I don't know, but there's a part of me that worries that this fellow is going to avoid a long prison sentence, but instead will end up in a mental institution for only a few years until he is sufficiently medicated and treated to the point where some panel of specialists deem he's no longer a threat, and then release him back into society. And when he neglects his meds, society had better watch out.
Begin quote here...... When a dog attacks and kills a person, we don't care if the dog was crazy or just plain mean and aggressive. We put that dog away forever (in the case of dogs, that means death, but with people, it should means life, until natural death, in prison). The same should be applied here with people. It doesn't matter if I murder my handicapped kid in some sort of mercy killing, or if I chop a guy's head off on a bus because I'm crazy, or abduct a kid rape and murder them, or anything in between. If you're convicted of 2nd or 1st degree murder, then you should be in jail forever, until your natural death. Manslaughter can be more lenient, but for murder, there's no get out of jail card. Of course, the lawyers would then make sure that every lunatic, drunk driver or whatever never got a murder conviction, but for those that do, lock 'em away forever, same as the dogs that kill people, we don't care why, we just care that they're stopped.
So, how are we going to pay for all these lifers? Well, for a start, get the non-violent offenders out of jail.
