Here’s what I think: it’s bullshit. If you just found out that someone murdered your children, killing them in retaliation does not suggest you are a bad or untrustworthy person. There is no point in putting him in prison for another 9-29 years. He has not done anything to suggest he’s a threat to anyone who hasn’t murdered his children, and anyone who finds themselves in the same position isn’t going to be thinking about legal precedent, so it’s not a deterrent either.
Anger management? Do they really think anger management is going to address the question “What to do when someone murders your children”?
It is not vigilantism to kill someone who killed your children as soon as you find out. It’s pretty much a normal visceral reaction.
The fact that you want to characterize it as such is sickening. Then again, you apparently don’t know enough about the concept to even spell it correctly.
This stretches the idea of vigilantism beyond the breaking point. Vigilantism is (for example) killing or beating someone because they “got off on a technicality” or because you think the court system won’t punish them severely enough. If you come home and find that someone has killed your child and you kill them before they can get away, that’s not vigilantism. That’s not to say it’s right, but it shouldn’t be called by the wrong name. Vigilantism is planned. This guy didn’t plan to kill his wife- he found that she had killed their son (and, he thought, their daughter) and he killed her.
So it’s not hard to see where this sounds wrong. It probably doesn’t help that Smeltzer makes a spectacularly unsympathetic defendant: not only did he leave his mentally ill wife alone with their children, he did it so he could go do drugs. And the article says there was a recording of his daughter saying he killed their son. Even if there was no other evidence for that it must’ve hurt. But then we come to the question of what the appropriate response is, and I really don’t know. He probably got the most lenient charges and sentence possible. Should he be charged with nothing at all- it doesn’t count that he killed his wife because she’d killed their son? I’m not sure that’s just either.
If I’m reading the article correctly, he was charged with “manslaughter with provocation”, which wikipedia defines as “a killing which occurs after provocation by an event which would cause a reasonable person to lose self-control.” So the charge seems perfectly reasonable to me.
I’m just kind of surprised that that charge carries a sentence of 15-30 years, which my many years of Law & Order associates with murder, not manslaughter. Personally, I think a sentence of 5-10 years would be more appropriate.
Maybe. It is still murder, though. A civilized person in a civilized society calls the police. A person who kills out of anger, however justified, is a danger to society and should be locked up.
For all we know, the guy could have been so hopped up on drugs that he completely lost control and he might not have otherwise. And in a weird thought, how do we really know the mom did the killing and not the dad? Anyway, he could be out in 7 years, so I think it’s a proper sentence, especially since his reaction was likely fueled by drugs.
Do you not have loved ones, Njtt? Are you incapable of conceiving of anything that someone could do to them that would make you lash out in anger?
If you push someone that hard, it is not reasonable to assume that he’d react similarly to anyone who does not provoke him in such an extreme manner. Just because you’ll lash out at someone who just strangled your children to death does not mean you’ll do the same in day to day life.
Manslaughter with provocation seems like exactly the right sentence. Summary painful execution without a trial is not the sentence for murder, and nobody has the right to carry that out.
Beating someone to death with a flashlight is a messy, brutal, drawn out process. At some point, when you are covered in blood, with pieces of flesh and brain material sticking to you, hearing the crunch of your wife’s bones beneath you as she gasps for her last breaths- you would have a chance to realize that what you are doing is deeply, deeply wrong. The brutality and personal intimacy of the killing makes it more than a simple crime of passion- it’s one thing to shoot someone in a moment of anger, it’s another to beat them to death personally.
On the whole, the guy sounds like a peace of work. He leave his kids with his mentally ill wife, goes off to do smoke crack (!), returns and beats the wife to death, and then tries to kill himself? This is more than a nice guy having the worst day of his life, this is a huge ugly clusterfuck of ruined lives that he was an active part of.
Except that the crime he was convicted of assumes that a “reasonable person” would have lost control of themselves if put in the same situation.* So doesn’t that suggest that most of society needs to be locked up?
this is assuming the wikipedia definition of the crime is accurate. Looking through the NH criminal code I could only find manslaughter, not “manslaughter with provocation.”
What are you basing the above graphic imagery on? All I’ve been able to find in terms of detail is that he struck her “several times in the head with a flashlight”. The whole thing may have been over in 20 seconds for all we know.
Well, I’ve never beaten anyone to death with a flashlight (or even beaten anyone to death, or with a flashlight), but from even the very few fights I have been in, hitting people repeatedly in the face/on the head is not the clean, sanitized things depicted on most fictional television. Watch a boxing match, sometime.
I think even sven’s graphic description of someone being bludgeoned to death with an object is a lot closer to reality than the “one-punch-and-the-bad-guy-falls-down” fiction we typically see on TV and the movies.
And FWIW, I also agree with even sven’s take on the perp.
The judge suggests that that’s a possibility. I don’t know how or if it factored into the plea. But it’s also true that even without drugs he might’ve reacted the same way.
I think if there had been real evidence he killed the son, the prosecution would have brought it up. It sounds like they agreed the mother did it.
I have to agree that this isn’t vigilanteism. If I recall the story correctly he came home to FIND his children dead and his wife responsible. I would actually consider his response quite rational and appropriate. Before I had children I might have not thought this way, however when you have children of your own the emotional connection is so intense that you will harm those hurting or killing your children. I would almost bet that this should have been considered a killing by reason of temporary insanity. Seeing your kids dead and having the responsible party right in front of you can certainly drive you past the breaking point. As far as I am concerned he saved the taxpayers years of taking care of this woman.
I am no internet tough guy, and quite rational in my life. However I would have to say if someone hurt or threatened my children I will take care of it. Perhaps one of those cases of you better hope the cops find you first.
Sure, but what I was objecting to was the idea that this was a necessarily long process. She seemed to be implying that the killer had time to reconsider what he was doing. I’m not convinced that was the case.
He obviously realized after the fact that what he had done was wrong. I mean, he tried to kill himself and then plead guilty at the trial without offering any defense.
Without reading some of the medical examiner’s report that’s impossible to say if it was drawn out or not. I knew a guy who was killed in a fight at the age of 16 (I was 18 at the time), that occurred over an argument during a softball game, he got hit in the head with a bat one time and never got up again.
Some flashlights are heavy duty and 1-2 solid hits could cause mortal wound, you don’t have to repeatedly hit someone in the head with a heavy piece of metal until you feel their skull cracked open to successfully kill them.
Just saying…, as for this guy in general I suspect he’ll probably be out in the 7 years if he keeps his nose clean in prison, his situation will be very sympathetic to a parole board.
It seems like a pretty classic crime of passion/diminished responsibility, and according to the article:
That seems more or less accurate, and I don’t think the prosecutors in good conscience could have offered him less. If he hadn’t been a crack head then they may have, because a more upstanding citizen would be hard to convict by a jury of this sort of thing. But a drug abusing piece of shit? His lawyer probably didn’t want this at trial.
I’m with some of the posters here who call for voluntary manslaughter. It seems like that’s what he got, but I would think a 5-10 year sentence more appropriate.