Plea Deal of a Lifetime

Monday, July 04, 2005

Apparently the United States isn't the only country that grants plea bargains to even the most heinous of villains. This story is downright sickening:

TORONTO (Reuters) - A Canadian sex killer was freed after 12 years behind bars on Monday. Karla Homolka, 35, and her then-husband, Paul Bernardo, kidnapped, sexually assaulted, tortured and killed two teenaged girls in the early 1990s in southern Ontario.

Homolka, who videotaped the assaults, also drugged her 15-year-old sister so Bernardo could rape her in the basement of her family home after a Christmas dinner. The girl choked on her own vomit and died.

She agreed to a plea-bargain sentence for manslaughter in return for testifying against Bernardo, an agreement that angered Canadians and was dubbed "a deal with the devil." Bernardo is serving a life sentence for murder and will likely never be released.

A Quebec judge rejected Homolka's request last Wednesday for a publication ban that would prevent the media from reporting her whereabouts.

"The thought of being relentlessly pursued, hunted down and followed when I won't have any protection makes me fear for my life," she said in an affidavit. "People are always going to interpret what I do as bad. They'll pick out one bad thing from a sea of good and I'll be judged on that," she wrote in prison correspondence that was published in a newspaper.

Question: If the "assaults" were videotaped then why did prosecutors need Homolka to testify against her husband if they had more than enough evidence to convict?

Any person who takes an active role in the torture, rape and murder of anyone deserves no less than life in prison, let alone a measly twelve year sentence many drug offenders here in the United States wish they could serve instead of their punishments.

Homolka is the embodiment of evil. Rather than appreciate the most generous sentence one could receive for taking part in such crimes, Homolka is concerned that she will be "judged" for whatever she does from now in life. Well, at least she's being judged in a free society.

And talk about audacity. She fears for her life? Tell that to the victims' families who saw the videotape you produced of a teenage girl who died on her own vomit. I commend the Canadian citizens and members of the media who are protesting the release of this subhuman.