I would post a link and text from this syndicated San Diego Union-Tribune column except it doesn't appear to have been put online yet. The column appeared yesterday in my local rag (Bucks County Courier times). It is worth posting here if it does appear.
In the column, Perkins noted that John Lennon murderer Mark David Chapman has finally come up for parole in his "20 years to life" sentence and cited the cases of Sirhan Sirhan (killer whose death sentence was reduced to a life sentence with parole) and John Hinckley (assault criminal and would be murderer whose continued interest in violence halted his potential unsupervised visits to his parents). Perkins said that according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average sentence for murder is only 15 years, with the average time served for actually killing someone being a mere 5.5 years.
My rant -
(if you merely assault an average citizen, you can expect to serve less time despite the decades that the scars and horror will last - for instance, one case that haunts me = after serving a sentence for hacking a young girl's arms off with an axe, one scabby creature was set free and soon murdered an innocent woman)
If some out there feel that the death penalty is unfair to segments of society, then at the very least you should advocate murder and assault penalties that truly reflect the seriousness of the crimes.
Jeff
In the column, Perkins noted that John Lennon murderer Mark David Chapman has finally come up for parole in his "20 years to life" sentence and cited the cases of Sirhan Sirhan (killer whose death sentence was reduced to a life sentence with parole) and John Hinckley (assault criminal and would be murderer whose continued interest in violence halted his potential unsupervised visits to his parents). Perkins said that according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average sentence for murder is only 15 years, with the average time served for actually killing someone being a mere 5.5 years.
My rant -
(if you merely assault an average citizen, you can expect to serve less time despite the decades that the scars and horror will last - for instance, one case that haunts me = after serving a sentence for hacking a young girl's arms off with an axe, one scabby creature was set free and soon murdered an innocent woman)
If some out there feel that the death penalty is unfair to segments of society, then at the very least you should advocate murder and assault penalties that truly reflect the seriousness of the crimes.
Jeff