From the WashingtonPost.com:
Anders Behring Breivik receives a sentence of up to 21 years for bomb and gun attacks that killed 77 people last year and terrorized a nation. The sentence is the maximum allowed under Norwegian law and can be extended.
Twenty-one years for mowing down 77 people in cold blood seems like a very small amount of time to to serve in prison. If he had done that same crime anywhere in the United States, his butt would never see the light of day. (And rightly so, in my opinion.) Americans are hard-nosed about their crime and punishment.
Constrast the Norwegian situation to a local Virginia situation. Michael Wayne Hash of Culpeper has been set free after spending 12 years in prison for allegedly murdering a 74 year old organist. The lady was shot in the head 4 times. Hash was convicted and given life in prison at age 19.
He was recently freed because, according to the Washington Post:
On Monday, Hash walked out of the Culpeper County courthouse with the charges against him dismissed, 12 years after being wrongly convicted of murder. Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh, who had been brought in to reassess a case that has raised widespread concerns about deceit and misconduct, asked the judge to dismiss all charges and lift any legal constraints against him.
Additional information was provided:
Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled that Hash was being wrongly held, citing extreme police and prosecutorial misconduct, such as coaching witnesses, failing to disclose a plea deal with a key witness and moving him to another county’s jail for two nights to expose him to a known snitch. The judge said Hash had made a convincing show of actual innocence.
More sophisticated DNA testing has shown us that false convictions aren’t rare. June 13, 2012 findings in a policemisconduct.net page Quote the Associated Press:
RICHMOND, Va. – New DNA testing in hundreds of old Virginia homicide and sexual assault cases supports the exoneration of at least 38 suspects, according to a study released Monday by a national policy group that examined the test results.
The Urban Institute’s study is the first to say how many exonerations are likely from Virginia’s stash of archived, decades-old biological samples that so far have cleared at least five men who were convicted of sexual assaults. Officials with the state Department of Forensic Science, which is conducting the testing project, have said their job is not to suggest who should be exonerated, but to test the samples and deliver the results to law enforcement officials who determine whether they believe someone is innocent.
It is a well known fact that poor people and minorities are more often the victims of false guilty verdicts as well as longer sentencing. The OJ trial showed us clearly what money will buy.
It sounds like we need to be careful about who we execute. I am not willing to give serial killers slaps on the wrist. I want rightly convicted people removed from society when they commit heinous deeds.
However, I want to make absolutely certain that everything involving their conviction is on the up and up. We will probably never get it perfect but we need to be doing better than we are doing. We don’t need more cases like Bennet Barbour, Arthur Whitfield, or Thomas Haynesworth, all who were wrongly convicted and who have all languished in prison for years. All of these men were wrongfully convicted of rape.
Somewhere there must be a happy medium.
That’s what I heard…..maximum of 21 years. I remember a decade or so back when some death metal guys were convicted of burning a church down, and murder, and they got something like 5 years. Sentences just run light in Norway. 21 years sounds awful light to me, but I think there is a lot about Norway I wouldn’t get. It’s a wondrous place from what I have heard.
From what I read, the judge can and probably will extend the sentence once the 21 years is up. If the guy is still considered a danger to society. He aid in court that he would do it all again if he had a chance. That will factor into the decision to extend the sentence, which is called “containment” and isn’t a set in stone length of time.
See…here’s the thing. I’m all for being “lenient” on this guy by giving him 21 years.
Just as long as he is awakened every morning with a beating. Every night, he goes to bed knowing that pain awaits him in the morning.
A slow beating. Something that won’t put him down and that will hurt a looooong time.
And then…on the day before he’s to be released….execute him. Just say, “Surprise! You didn’t think that we were REALLY going to let you go! Psyche!”
I think he ought to be in prison forever. I don’t want to punish him as badly as I want him removed from society where he can’t get at the general population.
Cargo, you are too kind. why not let him worry about being executed.
Europeans just don’t seem to want to execute people. Maybe they just did it too long over the centuries.
I hope the people wrongly convicted have some sort of restitution.