THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 1, 1994 TAG: 9412010005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A16 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 38 lines
Jeffrey Dahmer died almost as violently as he lived: He was bludgeoned to death this week by a fellow inmate, himself a murderer.
Wisconsin, where Dahmer was tried, convicted and incarcerated, does not have the death penalty. The man who admitted killing, dismembering and sometimes cannibalizing 17 young men received consecutive terms well beyond a life sentence. But if the state shied from meting out the ultimate punishment, some individual did not.
The motive of Dahmer's murderer is unclear: Experts say that inmates do sometimes kill particularly heinous criminals to become heroes in prison and folk heroes outside. At least one family of a Dahmer victim got phone calls purportedly from inmates promising he'd be ``taken care of.'' And some of the families of the men and boys Dah-mer killed take great satisfaction in his death, and the manner of it.
But the manner of it is unacceptable.
James Traficant, a Democratic congressman from Ohio, says Dahmer ``earned it, deserved it'' - but ``should have been sentenced to death by a jury, not by a bunch of thugs in a prison.''
E. Michael McCann, the Milwaukee County district attorney who tried Jeffrey Dahmer, called it ``the last sad chapter in a very sad life. . . . I hope,'' he added, ``there will be no economic returns or celebration as a folk hero for the man that killed Jeffrey Dah-mer.''
On that, thoughtful death-penalty supporters and opponents can and do agree. Probably, and unfortunately, movie producers do not. by CNB