perhaps as many as 25) in and around Riverside County, California in the summer and fall of 2006. On October 26, he started a fire at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains that spread rapidly up the hillsides. Five firefighters from a U.S. Forest Service firefighting crew were engulfed in and killed by "a wall of flames" while trying to save an unoccupied house in a canyon.

Oyler's five murder convictions may be reasonable on the theory that he should have anticipated his actions could cause deaths. But death is not an inevitable consequence of arson, and the prosecution admitted that Oyler did not start the fires with the intent to kill firefighters (or anyone else). A compulsion to set fires isn't the moral equivalent of a compulsion to kill. Oyler's death sentence is unwarranted.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on June 06, 2009 (boomark / email).