Drew Peterson murders

Toonces · February 22, 2013, 04:54:32 PM

I have a question that hopefully Jarhead or someone else can answer.

1. How is it this guy is only getting 38 years instead of life or the gas chamber?
2. Why does it take so many years to sentence him after his conviction?

LongBlade · February 22, 2013, 05:35:39 PM

I'm more interested in how his buddies managed to determine she drowned in a dry bathtub and that passed muster the first time.

Jarhead0331 · February 22, 2013, 05:50:31 PM

Quote from: Toonces on February 22, 2013, 04:54:32 PM
I have a question that hopefully Jarhead or someone else can answer.

1. How is it this guy is only getting 38 years instead of life or the gas chamber?
2. Why does it take so many years to sentence him after his conviction?

1. Illinois does not have the death penalty. That is one obvious reason why he is not being executed. Why only 38 years, as opposed to a the full potential of 60? I'm not sure...I have not followed the trial and I'm not really familiar with the details of the crime. However, I'm sure he was given some leniency for having served as a police officer for decades.

2. It was only a 5 month lapse in time to my knowledge. He was convicted in in September 2012. He was sentenced in February 2013. That is not too long. I'm sure there was some delay caused by the defense's post-trial motions for a new trial on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel.

LongBlade · February 22, 2013, 06:01:33 PM

Quote from: Jarhead0331 on February 22, 2013, 05:50:31 PM
2. It was only a 5 month lapse in time to my knowledge. He was convicted in in September 2012. He was sentenced in February 2013. That is not too long. I'm sure there was some delay caused by the defense's post-trial motions for a new trial on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel.

IIRC the first investigation determined she drowned in a dry bathtub. She was buried and the case was closed.

It was only after his third wife disappeared under suspicious circumstances that the light bulb went off that maybe they had a serial wife killer on their hands. Then they exhumed the body, reexamined the circumstances, and decided that, yeah, looks like #2 didn't drown in an empty tub after all...

Jarhead0331 · February 22, 2013, 06:09:34 PM

Quote from: LongBlade on February 22, 2013, 06:01:33 PM
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on February 22, 2013, 05:50:31 PM
2. It was only a 5 month lapse in time to my knowledge. He was convicted in in September 2012. He was sentenced in February 2013. That is not too long. I'm sure there was some delay caused by the defense's post-trial motions for a new trial on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel.

IIRC the first investigation determined she drowned in a dry bathtub. She was buried and the case was closed.

It was only after his third wife disappeared under suspicious circumstances that the light bulb went off that maybe they had a serial wife killer on their hands. Then they exhumed the body, reexamined the circumstances, and decided that, yeah, looks like #2 didn't drown in an empty tub after all...

He was convicted of the murder of his third wife. Yes. She died in 2004 and was exhumed in 2009 after the disappearance of his fourth wife.

Toonces · February 22, 2013, 08:30:26 PM

Ok, they kept mentioning that he was sentenced for the 2004 murder and it sure seemed like it was more than 5 months ago he was convicted. I guess 5 months isn't that long.

Still, I would have thought pre-meditated murder carried a heavier sentence than 38 years, even without parole. But maybe he got a lesser charge.

Staggerwing · February 22, 2013, 08:34:50 PM

Maybe the sentence isn't how long but where it will be served. He is, after all, an ex-cop in a prison, a situation not conducive to longevity.

LongBlade · February 22, 2013, 08:57:00 PM

He looks like he's in his mid fifties. 38 years is effectively life. Without a death penalty it's about the best we can ask for....

...besides somebody enforcing said penalty on the inside.

Toonces · February 22, 2013, 09:02:40 PM

No, you can sentence him to two life sentences, one for each murder. Sure, 38 years is effectively "life" but it's not the same as the message of completely hammering him with multiple life sentences with no possiblity of parole.

Steelgrave · February 22, 2013, 09:49:28 PM

I'm just glad that justice finally caught up with that smug a-hole.

When I lived in Alaska, I learned that one of the sweetest old ladies at our church had a son on death row here in Arizona. I googled him and there are a few parallels to Peterson. The guy's first wife was from the Phillipines and had supposedly gone back home. His second wife was found to have committed suicide in their bed via shotgun. Only when his third wife died, supposedly having fallen off of their boat and drowned in a calm lake, did someone start to connect the dots. Long story short, while the third wife's case was suspicious, the second wife's "suicide" was reopened and this time a determination of murder was made. He ended up being convicted of the murder of the second and third wife and almost certainly killed the first as well. He was executed years ago. Too bad that Peterson will escape that fate, but an ex-cop in prison...that may be worse. I wish him a long life of 37 and a half more years.

