Charles Cullen, the nurse who admitted killing as many as 40 intensive-care patients with fatal injections, was sentenced today to life in prison without parole for the deaths of 22 victims in New Jersey. Charles Cullen was sworn in during a court proceeding on Feb. 24 in Somerville, N.J. Mr. Cullen, 46, pleaded guilty last year after admitting to the string of killings in hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania between 1988 and 2003. Prosecutors have accounted for 29 deaths, seven of which occurred in Pennsylvania, and six attempted murders. The guilty plea allowed Mr. Cullen to avoid the death penalty. In return, he provided investigators with some information about the crimes.
Opinion below
This case illustrates a point I constantly make about the death penalty: its capriciousness. Because Cullen pleaded guilty, he got life. But he still murdered 22, and perhaps as many as 40 people, defenceless ICU patients in hospital. Out of 30,000 murders or so a year in the USA, we pick out a tiny handful of murderers, and decide that they should die by virtue of the internal mechanics of their particular case. Imagine a State that gave most people a $100 fine for speeding, but selected a handful of individuals to impose a 2-year jail sentence. Most people would say that was unfair, and the law would probably be struck down under equal protection provisions in the Constitution. The fact is that Cullen is every bit as heinous a murderer as anyone on death row. The only way in which the death penalty could remotely approach fairness is to execute every single person convicted of murder, irrespective of whether they plead guilty or not. In fact, one might argue that pleading innocent is more likely to put you in jeopardy of your life, and what message does that send to the accused? Would Americans fancy a "fairer" system that kills a couple of hundred people a day?