Interesting - I completely disagree with you.
I don’t understand any one could expect a parent to kill a child, or assume a child is dead and not hold to hope until the last.
On the other hand, I agree with this - except I think you left out how ugly the trial would be.
Sure, because strangling small children to death is just like loving or having sex with consenting adults of the same sex. :rolleyes:
I don’t believe I did. You went on to say “what exactly is the limit to what we should allow?”, which to me just raises the question of do you think there should be a limit at all. I’m mildly curious if you think there are any circumstances where his actions could be acceptable as a natural and understandable human reaction, i.e. he walked in to see his wife finishing off one of their kids. There’d be no justification defense if the kid was dead (even if the kid had died literally seconds earlier), but could he understandably snap and bludgeon her?
I’d like to establish that we both agree a limit exists before debating where it should be.
I may have done the same thing as the guy did.
I also agree with his sentence. If not that, child endangerment resulting in death.
You did misread my point because you put it to me that I didn’t think he should get a lighter sentence (than otherwise) when that is quite the opposite of what I said.
And you must have misread this next point too, because my answer should be obvious: I don’t think any criminal action becomes excusable due to circumstances.
Circumstances can affect the crime’s classification, or sentencing, but they don’t make a wrong into a right.
Do you honestly think that was what I was saying?
In context: I was saying it was strange to hear people supporting someone that has done something so abhorrent. And that it reminds me of people supporting those who lynch homosexuals (i.e. the lynching and support for it is abhorrent, not the homosexuality).
Geez ppl, what’s going on with this thread?
No. I think you know the difference. You just don’t care. Hence your willingness to conflate support for a bigoted murderer with support for a man who killed his child’s murderer.
ISTM that many posts here have blurred the line between mitigate and make okay. One of the reasons for a society having a system of laws is that human emotions and bias make us less than ideal arbiters of justice when it comes to our own actions. It’s simply not okay to beat anyone to death for any reason, regardless of how much we might imagine feeling similarly in similar situations.
Imagine if one of the woman’s relatives walked in the door just as this guy is beating her to death. That person would be understandably passionate, and we might ourselves understand that person killing him. Thus, it is possible to envision a not quite infinite regress of wronged family members reacting passionately to avenge the murders of loved ones.
Whether 15-30 is more appropriate than some lesser amount of time, I’m not sure. I’d rather err on the side of a bright and clear line when it comes to beating someone to death.
In both cases they are supporting a murderer.
I never claimed that the crimes or support for them were of the same magnitude. Simply that in both cases I find the support distasteful.
Sure, but lots of people do. It’s the same reason you still go to prison for a long time if you blow away your wife’s lover after catching them in bed.
If his wife was mentally ill enough to kill her child, she probably had a psychosis. Most mental patients are non-violent. Surely the husband had some signs that she was in need of help again. Leaving children with someone who is bi-polar is different from leaving them with someone who is psychotic.
A crime of passion is still a crime. And it indicates that this particular person can enter a state where all control is lost. Not every parent would do that. Considering that he was on drugs, he needs to prove that he is in control of himself for a very long time before he is released to the public.
The children needed protection and so did the mentally ill and the public in general. The only guilty one here is the druggie who bludgeoned his sick wife to death. She would surely have been found not-guilty by reason of insanity.
(I am all for a sentence that would have provided for longterm institutionalization for her under a guilty-but-insane plea if there is such a thing.)
See, that is the double standard that I think is stupid. You say that what he did - killing a murderer - is still a crime, and then you turn around and say that what she did - strangling small children to death - is not.
He was driven to this action by circumstances that are extremely unlikely to ever be reproduced. She did it just because she was psychotic.
True, very true, but if the husband is a druggie he likely isn’t all that well versed on what mental illnesses have what attributes… I doubt it ever occurred to him that his wife would KILL their children (I know only one died). He does bear some culpability in this, and certainly shouldn’t have been out doing drugs and shit–that is not responsible behavior for a parent. However, I doubt that he can be reasonably expected to have been able to predict what happened.
As for being able to control himself from killing her, I have no idea, but I think a lot of people, on drugs or not, would do the same. Passion killings are common (as killings go, obviously).
The whole thing is just so sad and fucked up, really. 
I think everyone is agreed that there is some degree of diminished responsability here for both murders.
The question is whether the guy’s sentence should be greatly reduced or even acquited.
I would say no; not if we want to become consistent with other sentencing.
If strong feelings are going to be a valid reason for committing murder then you may as well make murder legal.
(Obviously this is a situation with perhaps the “strongest feelings” possible. But so what?)
If the guy had come home to find a gangbanger had killed his kid, and he then killed the scum, I’d say give him a medal. But this was his wife. This was someone he left with his kids. And this was not someone who was perfectly fine and then just snapped.
I don’t know if the sentence was a bit too short or a bit too long, but this wasn’t a random murderer he killed. She’d probably suffer the rest of her days for what she did, and that is worse punishment than being killed.
I also suspect he was forced to take anger management classes for reasons other than just snapping when he came home.