Legal Commentary

Justice, Missouri Style

By Jeralyn

Two murderers were sentenced in federal courts in Missouri yeterday.

Lisa Montgomery got the death penalty in federal court. She will be the third woman on federal death row. Her crime: She cut the fetus out of a woman who was 8 months pregnant. She wanted the baby because she had told her husband she was pregnant and felt she had to produce one. She is mentally ill, likely a result of the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. The baby lived and is healthy, and has been returned to the family.

Other women on federal death row:

Since 1927, only two women have been executed under the federal system, both in 1953. Ethel Rosenberg was the first, sent to the electric chair after her and husband Julius were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

Bonnie Heady was sent to the gas chamber with her lover Carl Hall for the kidnapping and murder of a 6-year-old boy in Kansas City. Mary Surratt was hanged by the U.S. government in 1865 for her involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln.

Timothy Krajcir, 63, is a serial killer who pleaded guilty to murdering five woman on separate occasions. He got a life sentence by making a deal to plead guilty in exchange for the Government not seeking the death penalty. [More...]

Krajcir has admitted to killing a total of nine women in four states. He has already received a combined 80-year sentence for two killings in southern Illinois.

He has also been charged with rape and murder in Pennsylvania. He has been indicted in Kentucky on kidnapping and burglary charges stemming from a 1979 death, but the prosecutor said the actual killing did not take place in the state.

....As Krajcir pleaded guilty to each killing — and to three separate rapes in which he let his victims live — he described the same pattern. He spotted a woman at a public place, followed her home and returned later to attack her at gunpoint. He mutilated the body of one victim.

Krajcir was no stranger to the justice system:

Krajcir has spent most of his adult life in prison; the string of murders to which he confessed occurred during a brief window when he was free. Krajcir attended Southern Illinois University, where he studied criminal justice.

Authorities say he traveled to Cape Girardeau to hunt for victims and kill them, stumping detectives who sought mostly local suspects.

While I oppose the death penalty for anyone, it strikes me as very unfair that Krajcir, a man with a much worse criminal record, is getting life, while a mentally ill woman with fewer victims is getting the death penalty. If he is getting life without parole, so should she.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 05, 2008 (boomark / email).