To summarize, 17 years after the fact, this 14 year old girl’s rapist/murderer has been found thanks to DNA testing. Her parents can finally feel some kind of relief that the monster has been caught. I can’t imagine the pain of what they went through all this time, knowing that their daughter’s killer hadn’t been caught. I can’t imagine what she may have gone through the last few hours of her life. But, I can feel rage over it. I can sympathize. I’m glad technology came through this time.
I’m often iffy about the death penalty, but not this time.
Now that’s odd, I would imagine that on hot topics like the death penalty, there simply are no exceptions.
My personal stance stands unaltered: While a lot of people deserve a death sentence, it gives me the creeps when a government feels it has the obligation and the right to carry it out.
So, even in this case, I for one don’t want a death sentence, but rather would see the more expensive (and allegedly more inhumane) life long prison time.
Make him work the rest of his days to provide some restitution to the family he has hurt. Killing him is just another life wasted (not that, so far, he hasn’t done anything to ensure his own is hardly a standard-bearer).
Ha ha. What bullshit. If we raped him then murdered him, we’d be no better than he.
It may, as iampunha says, be a case of another life wasted. That’s a difficult question and the heart, I believe, of the death-penalty debate. I personally do not believe that capital punishment = murder.
Just for once I wish we had one of the technologies pictured on ST-TNG. Can’t remember what episode it was, but Riker was convicted of murder. It wasn’t capital punishment on their planet, but the implantation of memories, what thevictim went through. This would play through the murderer’s head at least once a day for the rest of their life. Which usually wasn’t very long, because those convicted tended to suicide.
You’ve paired a couple of oddly antithetical questions, Cardinal, suggesting that you (a) want this guy to experience a thoroughgoing punishment, and (b) you want him (if the punishment doesn’t involve death) to experience guilt and remorse.
From everything I’ve heard (plus my own comparatively trivial experience) living inside one’s head (without the distractions of people, activities, and whatnot) is hardest for those who haven’t come to terms with themselves and their actions.
IOW, the less repentance, the greater the punishment. I was personally angling for punishment.
Life in prison is too good for such scum. He is a waste of skin. Even if he’s not happy in prison, he still gets to eat, breathe, probably gets to see the sky from time to time, work out in the weight room, watch t.v., all kinds of good stuff that the victim can’t. He probably would not spend his time being sorry for what he did. And he has gotten all the intervening years to enjoy in whatever sick manner he takes pleasure in. IMO the only imprisonment that would be appropriate punishment would be the rest of his life in a dark dungeon with no windows and lots of vermin like himself. Since we don’t do that, just do away with him. Not with some nice painless lethal injection, either. Maybe a nice slow hanging.
Ahh, another expesive murder trial and the tax payers of King County are going to foot the bill. We already have the Green River Killer trial coming up and the prosecutors office is asking for another million for expenses. The defense lawyers have already gotten 1.5 million and they are asking for more. And the suspect, Gary Ridgeway, is only being tried for 4 of the 35 or so killings. I guess its the price we pay to put murderers away.
Whoops, should have read the story linked by the OP first. Seattle has a case of someone being arrested 21 years after the alledged killing. The person charged is now fighting extradition.
I honestly don’t get this. So Charles Manson is being punished MORE because he has no remorse? Do you mean that he’s punished more because he’s imprisoned for something he’s not sorry for? Is that supposed to be more disturbing than knowing you’ve done something reprehensible?
Did the state where the crime occured have a young offenders act of any kind? 'Cuz this guy will be charged with whatever was on the books when he was 14 years old…
and Ogre and Optihut, the death penalty costs more money than life in prison. It’s about $2 million v. $660, 000 according to a site I came across last week and am kicking myself for not bookmarking.