James Holmes didn't get off easy

My article in the current issue examines an ongoing challenge for death-penalty opponents: abolishing the death penalty in a given state has generally meant sentencing a lot more people to life without parole, a sentence just as hopeless and final. From an ethical perspective, LWOP—which Pope Francis has called a “hidden death penalty”—isn’t much better than death row.

The prosecutor in the Aurora theater shooting case, on the other hand, sees LWOP as much, much worse—for the victims and families. Mass murderer James Holmes “needs to be held accountable for what he did,” argued Arapahoe County DA George Brauchler. Brauchler’s implication is that locking Holmes up forever—a sentence the defense offered in a plea deal the prosecution rejected—would not amount to true accountability. For Brauchler, justice for victims of Holmes’s horrific crimes could mean only one thing: a jury trial in which that jury sentenced him to die.

They didn’t. And even if they had, a death sentence wouldn’t mean an execution—certainly not in Colorado, which has carried out just one execution in 48 years. As Mike Littwin argues, “no good ending was possible” following Brauchler’s decision to go to trial. It was incredibly painful for the victims and families, and even if Brauchler had won, the result would have been more of the same amid many appeals. Instead Brauchler lost—failed, in his view—and Holmes got LWOP, the sentence his defense had already offered to accept without a trial.