Reply #4: Good for you. Springer wasn't interested, apparently! [View All]

[jobycom]

:-)

My reason--and I'm not a lawyer, just my opinion--is that a person's sentence should be based on the crime and on the killer's intentions, not on how eloquently his family can speak, or on how much pain he caused people.

A grieving widow can easily bring a jury and judge to tears, whereas, say, a homeless bum with no family might go unmourned. So the sentencing begins to be affected by how many people loved a person and can appeal to the court, not by the intention of the killer. Maybe the man who murdered the family man did so in the heat of passion, whereas the man who murdered the bum did so just to watch him die. The former could receive a harsher sentence, though he is less a danger to the world and his motives were less (relatively) horrendous.

It can also open up race and ethnic and gender biases. A pretty grieving widow may sway a jury more than an unattractive, slightly grumpy gay partner, for instance, or a black man might not be seen as sympathetically as a white woman.

The nature of the crime should be revealed by facts about the crime, not the emotions of the family of the victims. IMO.