The Smallest Minority

Well, serial killers tend to have problems of a lethal nature inside, so there is always that. Even if someone inside doesn't try to redeem himself by ridding the state of this burden, he is still likely to reoffend inside and buy himself twenty to fourty more years.

"Price has written many letters over the years, to judges and prison officials and the media, complaining about his incarceration. Long ago, he says, he paid his debt for his juvenile crimes."

What is the value of a human life? Is it so valuable that taking one deserves the ultimate penalty? I can't see it being any other way.

The ultimate penalty is death, a penalty which he earned. He has most decided NOT paid the debt which he owes. I wish we could say that he paid his debt long ago.

BTW… If a human life is not so valuable that it doesn't deserve a the ultimate penalty when it is taken, then this psychopath's life isn't worth fighting for either.

But the courts are just as bad. The judge could have given him life in prison but was hoping for reform? I think that judge should be that animal's cell mate, since it is obvious the system will not take care of the rabid dog properly. The difference between them is splitting hairs. Is it the killer that kills upon release, or those who turn their heads and open the gate?

I always figured that in cases like this, the judge who sentenced him should have to offer his own home as the "half-way" house when he gets paroled/released.

Having just read an article on the sociology of serial killers, and the fact that they are predominantly white, I had a preconceived notion of a white guy rotting in jail until he played the race card.
Race aside, he should be fried. If only for his complete lack of remorse/rehabilitation.
OTOH, let him loose after giving the fathers of the victims date and time. Perhaps around shift change or break time.

Nose? Meet Face.

Let's hope that this "novel" interpretation of the legal definition of extortion doesn't do more harm to us all then any possible number of murders a single killer could dream of committing.

Yet another example of why "hard cases make for bad law". There is no argument for abiding by the law as written at the time of Price's conviction, other than "the common good", which is thin gruel indeed to a grieving family when he inevitably kills again. But the law, before it was stretched out of all recognition, existed as it did for a reason. The idea of "limited government" doesn't end with the size of a given bureaucracy or tax code, it entails the duration and scope of government's punitive authority over us all as well.

Sometimes it's better to face the devil we know, with the threat we already understand, then to wait in ignorance for the next manifestation of the devil we just ignorantly released who threatens us all.

Will Brown,

If the representatives and judges would have done what they were supposed to do, I don't believe there would be a problem. As well, I wouldn't worry about the exception. It is just that. From my understanding, Ma. isn't exactly heavy on even realistic punishment. The only reason this is being done is because people are demanding it in such large numbers, even the dead and deaf in power cannot seclude themselves well enough from the roar, not even in their ivory towers offer the usual refuge. They will continue to under-penalize and offer early release to the usual animals who aren't on the public's radar. No worries there, if you were worried for some reason.

Doom,

My only worry was that the exception, now having been established, will spread and thus become the rule. The concept known as "legal precedent" ring any bells for you?

I expressed no sympathy for Price, nor do I wish to seem callus towards any future victims he might claim or their families either. And the closest I've ever come to a tower, Ivory or other, is the fact that I live in an upstairs apartment.

None of which has anything at all to do with my dismay over this most recent subversion of established legal standards that all of us are expected to obey. By my reading of the article, the authorities did abide by the established law and sentenced Price as that law stipulated. Only then did others come along and circumvent the prohibition against ex-post facto laws by distorting the extortion statute beyond any possible reasonable interpretation of it's previous limits. You may not consider that to be an unsettling outcome ... yet.

For the moment, let's agree to wait and see if, or more probably when, a prosecutor in some other state siezes upon this new standard to convict someone else of this essentially new crime.

"On the advice of his court-appointed lawyer, Price refused a court order to undergo further psychological testing, fearing the results would be used to commit him for life. His refusals allowed Pine's office to file contempt-of-court charges in 1994."

Let that be a lesson. Don't put much faith in your court-appointed attourney, because they are little more than extensions of the DA's office.

I wish Craig Price would die choking on his own vomit, but the law said he should be released at age 21. I expect the opinions of many readers here will change when a gun owner is brought into court, shown to be completely innocent, but sent to prison for 25 years on a trumped-up contempt charge.

I think you misunderstand my position on this case, Will.

My position is that Price should have been summarily executed upon the conclusion of his guilt in this case.

There are people who are, in a word, evil. It doesn't really matter how old or young they are. Once discovered, they need to be removed from the population - permanently and quickly. Craig Price is one such.

The law is wholly insufficient when faced with people like Price. "Some people just need killin'" was, at one time, a suitable defense of justifiable homicide.

