Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Brent J. Brent: An Argument for the Death Penalty
While I’m not ready to change my view on the death penalty, I must admit that it’s impossible to argue lenience or compassion for some criminals. When you know you’ve caught the right person and you know the evil things that they have done, calling for anything less than their death seems inadequate.
For example, Brent J. Brents.
A 27-year-old woman was repeatedly shot up with heroin and stuffed in a closet between a string of sexual assaults in an abandoned apartment.
An apartment manager whose head was bashed in with a two-by-four had to have part of her brain removed to save her life.
A grade-school student clung to her purple stuffed hippopotamus while she was sexually assaulted on Valentine’s Day.
Brents is an exceptionally violent, indiscriminate sexual offender and child molester. He is broken in ways that can’t be fixed, and he can never be trusted around others. The details in the story cry out for his death, not for candlelight vigils and arguments about human dignity. He has nothing resembling anyone’s idea of humanity or dignity.
He won’t face the death penalty, though, and may well find himself in a state hospital. Nothing that he did warrants the death penalty in Colorado and it would be nearly impossible to argue anything other than insanity for what he did. So Brent J. Brents will probably live in either a state institution or a prison for the rest of his life, and I can’t imagine that he would ever be released from either. His admission that he doesn’t believe that he can be rehabilitated and that he manipulated the system after his first conviction will help the prosecution’s case tremendously.
Brents sexualized violent sexual assault--the need to have bloody, brutal control of a victim for his own sexual satisfaction. That doesn’t just go away; he cannot be rehabilitated.
It’s ironic that this time where I would wholeheartedly support the death penalty is a case where the penalty isn’t applicable, but the truth is that this is one of those instances where it would be the right response. I can’t help but wish that he had put up a violent struggle when he was captured, and that he had been killed as a result.
That would have been the appropriate end for Brent J. Brents.
My prayers and sympathies go out to his victims who will be forced to relive his attacks when they take the stand.
Comments & Trackbacks
Feet first into the wood chipper.
Oo, messy.
I would’nt sweat the issue with Brent J Brents. Just get him through the courts and the inmates will line up to kill him. Otherwise evil people draw the line at child molestation. It will not be quite as violent as the wood chipper (home depot probably does not rent woodchippers to incarcerated felons), but I think he would probly prefer the needle
Oo, messy.
Yeah.
A grade-school student clung to her purple stuffed hippopotamus while she was sexually assaulted on Valentine’s Day.
I imagine the child’s family would like to have a crack at him. Honestly, if that happened to either of my girls, I’d have a hard time holding myself back.
And you’re right. The death penalty is too good for this scum.
I guess what gets me most is the thought that I have no idea what it must have been like for his victims. I can’t even begin to imagine the terror and helplessness that comes from what he did to them--and I probably never will.
Thank God for that.
If you were the relative of one of his victim’s, put a couple of bullets in him, do you think a jury in this country — outside of California or Mass. would convict?
In Texas they’d probably give you a medal — and a steak.