Time to end life without parole

The Trib’s editorial, ‘The injustice when a life sentence doesn’t mean life’, is wrong on every facet of the criminal justice punishment debate. Lamenting the release of Chester Weger after nearly 60 years for the triple murder of three suburban women at Starved Rock State Park in 1960, the Trib rehashes the shopworn canard that letting out lifer Weger, an infirm octogenarian, fuels the death penalty advocates who claim such releases justify death sentences. Capital punishment is dead in Illinois, never to return no matter how many harmless, aging murderers are freed. Let’s recall it was not just abolished here because many innocent Illinoisans were condemned to death (and some likely executed). It was also because our government understood the death penalty is barbaric, state sponsored murder which in no way promotes justice or ennobles society; doing in fact the exact opposite. No citizen, even relatives of murder victims, has a right to expect the perpetrator to die in prison. That is not enshrined in our criminal justice system designed simply to provide a ‘measure of justice’ while protecting society at large.

Somehow, the Trib’s logic ignores the 1958 release of ‘Thrill Killer’ Nathan Leopold for the grisly 1924 murder of his cousin. Leopold's exemplary conduct won him parole after serving just 34 years. Only 52, he relocated to Puerto Rico where he became an X-Ray technician in a church hospital. He went on to earn a master's degree, taught at the University of Puerto Rico, became a researcher in social services in Puerto Rico's health department, did research in leprosy, urban renewal and housing, and traveled extensively to research a book he published on Puerto Rican bird life. He married a widow in 1961 who was with him till his death at 66 in 1971.

Nathan Leopold's case argues not only for abolishing capital punishment, but for modifying our sentencing guidelines to offer a path for similar offenders to demonstrate both their rehabilitation and their readiness to rejoin society at some point. Nobody lost when Nathan Leopold was paroled after 34 years. No potential murderer thinks that 34 years imprisonment is a fair trade to kill someone. As much as Nathan Leopold gained from his freedom, society achieved even more.

Chester Weger has been deemed both rehabilitated and no longer a threat to society. Though he’s unlikely to contribute to society anywhere near that achieved by Leopold, his release is contribution enough by expanding compassion in a society sorely lacking enough.