The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘I Just F–king Killed Someone’

Posted on | February 6, 2012 | 22 Comments

Alyssa Bustamante was a 15-year-old high-school sophomore in October 2009 when she wrote this entry in her journal:

“I just f—— killed someone. I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them now they’re dead. I don’t know how to feel atm. It was ahmazing. As soon as you get over the ‘ohmygawd I can’t do this’ feeling, it’s pretty enjoyable. I’m kinda nervous and shaky though right now. Kay, I gotta go to church now…lol.”

The victim, Elizabeth Olten, was 9 years old. The journal entry was read aloud in court today at Bustamante’s sentencing hearing.

Category: Crime

Comments

22 Responses to “‘I Just F–king Killed Someone’”

  1. Thomas L. Knapp
    February 6th, 2012 @ 5:23 pm

    And the perpetrator was, at the time, 15 years old, with severe psychiatric problems, as other entries from the same journal confirm.

    Bustamante is a textbook case of the stupidity of trying minors as adults. If treated as a minor, she’d probably have spent the rest of her life in a mental hospital. It’s worse not just for her, but for society, that she’ll instead spend some indeterminate amount of time in criminal graduate school.

  2. Adjoran
    February 6th, 2012 @ 5:45 pm

     Baloney.  “… severe psychiatric problems …” doesn’t meet the legal definition of insanity, that she didn’t know what she was doing was wrong.  The defense didn’t try to plead insanity. 

    I always thought the libertarian/anarchist position was against arbitrary age limits for various things like the right to contract or give sexual consent.  Now a cold-blooded murderer shouldn’t be tried as a adult because . . . her cell phone charger died?

  3. Thomas L. Knapp
    February 6th, 2012 @ 5:54 pm

    Adjoran,

    1) If I had mean to assert insanity, I’d have asserted insanity. I was very careful in my wording.

    2) Yes, the libertarian/anarchist position — or at least my libertarian anarchist position — is against arbitrary age limits. But it’s even more against capricious/selective application of law. Either have the limits or don’t have them. Not “maintain the limits at all costs if she wants to get laid, buy a beer or drive a car … but if we want to stick her in a cage, fuck all that ‘rule of law’ noise.”

  4. Anonymous
    February 6th, 2012 @ 6:51 pm

    bah, they need to follow darwins law that those idiots seem to so love at one time. Take her out back and put her to death to serve the greater good.

  5. EBL
    February 6th, 2012 @ 7:14 pm

    Thomas, that is (unfortunately) nonsense.  It is extremely difficult to commit someone if they have not yet committed a crime (it is not easy to commit someone if they have committed a violent crime).  I do not want to lock people up arbitrarily either.  Such crimes are (fortunately) relatively rare and it is impossible to predict this sort of thing without some very clear evidence.  She probably would have been processed rather quickly in and out as a child psychiatric patient.  Whether that would have prevented her from committing this murder or some other opportunistic murder is completely unknown.  

    And if she was convicted of this murder as a child, she would be looking at release in a few years.  It is a tragedy that this happened, but it is also a horrendous crime.  This is Crime and Punishment, but here the victim is an innocent 9 year old and there is very little mitigation (other than the girl being obviously troubled).  But “troubled,”  even with ” severe psychiatric problems” does not equal criminally insane.  And the appropriate punishment now is life in prison.    

  6. Thomas L. Knapp
    February 6th, 2012 @ 7:21 pm

    EBL,

    “It is extremely difficult to commit someone if they have not yet committed a crime”

    Yes, I know that.

    I wasn’t suggesting that she would have been committed before committing the crime.

    I’m suggesting that she should have been committed after committing the crime, instead of held to a double standard.

    She was either a child when she committed the crime, or she was an adult when she committed the crime.

    The law insisted that she was a child — right up to the minute that a grandstanding prosecutor decided it would be more politically worthwhile to pretend she was an adult.

  7. Anonymous
    February 6th, 2012 @ 7:23 pm

    Yeah, it’s amazing that the left claims to believe in evolution yet is against allowing any of the mechanisms that make it a working proposition for weeding out anti-survival traits.

  8. TWB
    February 6th, 2012 @ 7:42 pm

    It may sound simplistic, but I think this story is just another example of what a “soulless” society we’re becoming.

  9. Pathfinder's wife
    February 6th, 2012 @ 8:29 pm

    Not to worry, if things keep progressing at the rate they are (or accelerate, as certain physical laws would predict they will) then it will get much worse.

