I can't imagine that the man is going to be let back into the public even after time served. He is clearly insane.

However, the father of the boy hopefully will not carry out his plan. Do you think his son would want that? Would you want your father to go to jail for murder for you? No. I would not. It won't bring him peace of mind. And he would spend his last years on earth in a prison cell with other insane people.

For over 35 years the father has carried around the heavy weights of anger and hate. I would not want my dad to let my killer rule his life and thoughts. I would want my dad to think about how much he loved me instead of how much he hates someone else.

Easier said than done, I know.

The problem is, as a juror, you won't be deciding his sentence. You'll only be deciding whether it was a premeditated murder (which it would clearly be). Murder in the first degree is punishable by death in some states.

As for an insanity defense, I don't know how it works, but he may have a hard time proving he was insane if he pre-meditated the murder. Especially announcing it in the local news.

You know, the brutalization thing- that happened after death (we assume). Once the person is gone, the body is nothing. It has as much life as the table. I think, as Catholics, we are taught to honor the body (like it comes back to life, or something), but really, the body is just a vessel. It decays like everything else.

I do not fault him for wanting to kill someone and feeling enraged. Who wouldn't? I think he would serve his son's memory far more meaningfully if he used the energy to make a positive change in the world for others vs. becoming a murderer.

An eye for an eye doesn't work. It just creates a never-ending cycle of revenge that gets played out over and over through generations. No one wins. No one learns anything.

Jay, in regards to #3. I would imagine that the costs for local would/should be cheaper, especially when compared to vegetables which are not usually grown locally. For example, the bulk of the nations brocolli comes from California. So the east coasters should see a sizeable increase in the cost of brocolli, mostly due to shipping. A recent HuffPo article places those shipping costs at $6000 a tractorload, which can result in $0.25/lb increase. And that's not the only vegetable coming from California to our supermarkets.

I try to support local whenever I can. It helps that I work right next door to a large farmers market, but one should really consider where they buy their produce from. I've noticed though that not a lot of people do that.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/22/east-coast-broccoli-investment_n_826446.html