So, per the CNN article, James Holmes has racked up 12 life sentences + 3,318 years in prison. No parole.
Now, historically, humans live barely over 100 years maximum as they die of old age. The complexity of the human body means that an effective treatment for aging - something that works indefinitely and is not insanely expensive - will probably not be available in the next 50 years. But, surprising things can happen. A breakthrough could be made. Maybe manipulating the telomeres is not as hard as it currently seems. We could invent AI in 25 years and have the resulting super-intelligent being solve this problem. Etc.
So…if a treatment were invented. And, the treatment became a common and accepted medical treatment, one that it would be against the Constitutional rights for a prison to withhold.
So, how long would James Holmes be in prison if he didn’t die of aging, and they kept him in solitary and prevented him from committing suicide?
Doesn’t a life sentence say “the natural life” or something. So you could argue that each 120 year increment counts as a full life sentence. So he’d serve 4,758 years in prison? Is that correct?
No society has lasted for 3000 years. James Holmes would probably starve to death in his cell during a revolution or be let out by the victors eventually. Perhaps he would be stabbed by someone, or manage to commit suicide given enough time.
Alternatively, the constitution could be amended to provide that life extension drugs are not medically necessary for prisoners, and he dies in his eighties or so.
He didn’t receive a death sentence. You could reasonably argue that denying the prisoner the drugs is the same as killing him, which is not legally authorized.
If you can deny a prisoner life extending drugs, you can legally deny them any form of medical treatment.
In practice, I have read that many jails and prisons do drag their feet on providing medical care, and prisoners die as a result, but they get in trouble for this.
To the former, I do not know. Most living beings want to continue to live.
To the latter, again, if you can do that, you can declare that antibiotics for infection are an “elective” treatment and deny them. Or surgery for a burst appendix. Prisons do kill their inmates doing things like this all the time, but they get sued over it and sometimes lose, and life extending drugs would presumably be given every single day after a person turns 50 or something. If the prison denies them on Holme’s 50th birthday, he’d be able to sue, and the case would reach a verdict not in favor of the prison (under current guidelines, assuming the drugs were not absurdly expensive) before he died of old age.
Your idea is terrible. A man like Holmes should be rendered a non-threat by the cheapest acceptably humane method available. It is fucking stupid to prolong his existence for the purpose of torture when simply waiting for him to die is cheaper, more humane and more effective.
Yes, and if fairies fly, it doesn’t matter. Constitutional amendments are one of the most difficult imaginable things to obtain, and it is highly, highly unlikely there would be enough support for one in this case.
Also, this would make explicitly the standard life without parole sentence “death by slow torture”. People would be aware that it is a more painful version of the death penalty and would begin protesting it. I consider it more likely than the death penalty would become more commonly used in all states - already a “pigs fly” kind of thing given the way the wind is currently blowing - then people would explicitly pass a constitutional amendment just so they could give people the death penalty in a far more painful way.
Well, they do say life imitates art… although I’m not convinced. That said, I know its not Shawshank prison. Still, given “12 life sentences + 3,318 years” he might be able to tunnel through the solid granite walls of even Ft Knox with a toothpick.
I read a short story once about someone who sold his soul to the Devil in return for immortality. (Not clear what the Devil gets out of this, since he presumably only collects the soul when the guy dies.) Anyway, he ends up getting sentenced to life in prison.
The story ends there, leaving it to the reader to wonder how that ends up. Presumably, he will spend eternity alive in prison.
I read somewhere (maybe it was right here on the SDMB?) that if a convict on death row manages to almost commit suicide the day before his scheduled execution, the prison officials will pull out all the stops and spare no expense to revive the convict, keep him on life support if necessary, and do whatever it takes to keep him alive – just so they can execute him.
If Holmes lives to eternity, then the prison WILL keep him alive and in prison, theoretically, for eternity. As others have pointed out, something is likely to interrupt that – for example, the collapse of the current civilization, or a revolution (which might free him or might kill him), or he might manage to commit suicide or get offed by the other inmates.
And if he actually dies, of any cause, he still has 11 life sentences to go. This raises a new question: Those 12 life sentences are meant to provide “justice” to the 12 victims. We have this notion that you can somehow do “justice” to a murder victim, who nevertheless remains just as dead. Which of his 12 victims, then, gets to claim the justice when he completes his first life term? What justice do the other 11 victims get? And do the extra years for the weapons charge come first or after his life term? (Note that those 3000+ years aren’t extra years after the 12 life terms. Most of that IS the estimated time of the 12 life terms.)
To what extent does Holmes even understand (or will ever understand) what his new life is all about? The jury ruled that he is “sane enough” to face trial and be held criminally accountable, but for all that, it’s still pretty clear that he’s seriously psychotic. Prison life will undoubtedly drive him even further bonkers than he already is. It’s going to be grim for him.
Well, that’s interesting. So if future medical science had a treatment for death, he could get out of those life sentences by dying 12 times and then getting treated.
The problem is that such “treatment” is necessarily limited - future medical science might be able to revive someone dead for even a few hours, by invading their body with billions of repair robots and basically rebuilding large sections of the body with new components. But, you could argue that if it is possible at all to revive someone - if their corpse hasn’t rotted enough that you can’t do this - then they never died at all. We don’t consider a person on a heart-lung machine dead, why should we consider a cooling body that we can still save by connecting to a vast machine that can tear it down and rebuild it?
Anyways, it’s all hypothetical. In the unlikely event they find a way to treat the old age part, and he doesn’t die in prison from suicide or homicide, maybe in 300 years the state would use some sort of treatment or install a control chip in his brain or something to prevent further violent attacks, and he could be released.
“Talk therapy” can’t rewire a person’s brain in a way that stops them being a psychopath - maybe it could teach them coping strategies, but they are still ill. Can’t let someone who is ill and who killed a dozen people to the streets. Also, the therapy requires him to take drugs that have nasty side effects and he may at any time decide to stop taking them. But you could imagine a form of surgery that reconnects his neurons to fix this, and/or permanently adjusts his brain chemistry, or a control chip…
Do you really think Holmes is going to survive in prison? He’s got a very large target on his back just due to the publicity, let alone all the innocent victims he claimed. 5 years max.
It probably just depends. You know this isn’t justice. If the guy is supposed to be executed, he should have been sentenced to death in a court of lawyer and the sentence carried out by competent professionals. Allowing someone to be murdered by other inmates is a failure of the prison.