“Oh, Mr. Moore? We have that bed you made 39 years ago. Now lie on it.”
“…Clarence David Moore, 66, called the Franklin County (Kentucky)Sheriff’s Office on Monday and said he wanted to turn himself in, the sheriff’s office said. When deputies arrived, they found Moore — who’d been living in Frankfort since 2009 and had ID’d himself as Ronnie Dickinson — partially paralyzed and unable to walk because of a recent stroke. He was arrested and taken by ambulance to a hospital for examination before he was taken to the Franklin County Regional Jail.
“Sheriff Pat Melton told NBC station WLEX of Lexington on Tuesday that Moore said he’d escaped from the Henderson County, North Carolina, Prison Unit in the mid-1970s and has been on the lam for almost four decades. But as he got sicker, he couldn’t get medical coverage to pay for the complications of his stroke and other health problems, because he doesn’t have a valid Social Security number under his alias…Moore was arraigned Tuesday morning and waived extradition to North Carolina on a charge of being a fugitive from another state. He was being held without bond pending his being returned sometime this week….”
I hate to appear uncharitable, but I don’t understand this at all.
Moore chose to defy the justice system for 39 years, and now wants to get the benefit of it on his terms, when it’s useful and convenient to him?
He chose to avoid paying his debt to society. Society certainly has no debt to him. The ethical course is for the North Carolina’s governor to pardon Moore, and allow him to fend for himself, stroke or not. For taxpayers to have to foot the bill for a felon’s health care when he has shown nothing but utter contempt for the justice system is a travesty of justice, logic and ethics. If it’s compassion at issue, take the money that would have to be spent on Moore and use it to help an elderly law-abiding citizen who can’t pay his medical bills.
Or burn it.
Does the State have some subtle ethical obligation to the fugitive that I’m missing?
Ethics Alarms 