In a surprising turn of events in today's revenge-bent society, the family of three murder victims told the district attorney that they did not want to go through a capital case trial, and they wanted the defendants to be offered a plea deal. Two teenagers, William Angel and Matthew Wood, pled guilty this week to a triple murder (a mother and her two sons) in exchange for consecutive life sentences. They described in detail how they repeatedly stabbed and slit the throats of the victims while under the influence of drugs and alcohol. The nine-year-old victim pled with them to stop because he was "just a little boy." After killing the victims, they stole video games and then set the house on fire. The defendants actually had to wear bullet-proof vests to come to court because of the danger they faced for these killings.
I am amazed at the restraint the victims' family has shown, and I am pleased to see that they did not ask for these young mens' lives. Enough tragedy has been created that no more is necessary.
See http://www.wsmv.com/news/26674716/detail.html for more information
Read a couple of your articles on the death penalty. I commend you for your compassion. I worked for half a decade in a maximum security prison, first as a teacher, then as a Correctional Officer. I am against the death penalty, for the most part. On the other side, however, I wonder if if execution for some may be the compassionate thing to do. An eye for an eye is wrong and it is contradictory to kill for killing. The cases are never simply because a person was "bad" and there is often a legacy of of abuses leading someone to creating such an act. The reasons that, in VERY FEW cases I would understand the death penalty as being an option lie in the fact that if you have a seriously disturbed individual serving a life sentence with nothing to lose. I have witnessed and experienced assaults and murders inside the prisons by such individuals. What do we do then. I am a pacifist, Yogi and humanist. Sometimes, however, the shades of grey raise many questions.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog!
Thanks for the comment! I'm glad you're enjoying my blog. Yes, there is an issue for what to do with seriously dangerous people -- the case that comes to mind for me is a defendant from back in the early days of Sing Sing prison who would eat his victims after torturing them for long periods of time. I believe he was eventually given the electric chair. That case would be a much more difficult case for me to decide, if I had been a juror, but I like to think my belief in the ability to change and transform into a positive role model would win out. I think it would be a different (tougher in some aspects and easier in others) decision in today's world where he could be housed at a supermax prison for the rest of his life.
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