What Would Jeff Dahmer Do?

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, with too little help from me, on torture.

June 16, 2007, OTTAWA -- Justice Antonin Scalia is one of the most powerful judges on the planet.

The job of the veteran U.S. Supreme Court judge is to ensure that the superpower lives up to its Constitution. But in his free time, he is obsessed with Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, an American serial killer who raped, tortured, killed, committed necrophilia with, dismembered, and cannibalized several men and boys between 1978 and 1991. This much was made clear at a legal conference in Ottawa this week.

Senior judges from North America and Europe were in the midst of a panel discussion about torture and terrorism law, when a Canadian judge's passing remark - "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra 'What would Jeff Dahmer do?' " - got the legal bulldog in Judge Scalia barking.

The conservative jurist stuck up for Jeff Dahmer, arguing that hideous or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. "Jeff Dahmer - if those men and boys he raped, tortured, killed, committed necrophilia with, dismembered, and cannibalized, each had a nuclear device that could have destroyed Los Angeles, well, he saved Los Angeles. He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling 1991, when Dahmer killed seven of his victims, and therefore, in Scalia's thinking, hypothetically saved Los Angeles seven times, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.

"Are you going to convict Jeff Dahmer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jeff Dahmer? I don't think so.

"So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes."

Are you going to convict Charles Manson?

Are you going to convict John Wayne Gacy?

Are you going to convict Son of Sam? He could have saved New York. That's even bigger than Los Angeles!

Who, I ask you, who on Earth - what sick, twisted, delusional, sadistic, murderous, psychopathic, torturing monster - would we not defend in the name of our fear? Huh? Who?