I remember this...I am not in favour of capital punishment unless the guilt is beyond a doubt...as in this case. JMO - "rehabilitation" and this man do not exist in the same sentence.
ETA: The 'smile' below is part of a larger photo where someone is saying something to him. Other reports say Duncan had no reaction to the sentencing. It's the media...
RIP, dear family - and prayers for Shasta.
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http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/20...591681-ap.html
Child killer smiles as he hears sentence
By Rebecca Boone, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — In the end, killer pedophile Joseph Edward Duncan III couldn’t — or wouldn’t — offer a reason why he should live.
A jury didn’t find one either, deliberating just three hours Wednesday before recommending a death sentence in the 2005 kidnapping, torture and murder of a 9-year-old boy.
A federal jury has deemed Joseph Edward Duncan III eligible for the death penalty for the 2005 kidnapping, torture and murder of a 9-year-old Idaho boy. (AP/Kathy Plonka)
The jurors’ recommendation was binding on U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge, who thanked and dismissed them and then sentenced the longtime sex offender, who showed no reaction other than smiling.
Earlier, the former Fargo man acted as his own attorney but offered no response to prosecutors’ closing argument detailing why he should die.
“I have no argument,” Duncan told the court.
Relatives of the victim, Dylan Groene, remained somber as the jury’s decision was announced. Duncan murdered Dylan’s mother, older brother and his mother’s fiance. Duncan then kidnaped the boy and his younger sister, who was sexually abused along with her brother but survived.
“We’re happy with the verdict, but it’s a shame — this should have been limited to one death,” said Steven Groene, the father of the children. “He should have had the courage and the guts to kill himself before killing anyone else.”
Duncan took Dylan and the boy’s then-8-year-old sister, Shasta, to a remote western Montana campsite where he raped, tortured and threatened them before shooting Dylan in the head and burning his body. Jurors viewed horrifying video Duncan made of him sexually abusing, torturing and hanging Dylan until the boy lost consciousness.
“This defendant is dangerous. He is a predator who takes pride in his work,” prosecutor Traci Whelan told the jury. “He earned this day.”
With an eye toward kidnapping the two children, Duncan stalked their family. In 2005 he entered their Coeur d’Alene-area home and used a hammer to fatally bludgeon their 13-year-old brother, Slade Groene, his mother, Brenda Groene, and her fiance, Mark McKenzie.
Duncan was arrested and Shasta rescued weeks after the kidnappings when a waitress at a Coeur d’Alene restaurant called police after recognizing the two as they ate.
Duncan pleaded guilty in December to 10 federal charges involving the kidnappings and the murder of Dylan. He previously pleaded guilty to the other three murders in state court, where he also could be sentenced to death.
The federal jury had a choice of recommending a death sentence or life in prison without parole.
In closing arguments, Whelan reminded the jury of Duncan’s lifelong “pattern of violence,” including a conviction for raping a boy at gunpoint in 1980. Duncan has told investigators he killed two half-sisters from Seattle in 1996, and he is charged with killing a young boy in Riverside County, Calif., in 1997.
Duncan may now be brought to Riverside County to stand trial in the death of 10-year-old Anthony Martinez.
Darlene Torres, Brenda Groene’s mother, said she is glad the federal case is over.
“Justice has been served,” Torres said. “It’s been very painful.”
She said that when she saw Duncan in court, “I seen nothing but an evil, empty, cold-hearted shell.”
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ETA: Earlier in the day, an Idaho State Police detective was asked to read a letter written by Duncan to his mother. The letter, apparently never sent, was found folded in Duncan's coat pocket.
In it, Duncan said he wished he could kill himself but his will to live was too strong.
"I have once again become a medium of violence in the world and once again wish I was not alive," he wrote. "I know there is good, and love in my heart and yet at the same time there is a huge reservoir of hatred (evil) that drives me to hurt people, even those I love."
Duncan went on to write that he had been "praying fervently for God to help me, but his answers are jumbled and confusing I am driven by my hatred for our society ('the system') while at the same time tortured by my own compassion."
Duncan's letter complained that he had been taken over by a demon.
"God has shown me the face of evil," he wrote. "Evil is real only because we make it real. Evil can live in a person and society as well. ... I have been inflicted by an evil 'demon' that is nurtured by our so-called Criminal Justice System. ... But know I'm still fighting my demons and asking God to guide me as he can."
Duncan has a long string of arrests and prison time for crimes ranging from car theft to rape and molestation. He is suspected in the 1996 slayings of two half-sisters from Seattle and is charged with the 1997 killing of a young boy in Riverside County, Calif.
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
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12/02
There is no way to know at this point what kind of upbringing the murderer had - so it's also as likely that the mom and dad, like MANY parents, did everything they possibly could, and despaired because nothing DID work (mental health care was not all wonderful 35 or 40 years ago, and even now sometimes treatments Do Not Work).
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