Legal experts say the case pivots on whether Holmes was legally insane when he opened fire in a packed theater in Aurora, killing 12 people.Is life in prison an acceptable deal?
March 29, 2013
Prosecutors not ready to let the Aurora theater killer plead guilty to escape the death penalty.
"In a court filing, prosecutors criticized defense attorneys for publicizing [James] Holmes’ offer to plead guilty, calling it a ploy meant to draw the public and the judge into what should be private plea negotiations."
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60 comments:
That depends on what the definition of life is.
It would be nice if his victims got a chance to plead innocent and avoid the death penalty he imposed without asking.
My great-grandfather was a small-town jailer. He was also the executioner.
(Yes, they had job sharing back in the day.)
Strung 'em next to his house for the town to see.
On one occasion, he asked my grandmother to sew a hood.
She was a helpful child.
Just saying.
Life in a mental institution would be better. He needs his meds.
If not that, death would probably be preferable.
Before I saw the post above, my post was going to be:
"Hang his a$$"
No. Next question.
I'm sure the Cheyenne or the Arapaho would let him plead guilty.
And then listen to him plead as they gave him what he has coming.
They left out the part where he has converted to Islam and views his crimes as a "Jihad against Infidels"
The state should not be in the business of killing criminals. That there have far to much politics in the assignment of death sentences to those convicted is only the first of many reasons why that is.
That does not mean that I think that leniency should be applied in this referenced instance. Life should, and must, mean that Holmes should die in prison, should never, ever take another breath as a free individual.......never. His incarceration should be as uncomfortable and discomfiting as is possible.
Give him life in the general population. He'll be dead soon enough
heyboom - yup a weak pasty white guy wouldn't survive long in the penitentiary.
The death penalty was made for this muther f*cker.
I oppose the death penalty, so I say life. But as heyboom and others have suggested, his life will likely be Hobbesian.
Pleading guilty will lose value if the government can decide "No, your crime is so heinous you don't get the same rights as others."
He can plead guilty tomorrow. Then the Judge will sentence him to death.
If he wants a bargain to live in free room and board at our expense, then he should have shown some mercy like a human being would have shown to the innocent.
Edward wrote: The state should not be in the business of killing criminals. That there have far to much politics in the assignment of death sentences to those convicted is only the first of many reasons why that is.
Pure pablum, Edward. You don't have a clue.
This part of the tragedy of "deinstitutionalizing" the mentally ill in this country. He should be in a hospital for the criminally insane for life and given his meds. Maybe he could accomplish something but he never should be let out of an institution.
Having said that (1:28), it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to consider letting this asshole plead to life, given the potential problems of the insanity defense.
If those problems are readily resolved, then no way.
Matthew wrote: Pleading guilty will lose value if the government can decide "No, your crime is so heinous you don't get the same rights as others."
The main value of plea bargaining is to expedite criminal cases. There is no right to a plea bargain and the heinous nature of a crime should always militate against any deal.
Is there really a serious argument that Holmes was not insane at the time of the killing? That this was some moral lapse for which he must be punished, like killing people in the commission of a crime for personal gain?
Absolutely no deal. If ever there was a poster-boy for the death penalty, its this evil creature.
Is there really a serious argument that Holmes was not insane at the time of the killing?
I think anyone who kills people like that has a screw loose. That doesn't mean he didn't understand that what he was doing was wrong and evil.
As a society, our justice system should be focused on protecting the populace. As long as he's either locked away for life or executed I think that will be accomplished.
Let the guy plead guilty and lock him up for ever. It'll be cheaper than the expensive show trial, with less risk of him winding up back in society.
More cost effective to take the deal, eliminate any appeals and throw away the key.
If this nut case were really serious about killing, he would have used one of the WMD in his apartment OR one of those: Available to any adult; At a cost of $10.00 or less; Which require no technical knowledge; And, which could kill all in that theater.
If he had no access to effective guns, he could well have done that as could any other "crazy" who wishes to kill, for example, a great number of students.
Given that I'm opposed to racial discrimination in the application of the death penalty, I say that he must die.
If only to shut the race-panderers up.
But mostly because he intentionally shot into a theater full of people.
Yes it is, but the victims should be heard fiirst. What they think/feel means more than anyone else.
Could the defense argue that with the progress of selective standards the lives lost were no longer viable and therefore the murderer had a right to abort them directly or by proxy?
Grandstanding DA. Holmes will never be executed. Ever.
