The story has gone around the world.  In 1989 Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped on a dead-end road in a small town in central Minnesota.  For years, law enforcement worked the case—without success.  We all suffered with the Wetterling family as they lived through the horrible events.  A local man, Danny Heinrich, was a suspect from the start, but officials couldn’t establish enough evidence to charge him.  A few months ago, his house was searched, child porn was found, and he was charged with a couple dozen federal criminal charges—but not for murder.

Law enforcement, the prosecutors, and the Wetterling family agreed that if Heinrich made a confession to the killing of Jacob Wetterling, the authorities would not charge him with the murder and would let him plead guilty to some of the child porn charges with a prison sentence of twenty years.

That’s the sticking point—many people feel like Jacob Wetterling’s killer got away with murder.  How could someone who had done what Heinrich did, serve anything less than the rest of his life in prison?  Some wanted him executed, although that is not available to prosecutors in Minnesota.

I’ve worked almost forty years as both a prosecutor and a defense lawyer and have handled dozens of murder cases that were similar to this one but without the notoriety.  I don’t think Heinrich “got away with murder.”  Here’s why—

1.  Had he been convicted of many of the child porn charges, he probably woudn’t have even been sentenced to the twenty years he will get with this plea deal.
2. The prosecutors had absolutely no case against him for the murder of Jacob Wetterling.  No matter how much they wanted to get this guy, they couldn’t.  Of course, had Heinrich been charged with the murder and convicted (not possible really), he could have been sentenced to life in prison, perhaps without parole.  But since he wasn’t going to be charged, this is not a possibility.
3. Heinrich had an absolute right to remain silent under the constitution.  He couldn’t be forced to say anything.
4. The Wetterling family, prosecutors, and most of the rest of us wanted closure on the case.  What really happened?

For all these reasons, the prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed to the plea to the child porn case, a confession in court to the murder, and a twenty year sentence.  Actually, I’m surprised that Heinrich agreed with it.  My personal thoughts are that he felt guilty—perhaps for years—about what he did and this was the right opportunity to come clean about what happened to clear his conscience.  Here’s the story from the StarTribune– http://www.startribune.com/danny-heinrich-confesses-to-abducting-and-killing-jacob-wetterling/392438361/

So when people get mad and say Jacob Wetterling’s killer got away with murder, they’re wrong.

The post Did Jacob Wetterling’s Killer get Away with Murder? appeared first on Colin T. Nelson.

I’ve worked in the criminal justice system for over thirty years.  Crime prevention has taken many turns—usually in two ways:

1.  More police, more enforcement

2.  More money poured into high crime areas in the form of jobs, neighborhood centers, and sports programs.

Has any of this worked?

The FBI statistics show that over-all crime rates are down, but no research can explain exactly why.  And in some cities, crime rates are higher than ever.  To my knowledge, thousands of smart people have tried to figure out how to reduce crime.  It took an epidemiologist to come up with a new twist: let’s pay criminals to stop murder.  Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?  But it seems to have worked in Richmond, California.  The plan offered to pay criminals to stop murder.  Specifically, if the criminals stayed out of trouble, didn’t kill anyone, and came to meetings with mentors for six months, they’d get $1,000 a month for nine months.

It’s working.  There are three keys to this success:

1.  Trust.  The law enforcement identified 17 of the worst offenders who were probably causing most of the the murders.  If these people could be convinced to change—for money—that would go a long way to getting lower level criminals to cooperate also.

2.  Community intervention.  Several people were hired to approach the 17 king pins.  These community people were critical to gaining trust, especially when they told the criminals they would get pay to stop murders.

3.  Money.  The authorities followed through and paid the money.

Some readers ask the obvious: is this crazy that we’re paying money to criminals?  Shouldn’t we be putting them in jail?  The cost of fighting crime is far more than the money used to pay criminals to stop murder.  It’s estimated that a homicide costs the taxpayers about $400,000 for the cops, courts, lawyers, juries, judges, and prisons.

The usual response to higher crime rates has been more police and more incarceration—which doesn’t seem to work according to the research.

So, what do you think about this radical plan to pay criminals to stop murder?

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