Since some 95% of the criminal cases in the United States of America are concluded by plea bargaining, as I was considering witness protection programmes in last week’s column, a thought struck me. If someone murdered my mother and ‘cut her open and put charcoal inside her to use as a grill’ (to quote from the last column) and it was proposed that that person be allowed the comparatively lenient sanctuary of a witness protection programme as punishment, should I not have a say in the making of such a decision, and what kind of considerations should ideally motivate my involvement in such a process?
I was taken aback by my quick resort to a
