An
18-year old boy, who was seventeen at the time he kidnapped, methodically
killed and dismembered a 10-year old girl that he grabbed on the way to school,
was sentenced to life in prison.
Prosecutors and a psychologist described him as sadistic.
His
lawyers described him as “still a child himself” and stated that he might have
had trauma before and during birth, had anxiety, a learning disability and an
emotionally distant mother. As far as defenses go, that’s pretty weak. Against the kidnapping, killing and
dismembering of a ten year-old girl by a 17 year-old, the defense comes back
with emotionally distant mother? If that’s
all they’ve got to use, or all they could come up with after actual legal
thought and strategy, then their client really must have been psychotically
evil, because that’s a pitiful defense.
And it didn’t work. As reported by the Houston Chronicle (via theAP): Judge Stephen
Munsinger rejected that image and the defense argument that Sigg should be
eligible for parole in 40 years. He instead ordered the teen to serve a life
sentence for killing Jessica
Ridgeway plus 86 years for other offenses, including sexually assaulting
her and trying to attack a jogger a few months before. The sentence ensured
Sigg will never be released.
Jessica's
disappearance last fall put the Denver suburbs on edge as police, aided by an
army of volunteers, searched for her and then her killer. While people now know
how Jessica was killed, Munsinger said they might never know why.
"Evil
is apparently real," he said. "It was present in our community on
Oct. 5, 2012. Its name was Austin Sigg."
The
defendant didn’t testify during the sentencing.
The prosecution did address the defense’s testimony that the teenager’s
mother huffed glue while pregnant and that he’d gotten counseling when 12 years
old, in the most straightforward manner: "Even if true, whatever forces have made Austin Sigg who he is, he
is broken," Sargent said. "The only way to protect the community from
him is to keep him confined forever."
And therein lies the problem with
most defendants’ strategy during the punishment phase of heinous crimes, be
they capital crimes (death sentence) or serious non capital. Many, many defendants try to get leniency by
stating how messed up their childhoods were, so much so that they didn’t learn
right from wrong and were so messed up by abuse or their parents’ drug use that
they are depraved. It usually doesn’t
make the judge or jury feel sorry for them – or at least not as sorry for them
as for the victim of their crimes – and does seriously make the jury or judge
lock the person up. If the defendant is
so messed up that he is completely depraved, telling why it happened doesn’t
change the fact that the defense attorney has just spent hours or days telling
the judge that his client is depraved (no matter what the cause) and the judge
or jury surely doesn’t want that person on the streets again.
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