I prefer the death penalty for this sort of thing, but maybe the judged figured that a 58 year-old wasn’t a good bet to ever get executed. The appeals process could take a decade, at which point he’s 68, and maybe by then would be in such bad health that his lawyers could claim he was no longer aware of what was going on, which would require another decade of appeals, at which point he probably would be dead and the state would have wasted millions in legal fees.
I wish you could execute guys like this, but I can’t blame the judge in this case.
Judges can't give people the death penalty after a change of plea. There has to be a trial. And at his age, it is probably true that he would have died in prison before ever being executed, if the courts didn't overturn the death penalty sentence in this case. Allowing him to plead and accept a life sentence without the possibility of parole probably saved the taxpayers millions. Now this smug sicko will have to sit in prison for the rest of his life and think about what he has done. He's not going to like it. People in prison definitely won't be conservative enough for his tastes. Somebody might kill him just for being a jerk.