So let me see if I get this straight. If the killer admits to killing 3 more women the prosecutor will take the death penalty off the table. Instead the killer would get 3 life sentences. To add to the 48 he already has.
I just don’t get it. I know the prosecutor wants the cases cleared but isn’t it time to just take the man to court and go for the death penalty? How, exactly, is adding 3 more life terms on to the 48 he is already going to serve going to help?
It saves the state the trouble of assembling a case to prosecute against a murderer who’s already in jail for life anyway. Capital cases are extremely expensive and time-consuming. Multiple life sentences are silly, but I guess unavoidable, just like sentencing people to hundreds of years in jail. It makes no sense, but it’s supposed to mean something somehow.
You know what’s really futile? Fining him. Ten thousand dollars per person. How in the hell is that supposed to do anything? How is he even supposed to pay that? It isn’t as if he’ll ever have any wages again in his life. And if he happens to have a fraction of that in total assets, real and liquid, I’d be amazed.
I think he should be killed because he does not deserve more freedom than the people he killed, and I think the fines should be reduced to `everything he actually has.’
I’d say what they want is closure for the families of the victims. If he can give them the locations where he dumped the bodies and they can put that part of their lives to rest, it’s a much better situation for all concerned.
It sounds like the additional three murders are similar to the other 48, but lacking any other evidence it is unlikely that the case could be won. By offering to forego the death penalty, at least the families of the victims would have some “closure” and a chance to recover the bodies. If that is all that is possible, it’s better than nothing. IOW, what StGermain said.
Agreed, rsa. I heard King County Prosecutor Norm Meling on the radio, and he as much as admitted that they could only have successfully tried seven of the suspected GRK cases — and probably won them — but that would leave dozens of unsolved murders and unclosed cases and unhappy families. As long as they have the GRK alive (for a while) they might as well close as many cases as they can.
Maybe in five years they’ll have pinned enough on him, with few enough probable cases left, that they’ll seek the death penalty on something. Who knows?
I could be wrong, not being a lwayer or anything, but I think that some of these fines are imposed so that if (more like when in modern society) he should sell the movie/book/whatever rights, he won’t profit from them.
IANAL either, but I think that at the very least, many US states have laws against a killer profiting from his/her crimes in such a fashion. My guess is it might serve to gobble up any other profits that might be made off his notoriety and not the crime per se - for instance, I recall John Wayne Gacy sold or attempted to sell paintings that he did. They were mostly clowns, and so weren’t directly capitalizing off the murders he committed.