An Eye For An Eye

I thought when Jerry Sandusky was arrested last fall and charges of sexual assault were brought against him, he would be the closest living example of true evil that existed in this world.

I may have been proven wrong.

Earlier this week, I read about the sentencing of Alyssa Bustamante, an 18 year old girl from Jefferson City, MO.  She was charged and convicted of brutally killing a 9 year old girl in her neighborhood in 2009. 

Before I get into my thoughts on the case, here's the story if you'd like to read about the case first.  WARNING: it isn't for the faint of heart.

To say that Bustamante had emotional issues would not even begin to describe her mental state.  She was taking Prozac at the time, and whatever her dosage was failed to keep her head straight.  Add to that a very broken home (her father was in prison and her grandmother was her legal guardian), and a recipe for disaster was in the making.

I say all that to add context to her as a person, not to make excuses for what she did.  No, she is right next in line with Jerry Sandusky as people who are close to being truly evil in this world as people get.  What disturbed me the most about her case was the excerpt from her own diary that the prosecution had read at her trial.  Here's the brief piece they had read:

“I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them now they’re dead...I don’t know how to feel atm. It was ahmazing. As soon as you get over the ‘ohmygawd I can’t do this’ feeling, it’s pretty enjoyable. I’m kinda nervous and shaky though right now. Kay, I gotta go to church now...lol.”

If that section doesn't disgust or disturb you, I don't know what will.

I'm not even sure where to begin in talking about that quote, so I guess I'll so sentence by sentence.  Her first line implies there was more than one victim she had killed, and in fact when she had confessed to the murder she led police to two gravesites she had dug for her victims.  Only the body of the 9-year-old girl was found, so it's possible that she was arrested before she could hurt anyone else, but the implication is still there.

Second, she made it very clear that killing the little girl was premeditated.  She had chosen her target, she had waited until the most opportune moment, and she had planned out how she was going to kill her victim.  And she bragged about it!  She actually said it was enjoyable.  She was clearly in a stable state of mind as she wrote all this out in her diary.  She doesn't get any plea of mental insanity this time.

The worst part was at the end where she said she had to go to church.  I read online that she had to pack her things up for her grandmother to take her to a party at her local church.  Before I had read that detail online elsewhere, I honestly thought she wrote the line about going to church to be ironic, like she was being clever or funny about what she had to do immediately after killing someone.  Tragically, I was wrong.

The small amount of relief in this case is that the prosecution didn't drop the ball at any point, compared to the Casey Anthony case.  The defense attorneys knew Bustamante was guilty, and fought to get her a lesser sentence if she chose to plead guilty.  In the end, she got a life sentence with the possibility of parole, but I have no idea what the minimum number of years she'll have to serve will be.

I read quite a bit on Facebook about this story, and coincidentally I had stumbled onto it thanks to a friend of mine having posted the link in the first place.  Most of the comments I've seen about the story pretty much demand an eye for an eye, saying Bustamante deserves to be put to death for her crime.  At the very least, she deserves to be locked up for the rest of her natural life and have the keys thrown away.

While I'm pro-death penalty, I'm not exactly one who believes in the concept of an eye for an eye.  I do believe there are criminals who deserve to be put to death for whatever they had done, and there are certainly crimes that fit such a penalty.  Considering how Bustamante had clearly premeditated this crime, and her laissez-faire attitude after she had killed the girl, the death penalty would be warranted.  She's not the type of person who would be able to be rehabilitated in prison.  When she had spoken to the family of her victim at her trial, she tried apologizing and said if she could take back her actions she would.  Maybe I read her words out of context, but that kind of apology is only spoken by someone who feels remorse because she was caught.  Her diary entry completely contradicts her apology, and I don't think the gravity of her actions would have settled in over the passage of time.  Brutally killing an innocent 9-year-old girl isn't the type of action one can simply take back with a few words. 

The worst part is that throwing Bustamante in prison or executing her won't bring back her victim.  The family of her victim probably won't ever get full closure, even now that Bustamante is headed to prison.  In a way, Jerry Sandusky did an even worse thing to his victims because they have to live on with the memories of what he had done to them.  Sandusky and Bustamante won't ever suffer like their victims or the families of their victims will, which is a testament to how truly evil they are.  We can rid the world of evil people like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Muammar Qaddafi, but we'll never be rid of the evil people who are next door.