    I’ve always been of the opinion that morality in society was not there to ensure the good behavior of the slower members; it’s to keep the smart, jaded ones in check — once they really start rolling, then look out.

  10. Anonymous
    February 6th, 2012 @ 8:31 pm

     Thomas,  You assert that “If treated as a minor, she’d probably have spent the rest of her life in a mental hospital.” What do you base that statement on? My understanding is many get magically declared sane after a length of time and get let go. Beyond that this is not a matter of a teenager doing something stupid on a dare where it would make sense to treat the offense  differently. A kid who steals a pack of cigarettes is not the same as an adult who steals something. By 15 years of age she should understand that killing someone else is wrong.

  11. Quartermaster
    February 6th, 2012 @ 8:34 pm

    There was nothing arbitrary about this. The system demands, alas, that kids like this be tried as adults if they are to kept away from society for any reasonable period. The libertarian/anarchist position on something like this is just another term for insanity. The l/a position is a sickness and no where near a solution to anything.

  12. ThePaganTemple
    February 6th, 2012 @ 9:26 pm

    Kill the little ho and be done with it. The victim was NINE FUCKING YEARS OLD!!!

    The fact that the Libertarian position holds that there should be no age limits when it comes to signing a legally BINDING contract means its okay for us to stop taking them seriously about oh, anything at all.  

  13. Thomas L. Knapp
    February 6th, 2012 @ 9:35 pm

    “By 15 years of age she should understand that killing someone else is wrong.”

    Great. So lobby to have the law changed such that 15 year olds are treated as adults.

    Not just when a prosecutor thinks it sounds good for re-election, or when it makes you feel good to think you’re “tough on crime.”

    All the time

    Otherwise, this is an atrocity nearly as bad as the initial crime itself.

  14. Anonymous
    February 6th, 2012 @ 10:03 pm

     You obviously misread my post. What I’m saying is each case should be considered separately. There are times where it is appropriate to handle an offense as a juvenile. However, some cases are such that a juvenile slap on the hand is clearly insufficient.

  15. Thomas L. Knapp
    February 6th, 2012 @ 10:11 pm

    “There are times where it is appropriate to handle an offense as a juvenile. ”

    Yep. Those times are “any time the alleged perpetrator was below the age of majority at the time of the crime.”

  16. ThePaganTemple
    February 6th, 2012 @ 11:10 pm

     But if she wants to sign a contract that might keep her in debt for the rest of her life, fine and dandy.

  17. Thomas L. Knapp
    February 6th, 2012 @ 11:13 pm

    “But if she wants to sign a contract that might keep her in debt for the rest of her life, fine and dandy.”

    Wrong.

    All I’m saying is make it one or the other: 

    Either have an age of majority and stick to it, or don’t. But whatever you do, make it consistent.

    Not “if you want to buy a beer or get laid, you’re too young, but if we think you committed a crime, we have this here magic wand that makes you an ‘adult’ for the purpose, and only for the purpose, of letting us fry your ass because our constituents really dig politicians who are ‘tough on crime.'”

  18. Bob Belvedere
    February 7th, 2012 @ 8:47 am

    We could never confine her to a mental institution for life as the civil libertarians had most of them closed down.

  19. Edward
    February 7th, 2012 @ 11:15 am

     Utter nonsense.  The girl is evil not insane.

    When people try to equate evil actions with mental illness it blurs the line between those with -actual- mental illness and those who are really just plainly evil.  Just because you think evil = mental illness does not make it so.

    She is evil, kill her and be done with it.

  20. Edward
    February 7th, 2012 @ 11:17 am

     What the fuck does arbitrary age limits have to do with anything?

  21. Edward
    February 7th, 2012 @ 11:19 am

     Agreed.  Honestly it’s shit like this that makes me consider libertarianism to be beyond silly.

    Evidently in the libertarian universe everything has to be the same throughout no matter how illogical, unwieldy or ridiculous.

    …

    You know that probably explains my revulsion to Ron Paul.

  22. Pathfinder's wife
    February 7th, 2012 @ 11:33 am

    Probably not a bad idea — people like this rarely change that much.

    It excited her; that means she’s a psychopath — she won’t stop looking for the adrenaline rush, and since she was not guided to more appropriate outlets (aka. taught some moral considerations and how to avoid doing evil) this sort of thing will happen again.