King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng announced today that he will seek life imprisonment without possibility of release for Jewish Federation shooter Naveed Haq, the Seattle Times reports.
Although Maleng called Haq's murder spree "one of the most serious crimes that has ever occurred in this city," his decision to forego the death penalty was based on Haq's history of serious mental illness.
Maleng's statement is here.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 20, 2006 10:53 AM | Email Thissentence appears to diminish the innocent victims' lives. he gets to breathe--victims do not. the insanity plea/issue is out of hand. everyone banks on it. like our laws/freedoms/American culture, it's being used against us by enemies and criminals.
may the innocent victims always be remembered.
may this perp rot. let's not read about him being out for some silly reason again like the latest string of killer-perps in Seattle. sadly, he'll be given all the comforts of home and religious meals etc. on our dime and victims' families dimes.
"WWSD" ("what would sharia do?")
Posted by: jimmie-howya-doin on December 20, 2006 11:16 AMI, for one, look forward to this scumbag rotting in jail for the rest of his life.
In Washington legal circles there's a similar term: "Maleng" or "Malenged" it.
Excellent example of an oxymoron.
Posted by: Tyler Durden on December 20, 2006 12:11 PM
Your first two statements that the death penalty is not a deterrent and that it costs more than life sentences have probably more to do with the judicial system than the actual penalty. If death row inmates didn't get to spend 10+ years in the prison system at the expense of the taxpayers waiting for their tax-funded appeals to run their course, it might be cheaper to hang them. I don't see why that process couldn't be cut down dramatically.
Additionally, how can the death penalty be a deterrent when there are limp-minded prosecutors all over the country that are telling potential criminals, that they can murder all the people they want to and in return we'll give them a life of dependency at tax payers expense, just roll the dice and if you roll snake-eyes, only then will we go for the death penalty.
Posted by: Doug on December 20, 2006 12:19 PMHis being given life in prison without the possibility of parole, we still can't guarantee that Haq won't get out of prison. We can't guarantee that he won't get a chance to kill again. IF he is dead, he will never kill another person in his quest for jihad.
With the demonstrated behavior of Washington State Corrections System, Haq is likely to get out even if he is sentenced to life.
Even sentenced to life without possibility of release we will still have a significant amount of public funds spent to try to overturn his conviction.
The template for successful jihad by lone wolf has been set in this country. A muslim seeks mental health care, they then commit their murder, then they are found to be less than competent to suffer death for their crime. This has been used successfully in too many locales in our country so far.
Posted by: Skeptic on December 20, 2006 01:38 PMmy point is that i am not insensitive to the truly totally insane that kill & dont even know what reality is. secure them & care for them. dont let them out again. but--they are the exception.
the rule is most of these perps function well in life and plan & avoid detection and trouble & use the mental thing as a pass--like a sleeper cell-- it's denegrating to the truly insane.
after a horrendous crime or a few tries, i want the ultimate penalty doled out. for the victim's & their family's sake.
why waste years of ongoing social resources on someone we gave a chance to & kept (choosing to) blow it? it takes away from resources we can use for the poor, seniors, injured vets and those who contributed all their lives to doing good but have not.
sounds cruel, but it's the classic "lifeboat choices" made in survival situations on the high seas that we do not question, usually do not condemn and yet still fascinate us.
Posted by: jimmie-howya-doin on December 20, 2006 02:38 PMProsecutor Maleng does not agree. The only thing he 'executed' about Gary Leon Ridgway was a plea-bargain. Admittedly, the slovenly failure of Sheriff Reichert's office to investigate the case (and Ridgway later bragged about how easily he'd fooled Reichert) led to the lazy plea-bargain, wherein Ridgway admitted to killing 'only' seven women. (A woman's life means little to law-and-order conservatives, after all.) The other several dozen Green River murders were hastily stamped 'solved' by the King County Sheriff's Office, which, after all, had bicycle messengers to assault. During the Green River killings, detectives hypothesized that two killers were active simultaneously, each 'competing' to outdo the other. This theory was hurridely stuffed down the memory hole when both Maleng and Reichert decided that yelling 'we solved it!' took precedence over eliminating all possibilities. We'll never really know if 'the' Green River Killer was brought to justice, but we will know how little the death penalty deters. If a remorseless monster like Ridgway gets life imprisonment, why should any other killer fear death?
As for terrorist acts, Mohammad Atta is not available for the death penalty; Paul Hill, the pro-life murderer, welcomed his own execution. Does the death penalty, on balance, ever deter? If it does not, should we have the state teach murder?
This giving away a civilization is making me crazy and giving me a case of mental illness!!! So if I I.E.D. a local mosque I am in the clear! 3 Hots and a cot and I can watch Haq rally the troops over at Walla Walla to more jihad!
I heard the interview with one victim. She was gutless saying she is happy this stops the cycle of violence. This perverse redefining of justice and deterrence is getting us all prepped for the kill. What a chump!
All... All of you good people; the peace on earth crowd....oh wake up folks...if we had any balls he'd be executed with a bacon fat tipped bullet and his body allowed to rot overnight unburied; the next day a pig would lick up his blood and he'd be burned inside a Pork Pyre!
But we dhimmi! Get your women into Victoria's Burkas soon and men stop shaving.
1. I don't know if the death penalty deters other murders, it does deter the person convicted of murder. Anyhow, it is an academic discussion. I believe that society, if it chooses has the right to impose the death penalty, if for no other reason that some crimes are so heinous they deserve it.
2. The second part of your argument is actually the argument made by the Church about respect for life and the perpetration of violence. There is the story out of Boston. A six year old girl was wounded and paralyzed by gang fire. She and her family chose to forgive the shooter. I suppose as a person and probably as a society we are not yet where the six year old is.
Posted by: WVH on December 20, 2006 11:51 PM"If you come to Texas and kill somebody, we will kill you back. That's our policy."
-Ron "Tater Salad" White
Posted by: Palouse on December 21, 2006 07:50 AMhttp://michellemalkin.com/archives/006551.htm
Posted by: Obi-Wan on December 25, 2006 09:31 AMI wonder if Maleng let the guy off to ensure he gets the Jihad Muslim vote, the Pro-life Catholic vote, and the liberal Jewish vote. Only when someone kills Jews can you unite these three diverse factions! Amazing.
The reason to support the death penalty is simply because it is the only punishment that fits the crime. Liberals have long taken away the deterance aspect of it because the punishment occurs to long after the crime. People who oppose the death penalty are just cruel people who refuse closure to the victim's families. Who now have the knowledge that their killer lives and sucks the same air we breath.