Ariel Castro sentences himself to death
Perhaps he thought the court’s sentence of life plus a thousand years wasn’t quite harsh enough.
Perhaps he thought it was too harsh, and didn’t feature being behind bars for the rest of his life.
Perhaps he figured he was likely to be murdered in prison anyway and preferred to escape that fate.
Perhaps he felt shame about his crimes.
Perhaps he felt guilt.
Perhaps he was bone-weary tired of living.
Perhaps. But all we know is that Ariel Castro died Tuesday evening by hanging, most likely by his own hand, and that security at the prison was obviously inadequate to prevent it.
The house where Castro tortured his victims for so many painful years had already been demolished. Now, just a month after his sentencing, Castro has been erased as well. But the freed women and child go on—let us hope to lead long, healthy, happy, productive lives.
Case closed.
Is it wrong that I wish he had suffered more after he put those girls through hell? Let’s hope he’s moved on to a very hot place.
His death demonstrates the utterly incompetent prison administration this country has. That’s why Chuck Colson developed his anti prison rape project. People in prison shouldn’t be able to hurt themselves or anyone else.
And if the prison administration were competent he’d be spending the rest of his life in a little cell getting at lest some sense of what he did to his victims.
“Most likely by his own hand”???
Perhaps the basis for this doubt comes from the Land of Newspeak, or Stalinist Russia. The man and his house no longer exist. Both have been erased. Effectively, to deny the failure of ‘authorities’ for a decade or so.
As to the survivors of his abuse and incarceration, there can be no realistic hope for their lives to be happy and productive. Long, maybe, but so what? They have been ruined.
Was the security really inadequate or did the guards just look the other way?
A practical outcome, if I may say so. Castro gone, and the good people of Ohio free of the costs of his incarceration.
Don Carlos, perhaps their lives are ruined, but they are alive, and I think it better to be optimistic (certainly it is for the victims to be so) about their remaining life- they are still young after all.
Saved a lot of taxpayer money supporting him. in today’s economy, every penny counts.
I think that, since he cheated the state out of 999 years and ten months, his punishment should be extended.
Can’t say that I’m sorry; even if it means the guards “looked the other way.”
I remember reading that he claimed that he “was not a monster, just sick, with an addiction.” WTF? No one, especially those women he held captive, need to watch or listen to the trial that was going to be his platform for his self-pity show.
With the hell he put those women through, and the hell he was going to put them through with the trial, perhaps this is a better outcome.
Charles:
There wasn’t going to be any trial. The trial was over. He pled guilty and was sentenced.
That’s how trials should be. Short and on the point, timely. The modern age expects trials to be long drawn out affairs, but I actually think that runs counter to the spirit of a true due process trial. More process than is due, by the media if anything.
While most people may feel pity for the captured sex victims and think their lives are ruined, that’s not taking into account the various human constructed recovery and re-integration methods developed for just such cases. I’ve seen worst circumstances that weren’t impossible to recover, so long as the patient had 1. consciousness and 2. life. It truly branches off the concept that where there is life, there is hope. But only when competent people are involved in the recovery process of human emotion and thought patterns.
In many countries of this world, this kind of thing is normal for women as they live their lives and is considered by their society to be normal or at least no more abnormal than stealing.
America cannot change the world for the better when it cannot even heal, protect, or change its own people for the better.
Probably the only good thing this human piece of excrement ever did.
It’s interesting to read the unforgiving comments. I think Ariel Castro’s claim to be sick came from a suicide letter he wrote in 2004. That letter was found by the police in the house where the women were held. He wrote that he had been abused by his parents and raped by an uncle. He asked that his assets be given to his victims. It’s pretty clear he was sick. His family disowned him and wished for him to be given the death penalty. Maybe that is why he committed suicide finally?
Interestingly one of his daughter’s is now in jail for slitting the throat of her daughter (not fatal fortunately). She did this when her boyfriend moved out. She denied being a bad person in court. Her family defended her as having mental illness.
Perhaps he pled guilty, removing the death penalty, because he knew the lengthy appeals process would take too long.
Steve–Unforgiving comments? Harold–Would you like us to spend money babysitting evildoers one on one?
I read the other day that it costs $167,000/year to house a criminal in New York.
I believe this man lasted 33 days in his own company, no benefit of being out and about. Evil can’t even stand itself in the long run.
Perhaps he sat in his cell thinking of endless days sitting in his cell. Unable to be safe among the prison population he could look forward to being alone.
So, he took an escape.
Hell would be reaching an afterlife to find himself again alone in a cell, endless hours of solitary and nothingness, until even his own thoughts are just shadows in an abyss.
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I read the other day that it costs $167,000/year to house a criminal in New York.
It’s not really the criminals I would defund and get rid of first. It’s the politicians. Then again, I repeat myself.