I don’t get it. It’s senseless.
John T. Earnest, 22, described as “a former nursing student,” will spend his life in prison without the possibility of parole for shooting up a synagogue, the Associated Press reported on Thursday, September 30, 2021 (read story here). The state dropped the death penalty in exchange for a guilty plea.
It wasn’t much of a trade. Nobody gets executed in California, and Earnest had nothing to gain in a trial.
He killed a 60-year-old woman he didn’t know, and wounded three other people, including the rabbi and an 8-year-old girl. After surrendering, he told the cops, “I’m defending our nation against the Jewish people, who are trying to destroy all white people.”
For acting on that delusion, he will spend 50, 60, or 70 years living in a cage, eating prison food, whiling away his time by watching TV or playing cards with other inmates, and having his daily life run for him by prison guards.
By the way, I’m as much a part of this nation as he is; more actually, having defended it by serving in the military; and I don’t want to be “defended against Jewish people.” They’re my friends.
I don’t know what he has against Jews, and his family doesn’t know either — they call it a “terrifying mystery” — but as he had no known white supremacist affiliations, and hung out on toxic websites like “8chan,” the best guess is he picked up a brain-eating amoeba in a dark corner of the internet.
Because this young man definitely isn’t right in the head.
A 22 years young man in possession of a very, very hardened face.
Whatever was wrong in his life, should not have been taken out on innocent lives.
May he mature enough in prison to be truly repentant and truly remorseful for the murder of innocent people, whose lives he has taken and the families his wrong decisions have impacted.