While everyone vents their righteous rage, I’ll just put out the little reminder that plea deals are made to save the prosecutor’s office time and risk and expense, and to give the victim’s family swifter and surer justice, and save them the trauma of a long public trial. There is no shortage of stories where a brutal crime like this one ended in a light sentence or even no conviction, because of evidence collected or stored or examined incorrectly, for juries being swayed by slick attorneys, by the media getting involved, and 100 other reasons. Nobody here knows what sentence the prosecutor will now recommend (she gets sentenced March 9th), and yet hands are being thrown in the air in protest, as if an injustice has been done.
Because plea deals always get murderers off death sentences. That’s why.