A quick verdict in notorious murders

The jury in the Colorado theater shooting trial didn't waste any time in returning a verdict Thursday: Guilty of mass murder.

The verdict should not have been a surprise. The accused, James Holmes, was captured at the scene. He was wearing his murderous terrorist outfit, still carrying weapons used in the massacre, and still living his macabre dream. His only defense was that he was mentally ill. That defense had worked in other infamous murder trials, but not in this one.

I wrote in April that two trials would determine the future of capital punishment in this country, but I did not have the foresight to include the trial of James Holmes. This verdict, too, will set a precedent. The rejection of the mental illness defense shows a sophistication of the Colorado jurors, who recognized that mental illness, while debilitating and even destructive, does not normally provoke murderous rampages.

Whether Holmes should get the death penalty for the taking of 12 lives is yet to be decided, but if the jury has rejected the "innocent by reason of insanity" defense, it might be willing to let the punishment fit the crime. Executions are clearly on the wane in America, but the death penalty is part of America's sentencing traditions. Only in the last 100 years or so have Americans doubted the appropriateness of the death penalty, which once extended in some states to first-degree burglary, kidnapping and rape, and not just murder. The reversal of some capital sentences because of new evidence has given the public cause for doubt. In this case, however, there is no doubt about the defendant's culpability for the crime, only whether execution is appropriate punishment.

Two trials test use of capital punishment

Two first-degree murder trials currently under way could determine whether the death penalty is dead in this country.

The two trials are the Boston Marathon bombing trial in Boston and the Craig Stephen Hicks trial in Chapel Hill. In each case, there is no question as to whether the accused committed the crime. Attorneys for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have admitted that the defendant planted bombs that killed and maimed dozens of innocent spectators. Hicks turned himself in shortly after the murders of three students at a Chapel Hill apartment. The pants he was wearing when he surrendered were stained with blood from one of the victims. Attorneys in both trials are not striving for a not guilty verdict, merely for a sentence of imprisonment, not execution.

The admission by both defendants and their attorneys that the defendants were responsible for the murders takes away one objection to capital punishment — the risk that some innocent person might be wrongly put to death. Whether they are executed or not, these men are murderers.

Most supporters of capital punishment agree that the ultimate punishment must be reserved for the most heinous of crimes. Killings committed in the heat of emotion or passion, killings resulting from extraordinary circumstances should not be punishable by death. But both the Boston and the Chapel Hill trials involved coldly calculated murders, one a carefully planned and cruelly executed mass murder and the other an enraged tantrum by a man reported to be a hair-trigger away from killing anyone who crossed his path.

If capital punishment is ever to be used, these two trials make a case for it. If Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Craig Stephen Hicks are sentenced to life in prison, no rational arguments can henceforth be made in favor of executions. If Tsarnaev and Hicks can live out their natural lives as guests of the government, no future murderer should ever be put to death.