Longdan · February 24, 2013, 12:10:27 PM

It is hard for me to imagine one murder being worse than another once you pass the unintentional,
what we call Manslaughter here, stage (I do not know what you call it in US jurisdictions).
But some are. The only reason I am not pro death penalty is because just too many people are
falsely convicted and this is a trend that continues. I am sure that you guys who are in favour
of capital punishment have no problem with this whatsoever. Yes some cases are obvious...
and some are not. The ones that are falsely convicted probably deserve it anyway, right?
In either case it costs a bazillion dollars to get rid of a high profile homicidal sociopath
and comparatively few bucks for some friendless black guy in Texas. However, in the former
case, there is a dividend of millions of supermarket tabloids sold and hours of breathless news
commentary over some sordid bastard who killed people who loved him.
Naked pictures of young female British royalty is so much better.

Staggerwing · February 24, 2013, 12:22:31 PM

It would be a better world if all the Tabloids could find to publish on their front pages was Princess Boob Shots.

Unfortunately the Tabloid cup runneth over most times with sex and violence. And no shortage of avid readers looking for both.

Steelgrave · February 24, 2013, 01:12:37 PM

Quote from: Longdan on February 24, 2013, 12:10:27 PM
It is hard for me to imagine one murder being worse than another once you pass the unintentional,
what we call Manslaughter here, stage (I do not know what you call it in US jurisdictions).
But some are. The only reason I am not pro death penalty is because just too many people are
falsely convicted and this is a trend that continues. I am sure that you guys who are in favour
of capital punishment have no problem with this whatsoever. Yes some cases are obvious...
and some are not. The ones that are falsely convicted probably deserve it anyway, right?
In either case it costs a bazillion dollars to get rid of a high profile homicidal sociopath
and comparatively few bucks for some friendless black guy in Texas. However, in the former
case, there is a dividend of millions of supermarket tabloids sold and hours of breathless news
commentary over some sordid bastard who killed people who loved him.
Naked pictures of young female British royalty is so much better.

I will probably surprise a lot of people here by saying that I've been anti-death penalty for most of my life, with the primary reason being the unconscionable number of wrongful convictions which occur. I also think that, given the conditions of American prisons, a true life sentence is a sufficient punishment with the death penalty perhaps being the easy way out.

I'm somewhat harsh in my opinion of what should occur when there is a loss of life perpetuated by another person, if the death was caused by preventable circumstances. Taking someone's life is so obviously final. I remember a case in Anchorage where a teacher, driving home drunk from a bar, hit and killed a 17 year old on a bike. Her attorney plead for mercy, saying how much she still had to offer society, when all I could think of was how much did that kid have to offer, what was his future going to hold before she ran him over? Personally, I think if you take someone's life, via gun or knife or by driving drunk, you should have no expectation of resuming your normal life. If a jury or court grants you mercy, good for you. I can live with that. But the expectation should be that if you've taken someone's life through a preventable action on your part, your life as you know it may well be over. And if it was a deliberate, premeditated act, you no longer have the right to interact with society.

People like Peterson deserve all that the penal system has to offer. I hope he sees the faces of his victims every day, but with a guy like this, I doubt it.

I think you're being a bit harsh, LD, in suggesting that someone who is pro-death penalty is ok with an innocent person being executed. In my personal debates on the issue, I've never had that sense. The issue here is that most people believe in the justice system and believe that the outcome is usually fair and therefore the conclusion of guilt is correct. History is starting to teach us that is not always the case.

Toonces · February 24, 2013, 01:22:00 PM

I suppose I'm on the completel opposite side of the fence. I'm not only for the death penalty, I think we should use it a lot more, and a lot more liberally.

Commit a crime with a gun? Death penalty. Rape? Death penalty. Murder? Oh you better believe death penalty for that. Third strike? Electric chair for sure.

I did a paper once in college about the death penalty. It was a really long time ago now, but I think the conclusion I came to was that the death penalty doesn't have deterrent value to would-be criminals. I wonder, though, if we started conducting wholesale executions on our really bad offenders, I'm talking the people that really serve no purpose in society but to cause trouble, would start to have a deterrent effect?

Steelgrave · February 24, 2013, 01:30:04 PM

I simply don't have faith that our justice system renders fair and correct verdicts consistently, given the amount of prosecutorial misconduct that we know happens, given the known incidents of certain elements of the police operating outside of the lines, given the political pressures to convict which are in play when the death penalty is on the line.

And that's what it comes down to for me.

If there is no "justice", or if there is only "justice" in 8 out of ten cases, how can we choose to take the lives of the two who didn't have enough money to fight, who were railroaded, who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, who crumbled under 14 hour interviews, who have a diminished mental capacity, who happened to be the wrong color? All of these injustices are documented time and time again. How many innocent people put to death are acceptable so long as the gears keep turning? The founder of our modern judicial system, Sir William Blackstone, is famously quoted as saying that "it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer". I would rather see ten people who should be on death row for their crimes serve life in prison than one wrongfully convicted person die.

It's no secret that I'm a skeptic of most things governmental. The sheer volume of known wrongful convictions and misconduct on the part of the authorities is no small part of why that is.