Uh, Kevin? You didn't specify a particular Will (Let's get him!:)), so I'm gonna jump in here. I think "Some people just need killin'" was, at one time, a suitable expression of the justifiable homicide defense. A subtle but critical distinction, I think, that doesn't fundamentally alter your basic premise.

And, just to burnish my 'sphere cred, I'm going to argue that "the law" in fact is not "insufficient when faced with people like Price". As a result of his prosecution as a juvenile (with all of the proscriptions and boundaries that we as a society have decreed people of such few years merit) the law governing certain crimes committed by people of the same age as Price at the time of his killing spree are now prosecutable as adults.

This is precisely how our legal system is designed to respond to exceptional behavior, by adjusting as circumstance demonstrates to be necessary. What the law does not get to do is change and then go back and try someone for something that wasn't a permissable option at the time of their initial offense.

Something/someone has to be the prime motivator for a change in the law. Pretty much by definition, such an individual cannot possibly qualify for prosecution under a statute that didn't exist (in that particular form at least) at the time of his action. Everyone after, but not him.

In any case, summary execution isn't a permissable option under any US civil legal code of which I'm aware (IANAL, but I think Glenn
Reynolds or Eugene Volock would have noted such an extreme exception to the national norm before now) and even the UCMJ prescribes it as a general rule (via the requirement for review of a capital sentence by a higher authority before execution of said sentence), so I take your statement as the expression of frustration I'm sure you intended it as. And sympathise with you.

That said, I stand by my previous statement that the damage done to our national legal code by an obscure Rhode Island assistant DA's fear-mongering is potentially far greater then any number of killings any single individual murderer could hope to pull off on his own. Ultimately, such as he would make a run at one of us People of the Gun and activate the serial killer retirement clause of the 2nd Amendment if nothing else.

What's the definition of the "crime" of extortion as it pertains to making a verbal "threat"? Case in point, are you "extorting" Craig Price by your previous comments here? That would seem to be an equivelant interpretation of the legal standard Price himself has been held to (presuming the AP has told the tale in anything like it's actuality - not a given, as I'm sure we all recognise). I don't think that to be the case, but a canny Arizona prosecutor might think otherwise and seek to advance his political career at your expense some day, fear-mongering being an appeal to a universal human emotion even cowboys aren't entirely immune to. :)

I agree it would take an exceptional circumstance to over-whelm your 1st Amendment rights, but Craig Price was and remains a US citizen (however reprehensable a one he certainly seems to be) and his rights under Section 1, Art. 9 and 10 of the US Constitution (which deals with ex-post facto laws at the federal and state levels respectively) don't seem to have withstood the onslaught brought against him by ADA Price and others. Which leads me to believe that all the rest of us have suffered an equal denial of our civil rights, if only potentially so far.

I doubt that many readers here would strenuously object to the position of shooting Craig Price dead as he came through the door as an expression of personal ethical conduct on any of our part. I equally expect that you would be early among us at objecting to the state's moving the goal posts in a similar manner if doing so more directly effected gun ownership for example. If we are going to demand equitable and ethical treatment for our favored cause(s), I think we are beholdened to maintain that standard even when we have to hold our noses while doing so.

I'm open to suggestions as to practical technique in doing so without letting go of a gun at any time.

Kevin,

I'm afraid I did misunderstand your position. I was assuming you agreed with the tactics of the prosecution, not just the outcome. At least the law is now changed, and the next time a 15 year old decides to commit multiple murders, the court will be able to lock them up for life.

Uh, I don't want summary executions on confessions. The police seem particularly adept at getting "confessions" from people who are later exonerated through hard forensic evidence, like DNA analysis.

I concur, Phelps, but there is no doubt this kid did both crimes.

I'm not a big fan of the death penalty. The .gov tends to screw up so much that I'm more than certain that innocent people have ridden the lightning or taken the needle, but there are crimes where guilt is not in question, and where the perpetrator is, literally, evil.

As Ron White puts it, those people ought to get to take the express lane.

However, the law doesn't allow for that. Price was a minor.

In these very rare cases, I support extralegal intervention - "vigilante justice" as it were. There was a child molestation case some time back where a coach had been molesting a player, a young boy. There was no doubt of the coach's guilt. He was arrested and extradited back to the state where he committed the acts for trial. When he was escorted off the aircraft, the boy's father turned away from a concourse payphone, drew a pistol and shot the guy to death at point-blank range.

He was acquitted of murder by a jury of his peers.

The law doesn't need changing. Some people just need killin'.