Media Center

Scale Best Hope for Justice

By Will Phung

Washington Square News, March 9, 2005

In a perfect world, the courts would send sadistic murderers directly to the executioner's block. There would be no grumbling over whether or not the killer's crime warranted the death penalty; there would be no legal hand-wringing over the definition of words like "depraved" or "heinous."

But we do not live in a perfect world. Sadistic criminals get to stay in their cells, waiting for a chance at release provided by a legal loophole, or the slick work of their lawyers because their crime was not deemed heinous enough, their actions not depraved enough.

This is why we need the work of people like Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic and clinical psychiatrist employed as a professor at NYU's School of Medicine. One of Welner's current projects is the creation of a "depravity scale." When completed, the depravity scale would provide a standardized, objective measurement of what actions, intents and attitudes need to be present in a crime for it to be considered especially depraved or heinous.