Loughner to Get Life

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Jared Loughner accepted a plea deal for a life sentence. He is the gunman who shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords along with a bunch of other people last year.

In the linked article below, the author describes this as a side-benefit of having a death penalty on the books. Most state prosecutors are willing to accept a guilty plea for a life sentence without the possibility of parole in exchange for not going to trial and not risking the death penalty. This will save the justice system at minimum several hundred thousand, if not a few millions dollars.

Not only is it way cheaper in court cost savings alone, it removes the killer from society for the rest of his life, thus accomplishing the same thing the death penalty would. However, you would never get such a plea deal if the death penalty was struck down. If the maximum penalty was life in prison, no defense lawyer would accept a plea deal for the maximum sentence - he'd take his chances at trial. Conversely, no prosecuting lawyer would accept anything less than life in prison, so there's no chance of a deal. Without the death penalty there would be no downside to going to trial.

The article used the recent Sandusky trial as a counter example. The reason Sandusky pleaded not guilty and went to trial is a plea deal didn't make sense. A plea deal for the minimum sentence on each count would have sent him to prison for 28 years. He went to trial and ended up with 45 years. But Sandusky is 67, so there was no incentive to take the plea deal, as either sentence is tantamount to life in prison, unless he plans on living beyond the age of 95.

The bottom line of the article was the suggestion that even if it is rarely implemented, there is some advantage to keeping the death penalty on the books, because it allows prosecution to bargain down to life in prison in a plea deal. Thoughts?

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I'd say a second advantage of the death penalty is actually killing the murderer and allowing the family(ies) closure.

A third advantage: A dead person can't escape either. Another escape -- the Tison escape was one I remembered from my childhood.

Spoiler

The little boy was found with very little left of his head -- a close range shotgun blast. The teenage girl was found a quarter mile away, she'd been raped and shot -- she managed to crawl away and bled to death.

 

Wasn't Loughner deemed to be insane to some degree? I'm surprised to hear the death penalty is even an issue for him.

 

Isn't anyone who commits murder insane to some degree? To me insanity doesn't really matter in murder cases -- insane or not I don't want them back in society (and don't really care if they're executed).

 

I would venture a guess that most murderers are not insane, if by insane we mean that they're suffering from some documentable psychosis as opposed to simple anger issues or the everyday need to eliminate business rivals or pocket a few extra dollars or having a bender sneak up on you during which you finally put paid to Uncle Jimmy or what have you.

I suppose the practical difference is whether they go to prison forever and/or are executed, or whether they go to a psychiatric hospital forever. I don't think Loughner would have simply walked free even if he was found insane. He'd at least be on a short leash, like Hink-dog.

 

People go through those things every day and don't murder anyone. There's obviously something different in the psyche of a person willing to commit murder. Is that difference a form of insanity? It's certainly abnormal ... and my guess is most murderers are not even close to society's definition of normal.