In the UK we had Fred West and Harold Shipman. Both evil men who deprived the rest of us of the satisfaction of watching a life completed rotting in a cell of a high-security prison. It's hateful that Castro was allowed to take his own life - I'd rather have seen it ruined in the same way that he ruined others'. Sometimes there can be no room for compassion.
People often say that criminals who kill themselves while serving time in prison are "taking the easy way out" and they should be made to suffer and rot in jail for the rest of their lives rather than have a quick death..
To be honest, I've never really understood this.
Perhaps it's different for the victims of the crime, but to me, it just seems like, if the worst penalty that can be dished out in the United States is death, why is the fact that an inmate ends his own life seen as a easy option? The inmate has effectively handed himself the justice system's worst punishment.
Surely the whole point of punishing criminals with 1000+ year sentences is that the victim/victim's family can get closure, and the criminal is unable to harm anyone else again.
Aren't these both achieved in Castro's case? Now that he's dead, no-one else need ever be afraid of him, and the victims can get some psychological closure in the knowledge that he's no longer among us anymore.
I guess this case is particularly unique because Castro was convicted of kidnapping and imprisoning and abusing his victims for many years, and yet it seems he was unable to cope with the idea of remaining in a cell for the rest of his life!
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