Will the execution of Saddam Hussein have any impact on the fate of convicted cop killer Ronell Wilson? Jurors who on December 20 convicted Wilson of the deaths of undercover detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin will be weighing the death penalty as an option when the penalty phase of the trial begins January 10.

Although the death penalty is in legislative limbo in New York, Staten Island’s district attorney, Daniel Donovan, turned over the trial to federal jurisdiction, which does allow for death sentencing. Whatever one may think about the death penalty here in America, the hanging of Saddam can only be viewed as justice long delayed.

Still, I felt sadness upon hearing the news — not for Saddam, but for a world that allowed such evil to go unpunished for so long. What, pray tell, do we have the United Nations for if it allows the slaughter of a people by its ruler? How could countries like France and Russia have signed oil contracts with this despotic murderer of the Iraqi people? Why on earth did we waste such valuable time trying to secure a U.N. war resolution that was doomed to be rejected by Saddam’s business partners?

Perhaps the American public did not know what was going on in Iraq, but journalists knew, and they elected to keep quiet so they could maintain their access to Baghdad. After Saddam’s regime was ousted, CNN’s chief news executive, Eason Jordan, felt safe enough to admit that the cable news giant kept quiet about the decades of gut-wrenching torment that he had witnessed on his many trips to Baghdad. So he admitted that appalling human cowardice, and most of the world yawned.

The brutal slayings of those undercover police officers may not bear any comparison to the genocide of the Kurds of Iraq and the slaughter of thousands of Iraqi citizens, but there is a relation between how the perpetrators of these acts are perceived.

Ronell Wilson is a young thug, a creature of the streets who apparently had little regard for life. He and his ilk are not alone. The rising murder rate in New York City is testament to that. Life is cheap when society values material objects more than principles, and unfortunately cop killers gain an unseemly cachet with neighborhood youth.

In the classic 1938 film “Angels with Dirty Faces,” James Cagney portrays a hood who’s viewed as a hero by the children in his Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood even when he’s sentenced to death for a murder he committed. They expect him to go out like the tough guy he’s been all his life. On his way to the electric chair, however, persuaded by a priest to be mindful of how he would be remembered, he feigns terror, screaming for mercy so the children will not follow in his footsteps.

Unfortunately, Saddam showed no such compulsion to tarnish his tough image, thus leaving his followers with his “martyred” image. Over the next few weeks, we can expect global condemnation of his hanging from various sources. I wasn’t surprised at the reports that a Vatican spokesman had denounced the execution by saying that capital punishment cannot be justified “even when the person put to death is one guilty of grave crimes.”

When one examines exactly how grave Hussein’s crimes against humanity were, one must ask whether they would have been possible if a more judgmental international community existed. The tyrants of the world have long escaped the fates they have inflicted on their victims. Many retire in exile to a life of luxury and die of old age. That Saddam is the first to be brought to justice after receiving a fair trial is a testament to the new Iraqi government, President Bush, and our brave military.

Let his death be a warning to the despots of the world that good people will no longer stand by and do nothing while human beings are being fed into wood chippers feet first so that their screams can fill the air; while schools are ordered to send children to be raped by the despot’s evil sons, and while mass graves are filled with the bodies of innocent men, women, and children. Surely, the Vatican can recognize that even God had his warrior Archangel Michael battle Satan, and there has been no better disciple of Satan than Saddam.

The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against an unjust aggressor. In the case of Saddam, the death penalty was certainly justified.

The jury deciding Ronell Wilson’s fate will be facing a much more difficult choice.