Maybe Obama would like to send in a drone...
Who are these people who think that being evil is a sign of insanity? Do you not believe that some people enjoy causing pain and suffering?
There is no doubt we have the right guy in custody. He planned it way in advance. He even booby trapped his bedroom with explosives so that if and when the police arrived, they would be injured or killed. Holmes arrived at the theater with the full intent to kill innocent people, including children, at point blank wearing protective gear. James Holmes did not want to be shot. He is the very definition of a coward.
Right now, the pussycrats who run Colorado, are attempting to kill the death penalty. I think we have all of 4 people on it.
Take the plea, sentence him to life, put the Aurora theater killer in a cell with someone willing and able to kill him, pardon the guy after he kills the Aurora Theater killer.
Georgia should take the same approach with the 17-year-old who shot a baby in the head, but whom Justice Kennedy won't let the state execute.
If I was dictator, this guy would have been put the death shortly after the victims were buried. The family's deserved time to mourn and take care of the immediate needs, before getting their final closure.
But as I live in a freedom loving Republic, I rather the Prosecutors all the plea, but on consecutive cases to eliminate any possibility of life in prison being anything shorter. We have a long appeal's process to protect the innocent, but this is guy is clearly guilty. The sooner he out of the court and serving his punishment (death or life imprisonment) the better. He won't get any sympathy in prison, and he'll soon be rightfully forgotten.
It would be nice if you guys would muster up this much righteous indignation and blood-thirstyness for those who use this kind of thing as an instrument of war, or imdeed just for filthy lucre, such as the drug traffickers.
I don't get why they would even discuss a plea. How hard is it going to be to prove that he did it? (Yes it will be expensive. How long would it take any of us to find a dozen things the government (any government) does that are more expensive and less important.) The only question is sanity.
Fine, life w/o parole and he has to listen to the families in court at his sentencing. Unless your in a state like Texas or Florida, the death penalty is both not a deterrent nor a satisfying penalty (see Scott Petersen).
He'd suffer more if he did have to spend life in prison. Those death row guys get way too many perks.
Plus, its cheaper.
Plus, I'm pretty sure he's insane.
Everyone knows he won't be put to death. That wouldn't be "progressive".
No, a likelier scenario is that he converts to islam, becomes transgendered, marries his cellmate, all while collecting Disability.
The prosecutor could not write a very good book if there a plea deal, and even worse, he wouldn't get his 15 minutes.
I wonder how many times they could arrange to have the defendant killed.
Hagar said...
Life in a mental institution would be better. He needs his meds.
If not that, death would probably be preferable.
No, he needs to suffer and die horribly. If the death penatly isn't strung out in Colorado then I say he gets it. If it is then give him life and fuck his shit up in gen. pop. Insanity should not nor ever be a defense for murder.
Execute the prick. His very existence is an abomination to the victim's families. Consider his execution a retrospective abortion for those whose sensibilities are offended by the concept of capital punishment.
He planned his crime and surrendered meekly. he knew what he was doing.
James Pawlak said...
If this nut case were really serious about killing, he would have used one of the WMD in his apartment
====================
I hate the "heroes of law enforcement" trying to manipulate media and public to propaganda that serves the pigs, but not the public.
1. A baggie of pot grabbed from some doper does not have "a street value of over 10,000 dollars".
2. The heroes in the local police can claim they "found an absolute arsenal" in the suspects house consisting of "at least 40 shotgun shells and a brick of 22 ammo boxes nearly 500 rounds total" for the shotgun and 22 rifle they grabbed....but that doesn't make it an arsenal.
3. The "hero" police chief puffing himself up at a press conference can call a Molotov cocktail, a pipe bomb, a 9mm with a 15 round clip in it a WMD, but just because the lying shit says it is , doesn't mean it is remotely close to what things are classified as real WMD.
Nukes, nerve gas, biowarfare agents..that is the real thing. Not a large black powder firecracker taped to a jug of gasoline.
He has "converted to Islam" and declared his acts a form of "jihad".
So what happens when some Islamist hostage takers demand the release of their "comrade"?
If he's dead, that can't arise.
Those that say "a life behind bars is worse than death"
I ask, how the fuck do you know?
been to hell and back?
" Pure pablum, Edward. You don't have a clue." Rubbish. You haven't a clue as to my level of knowledge or awareness of the topic. I stand by my words and my position.
Defend yours.
Yes. As long as the victims get life too.
Edward Lunny said...
