STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

In Defense of the Death Sentence: Calculating, Mass Killer James Holmes Convicted by a Jury of his Colorado Peers of 1st degree Murder, Must Be Executed!
A life sentence would be a mockery of State Judicial System and the useless, ineffectual Insanity Plea. As most of you by now, James Holmes, a failed Neuroscience graduate student, dumped by his alleged girlfriend, went on a premeditated bloody rampage in a movie theater.  By chance, Colorado still has the death penalty after having rescinded it at one time in their recent history.

The reason I am particularly interested in this case is that very early on in the trial, I explained that this was a typical case of a ‘narcissist, childish’ pre-calculated murder by a young man who was not mentally insane. Some of my colleagues in psychiatry disagreed, declaring a false truism that “by the very nature of this man’s mass-killing, Holmes had to be insane.” That seemingly rational logic has no basis in truth or in my extensive experience dealing with mass murders in the civil arena as well as in the national security environment.

How many times have I heard a senior State Department Official say to me that a particular leader had to be ‘crazy’ or ‘paranoid’.  I would always calmly explain that leader X could not run a country of millions of people as well as command a military, if they were ‘crazy’. Our society has become very lazy in their understanding of what the concept of ‘mental illness’ involves. It is much easier to state that a barbaric act of mass killing like one that James Holmes had committed was part of a simplistic matrix of calculations and manipulation for James to be designated as ‘crazy’.

However, thanks to the excellent work of the Colorado State Prosecutors and the FBI [which has extensive behavioral experience in these type of cases] – Holmes was convicted on 160 charges including 12 first degree premeditated murders. I congratulate the citizens and jury of Colorado for understanding how egregiously calculated Holme’s murders were. Holmes was so clever that he even tried to play the part of a ‘catatonic schizophrenic’ in court by just sitting there and saying nothing. His defense attorneys did what they do best –they try to convince the jury that he committed the act of mass murder because he was ‘mentally insane’. The prosecutors and law enforcement officials made a brilliant case of how really pre-calculated Holmes had been. And the judge, judiciously allowed for all the evidence to speak for itself.

Clearly, any type of sentencing will never bring back the innocent victims [including lovely children] who were wantonly slaughtered by machine gun fire. As the judge and jury agreed, Holmes had been very circumspect and exceedingly calculated in every part of planning his debauchery of mass murder. The question that hangs over Colorado is what to do with James Holmes?

As someone who took care of the criminally insane, I professionally and personally advocate for the death sentence ASAP! Holmes could never be rehabilitated from any mental disease that he never had. Despite the psychiatrists that can be hired to say anything at any time for the proper amount of sheckels, they do not constitute the basis of any truth other than the fact that they can declare anyone insane for the right amount of money.

The converse also works.

When someone like Holmes is placed in a State Psychiatric Institution, he will receive a work-up and then meds according to the diagnosis he will evidence at any given time in order for him to justify the faux reason he had been hospitalized to a life sentence. I have never been able to reform or rehabilitate a mass murder or know of anyone who has. What the mass murderer does in his new surroundings is to revel in his past glories and remain ineffective for the rest of his life, at a huge multi-million dollar cost to the taxpayers.

Look at murderers like Chapo in Mexico and those two lifers in NY State who attempted to escape from prison, I strongly suspect that Holmes will spend most of his solitary life figuring out how to escape from captivity. Prison provides a retreat for a mass murderer to figure out how much further he can game the system. Professionally, I would strongly recommend immediate execution without any delay or commutation of sentence at the last minute. Killing a mass, cold-blooded murderer is as compassionate an act as society can invoke as punishment and retaliation for his wanton killing.

The American mass murderer deserves no less than a full termination of his life ASAP!.

The killer’s death may or may not deter someone else. Death does have a certain psycho-dynamic finality to it which will allow the grieving families to start to end their grief process and work on a new, inspiring perspective to their respective lives. Life sentence for James Holmes would allow for a constant reminder of an odious element to constantly mock society and the judiciary for having gamed it to perfection.

Congratulations to the honest citizens of Colorado who had found James Holmes Guilty on First Degree Murders. Please take the next steps and allow him to end his life as he might have not intended to end his Machiavellian games of revenge for personal hurts and injustices.

He may have gamed the system in killing and wounding as many people as he had but don’t let him game out his final ending of ‘guilty by insanity’.

Nonsense! He is guilty without any marks of mental illness. 

He must pay as the other three murderers [also from Aurora] on Death Row in your Colorado Prison. James sought out celebrity status by enacting his mass murder scenario. Instead, let him discover an ignominious death with alacrity and publicity; so that a man who had committed a heinous act will now pay the proper judicial and mental price for his miscreant behavior.

The French writer, Jean Anouilh wrote the following:

“Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage.”