Public Consent
I've been to Cleveland, Ohio - where the three young women who vanished a decade ago - were released from a house in the city suburbs.
My Uncle Bob moved to Cleveland when he finally got his American work permit - or Green Card - and I remember visiting years ago to spend a holiday there with my three cousins - Craig, Nancy and Helen.
For some reason my abiding memory of that trip is the famous Deep Purple track - 'Smoke on the Water' - which must have been a bit hit at the time.
As I recall, Cleveland was a big, industrial city that used to be dominated by the giant Ford Motor Factory - where my Uncle Bob worked for twenty five years before retiring to Miami - though I imagine like many American industrial cities of a certain age, Cleveland has probably witnessed better times.
Now all these memories came flooding back as I heard about the horrific experience of Amanda Berry who who disappeared aged 16 in 2003, Gina DeJesus who went missing at the age of 14 a year later, and Michele Knight who vanished in 2002 at the age of 20.
Their alleged kidnappers and captors are three Hispanic brothers - aged 54, 52 and 50 - who have all been arrested in connection with the case by state police.
The barbaric treatment that must have been meted out to these three young women over the years is unimaginable - and there is no punishment in the world that would do justice to the horrible nature of their captors' crimes.
But one thing's for sure, if and when the suspects are found guilty in a court of law - they will spend the rest of the natural lives in prison - because in America a life sentence really does mean life.
Unlike in other legal jurisdictions - in Scotland, for example- where a life sentence can mean something completely different - by virtue of laws and legal conventions that the general public has never been asked to support, consciously at least.
Now I'm not a 'lock em up and throw away the key' sort of person - generally speaking - but I do believe that very violent offenders, murderers and serial sex offenders should normally be taken off the streets and denied their liberty - for the rest of their natural lives.
So the question is how come the law operates in the way that it does in this country - without proper public consent - especially as there is a lot of evidence to suggest that most people would support a much tougher stance against violent criminals?