The state should not be in the business of killing criminals. That there have far to much politics in the assignment of death sentences to those convicted is only the first of many reasons why that is.
===================
Never got the bleeding heart stuff liberals reserve for murdering scum who are domestic enemy vs. kinng scum that are foreign enemy overseas.
Both threaten us the same way(our physical safety), and the main goal in war is not to have a strategy to capture and imprison enemy soldiers for the rest of their lives - but to go out, find them, kill them. All with a hell of a lot less "due process" than we have for domestic butchering threats.
Even ACLU Jews are obediently silent as liberals like Obama properly whack a bin Laden for killing people - but they draw the line at killing domestic enemy like a thug that shoots a baby in a stroller in the face.
(People that honestly 'deserve it'
more than enemy combatants and noncombatants we have no real remorse about killing, though they are guilty of nothing other than fighting for their beliefs and cause)
Lately, we hear a lot of crap about how "state sanctioned murder" could bring down the very pillars of civilization if a "wrongfully convicted, even innocent person" is executed.
What bullshit. We have 95,000 people killed each year in medical misadventures - mistakes and cleanliness oversights by doctors, nurses, techs, staff, pharmacists. The pillars of the legitimacy of civilization did not fall because of 95,000 a year - so how would it for some shithead with a long rap sheet that was sent to the hereafter because his lawyer didn't adequately plea how he was abused as a kid???
It won't happen, because the lawyers have paralyzed the old "swift and sure" justice in favor of the never realized justice of endless Talmudic debate and due process.....but my preference is that Holmes, Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed, DeMarquise, the rapist that beats a woman into brain damage all be lined up against a wall and shot without ceremony.
I say gut-shoot him with a couple of .22s rolled in human s#it, put a couple in his knees and elbows, then stake him out in the sun.
Just a few years ago there was a prison video of Richard Speck. An Illinois mass-murderer (IIRC) who did not use a gun, and killed his Nursing Student victims one at a time.
He was yukin' it up smokin' weed and I believe he'd even got some kind of breast implants. He is serving "life."
Life means you have the ability to adjust to the conditions, and live day to day and even have forms of pleasure. As Private Joker said "...the dead only know one thing - it is better to be alive..."
This being good Friday, I wish we could crucify this animal Holmes, and Speck too.
I could see the merits of negotiating the method of execution. In return for sparing the state the expense of a trial, offer a quick hanging or firing squad. Otherwise, cutting in half at the waist.
Of course they are going to let him plead guilty to avoid the pesky questions that would come up pointing to the fact that this "massacre" by a "lone wolf" never happened the way the official story portrays.
Of course the "law prof" doesn't see the inconsistencies either, because she is willfully blind, viewing it from her Ivory tower in Liberal academia.
The lawyers of Holmes--- merely minders for government agents, don't even bring up the FACT that NO
ONE can place Holmes, the guy with BRIGHT RED Dyed hair, in the theatre.
The official story is that he bought a ticket, sat inside the theatre for a few minutes, went outside the front exit, propping the door open, then returned with guns blazing through that door.
So WHO saw him in the theatre?
WHO sold him the ticket?
Can anyone ID him as the guy that was shooting?
WHO checked his ticket?
Was the guy with DYED BRIGHT RED HAIR the guy that was sitting in front of Corbin Dates, and went out to the front exit? Why does no one ask?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Gv3PGtsHg
WHY does this MSM reporter for CNN not address this as they try to repair the damage he makes to the official story?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVi3U1fGtso
Why was there a gas mask at the far end of the back parking lot of the theatre, when Holmes was found drugged and standing next to his car (where he was placed) a minute after the shooting stopped, wearing a gas mask.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK2jXXomgjA
WHERE is the security cam footage?
All pesky questions that expose the fact that this was a staged incident, and the script given to the useful idiot media.
Not one of you so called smart people here ask these obvious questions and assume Holmes is guilty. NO ONE can place Holmes in the theatre, either before or during the shooting. You should all be ashamed of how willfully blind you are.
Did you know that Holmes' father was about to testify against the criminal bankers in the Libor scandal? And now has still not testified.
" Never got the bleeding heart stuff " You have made a serious error in your assumption about my politics.
" scum who are domestic enemy vs. kinng scum " They are not the same and should not, indeed are not, confronted in the same fashion.
