by James Zipadelli

Created on: April 03, 2009

A murderer should NOT be allowed to profit from a tell-all book. When I was looking at this topic, I was reminded of O.J. Simpson's notorious memoir, If I Did It, an account of what he would have done had he been behind the murders of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. Simpson was acquitted in 1994 of the double murders, but the Goldmans won a civil suit against Simpson for some $33.5 million. If I Did It was cancelled after a public outcry in 2007.

If you are in prison for murdering someone, it's not a vacation. The point of capital punishment is just that - to punish the murderer for the crime. Your freedoms are taken away; you're treated like an animal and you have to live with the crime you did. You probably don't get any visitors in prison, and even less mail. Why then, should a murderer be able to profit from writing a book? Who gave him (or her) the freedom to write a book in the first place? It's not like jail cells in San Quinten State Prison have computers and wireless Internet.

Some will say that allowing the murderer to write a book wouldn't be so bad. The profits, instead of going to the author, might go to a worthy charity. If the murder happened as a result of a domestic dispute, it should go to a charity to help domestic violence victims. That doesn't make a difference. The loved one is still murdered.

Murderers who do make a profit from writing a book add insult to injury for the families involved. Imagine being a wife, husband, sibling or relative of the person murdered, only to go into a Barnes and Noble or on Amazon.com and see that the person that took a life is profiting from it. Imagine watching Larry King Live and seeing the attention that the news media would devote to the book. The profits from the book might go to a legal fund where the murderer might try and appeal the conviction, straining court resources. Families who have experienced a loved one being murdered want nothing more than closure, and knowing that the murderer is profiting from a book they wrote will never give families an opportunity to heal and move on with their lives.

I hope that we are not so greedy a society that we glorify the person that murders a loved one by allowing them to profit from a book. And the saga might not be over for O.J., either. His lawyer told The Seattle Times that O.J. plans to write another memior with a more "tasteful" account of his marriage to Nicole.

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