View from the cop: Crime & punishment
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AJC.com > Metro > View from the cop > Archives > 2008 > December > 18
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Brian Nichols: Was justice served?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you watched the coverage of the Nichol’s sentencing, and with the help of a calculator, you know how many years this guy is going to get.
They were somewhere in the 6th or 7th life sentence when the stations all broke away for a digital TV test. Couldn’t happen during a lull or commercial and it certainly wasn’t good timing but I’m guessing the stations didn’t have much of a choice on the timing.
Brian Nichols was spared the death penalty. My opinion: too bad. You know, the guy won’t see another free day in his life but the fact remains that he’ll be alive and we’ll be supporting him for the next however many years until he passes away or falls victim to the shank or escapes.
Honestly, I don’t think he will have the opportunity to escape but the quality of his life is going to be a hell of a lot better than his victims who have no life and their families who have to live with the tragic results of what this guy did.
I don’t believe that Nichols will have sit in prison, suffering for the murders he committed. His quality of life won’t be that bad because he is one of them, not us. He’s a thug and a murderer. He’ll be among his own and he’ll adapt to that lifestyle and he’ll be in his element. His adaptation to that environment will make his quality of life, for lack of better words, livable. He shouldn’t have it that good.
Folks, you can boo-hoo all you want about his instabilities and his mental interpretation of what he was doing when he began to murder those people but the fact is he showed complete disregard for human life over and over again. He indicated no remorse and probably would have added to the casualty list if he had been given the chance.
In his little world, in prison, Nichols will probably adapt and his day-to-day life will be bearable for him. That’s too much quality of life for someone who did what he did. He doesn’t deserve it.
Maybe he should have a cell decorated with photos of his victims and their families and let him look at all the people, the sons, daughters, wives, even friends during their good times in life.
Make him look at those photos every day of his life and then maybe he won’t have the luxury of forgetting them.