" the main goal in war is not to have a strategy to capture...." incorrect, catastrophically incorrect. The "goal" in a war is to defeat the enemy. The means , tactics, and strategy vary with the variation of the enemy( ies). The defeat must not only occur on the battlefield but in the enemies society as well. A "no prisoners" approach makes a societal victory difficult if not impossible.
" (People that honestly 'deserve it' " By who's estimation, and why ?
" "wrongfully convicted, even innocent person" is executed." Will you volunteer to be one of those people wrongly executed ? Why not ? The importance of this concern can be summed up in one word....Texas. Not just wrongly convicted, but, deliberately and criminally wrongly convicted. So, I ask again. Will you volunteer to be one of those wrongly convicted and executed ? And, again, why not ?
" mistakes and cleanliness oversights by..." Unfortunate, but, unacceptable. But, you deliberately conflate two very different issues. By your own admission these 95k died due to mistake and/or oversight. The wrongly convicted and executed were, and likely are still, deliberately so. Again, see Texas, not only Texas, but, most prominent.
" The pillars of the legitimacy of civilization...." Those pillars, those mores, don't collapse because of a single incident or policy. They do erode over time because of many, continued, small corrosive policies and actions. Should we not attempt and succeed at reversing and preventing those corrosive activities and policies ?
" shithead with a long rap sheet that was sent to the hereafter because his lawyer didn't " Oh, what unmitigated and callous rubbish. Most of those convictions overturned, those involving life or death sentence convictions, involved deliberate and criminal actions by the prosecutor and/or law enforcement personnel. I ask again, will you volunteer to risk your life to such a prosecution ? Any of your children or family ? Many of those people freed from these abhorrent incarcerations had no prior criminal history or had only what can be accurately described as nuisance citations.
" the old "swift and sure" justice" You seem very adamant about abandoning the "sure" part. This despite evidence that various state actors have deliberately falsified and/or hidden evidence in order to convict and sentence someone that they know to be innocent. Would you subject you, or yours, to the same parameters should you find yourself in criminal court ?
" .....but my preference is that Holmes, Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed " except that every case isn't so sure, so certain. Indeed, often enough, the opposite is the case. That is why we have a court system and the presumption of innocence after all. Your attempt to equate every case, even every capital case with those you mention is fallacious at least.
There are evil, despicable people in the world. People whom practice abhorrent and horrific things against those who deserve no such behavior. Having the state slaughter innocent people ,whose convictions were arrived at by criminal means, in order to kill those who are guilty of horrific crimes is of no benefit to society and is ultimately corrosive and detrimental to that same society.
"Rubbish. You haven't a clue as to my level of knowledge or awareness of the topic. I stand by my words and my position.
Defend yours."
I missed this yesterday. So I'm probably too late. The clue to your level of knowledge lies in your ignorant comments. I was a criminal justice professional for more than 25 years and I know bullshit about the death penalty when I see it. You can stand by your words and position until you turn blue, but you cannot provide compelling evidence that politics plays a significant role in " the assignment of the death penalty."
I am personally familiar with the circumstances of considerably more than 100 capital cases. Politics played absolutely no roll in the outcome of any of them other than the delays imposed by anti-death penalty politics.
I repeat. You haven't a clue!
" So I'm probably too late." No, you are not.
" cannot provide compelling evidence that politics " One could start here " http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=27301 " and here " http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/The_Innocent_and_the_Death_Penalty.php " . And I'll repeat one word, Texas. Prosecutorial misconduct, if not outright criminal behavior, law enforcement misconduct, is not unknown and does happen. And it happens all too frequently. No knock raids at the wrong address, or based on fabricated evidence or statements ? Innocent people killed or terrorized during these raids ? No, that never happens....of course not. The law enforcement and judicial communities are above reproach ! Ohh, how about those Pennsylvania judges and police that arrested juveniles for nuisance offenses and sentenced them to incarceration in order to get kickbacks from privately owned facilities. Those folks were just recently sentenced to jail terms.
But, those are probably just "ignorant" comments on my part.
" Politics played absolutely no roll in the outcome of any of them " I cannot speak to those specific instances. However, there is ample evidence that politics, misconduct, criminal negligence, and flat out stupidity have played significant roles in convicting and sentencing to death ;innocent people, on more than a few instances, for crimes that they not only did not commit, but, weren't in the slightest involved . This beyond human error and/or oversight.
" I repeat. You haven't a clue!" You are wrong. Further, your refusal to see the obvious, to accept the reality of these situations has the potential to punish, if not kill, innocent people.
The state has no business killing criminals.
Enjoy your Easter.
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