Good call on that one, Gatsby. Too little too late and how can you plead like he did as if forgetting that he and a friend "desecrated and abused her corpse" while covering his tracks. "Oops! I forgot I did that also."

I just read on CNN that the creep has escaped the death penalty. The jury has called for life without parole. Maybe the judge will overrule them...?

Well ... since even I often think in terms of the Old West in these matters (it'd really be nice if they found guys like this guilty one day and then "took care of it" the next day at sunrise ... and, again, I don't believe in that as an overall ideal, I DO see some shadow of rightness in it in this case, anyway), I think 57 no-chance-of-getting out years is a pretty fair justice. It's "death", in a stretched definition of it. The judge commented (although I only heard a quick passing remark) about that Cutts wouldn't have special living arrangements while incarcerated. At least not "going in" - we'll see what happens as things progress. After a few weeks (days?) mixing with a community that flatly loathes their 'citizens' who harm children. And from the same who have a *ahem* special fondness for law enforcement types, too. My (can't help but think so) mindset here is that Cutts will never get a decent night's sleep from now until the end of his time. Each waking moment will be spent in fear of sharpened dinnerware concealed under every nook and cranny he looks at in there. The down side, I'm guessing, in that is that a dude with the psychology of Mr. Cutts (his pathology just reeks of coldness, at least visibly) will manage, somehow, to adapt to a life like that. But it won't be an adaptation that has even a tiny tint of "reward" to it. He'll only have to learn how to get familiar with being a "dead man walking" for a few decades. And never really get the benefit of a target destination as he does said walking.

The emotions were VERY high in that courtroom yesterday (they showed the whole thing here locally). I commend Jessie's mother, the grandmother of Bobby's son and deceased daughter. While it seems to jump soundly over the edge of logic, she forgave the convicted beast. I gathered that she had reconciled herself that revenge will happen, but that she will not be in any way "corrected" by it as it does (whether it happens in this lifetime or another one). She chose to "think forward", to raise the surviving child as best and sensibly as she can. To give the future that he might have, give the light he could possibly share, a chance. Pretty wise thing, that. "Thinking back" will only change all the geographies of this murder vs. that murder vs. blood on these hands vs. blood on those hands. Bobby Cutts is a hopeless case. It's done. His life is mapped out in black lines and dead-end places. Jessie's mother has/had the right idea, in my opinion. Rewrite/revise and improve the "map" for those that are left behind. And, I'm almost certain, of all of the people involved in the situation, her forgiving her daughter's murderer let her sleep more peacefully last night than the others who spoke to Cutts yesterday. They were justifiably angry still. And, unfortunately, took nothing home with them but that hard-to-round-out rage. That mother took home rage, too, I'm certain. But it was gentler, more sculpted and less blind rage. She governed IT ... and doing that allowed it not to govern HER so purposefully anymore.