Does a sentence of life without parole always mean just that, or are there situations / circumstances where that may not always be the case ?
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Does a sentence of life without parole always mean just that, or are there situations / circumstances where that may not always be the case ?
Are you asking if the sentence can be reduced? If so yes, it happens regularly.
All you need is the libs to challenge it as cruel and unusual and LWOP goes away.
The main reason I support the death penalty is so that it stays the shiny object drawing liberal eyes so as to keep the heat off LWOP, which for most punks is good enough. That and to have something to dangle over the head of spies to ensure better cooperation when cleaning up their messes.
– On the very previous comment:
Not at all. The parole process in European countries is not different than in the United States. Even "extension" of imprisonment as in Norway is in practice identical to civil commitment in the U.S, and both are conducted in the same way as parole hearings.
It is not a penalty, as life without parole is, for deterrence and retribution, and for which victims are sure they will not have to wonder at regular intervals whether it will or will not continue to be enforced.
Such sentences don’t exist in European countries, and would become the next target of some elites in the United States if the death penalty disappeared.
The so-called European "court of human rights" indeed already banned life imprisonment without parole. For all crimes.
Retaining the death penalty, even if applied rarely and randomly, is the only way to not grant to every killer an absolute right to regular parole hearings.
It is also an important advantage of the death penalty, that it allows justice to impose life sentences without parole for some cases of plea-bargained murder. And for non-homicidal crimes such as child rape, without unbalancing the scale of penalties.
– On the original question asked by this thread:
Once final, a sentence of life without parole, like all other penalties, can be reduced only by a new law or Executive clemency, and that’s not regular because the death penalty exists. And true it is that such reduction cannot happen for a death sentence once carried out, which is another argument for enforcing the death penalty for horrific crimes.