Man gets maximum sentence for beating deaths of transients

[jpak]

Source: Washington Post

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A judge sentenced a young man convicted of beating two homeless men to death with cinder blocks and other objects to the maximum term of 67 ½ years in prison Friday after hearing tearful pleas for tough punishment from the victims’ relatives.

Alex Rios, 20, apologized to the families and asked for mercy, but Judge Briana Zamora accused him of trying to minimize his role in the 2014 attack.

“I can’t even call this a killing,” Zamora told him. “This was torture.”

A jury found Rios guilty last year of killing Alison Gorman and Kee Thompson, who had traveled to Albuquerque from the Navajo Nation to find work. The attack led city officials to establish a task force on Native American homelessness, though prosecutors did not say the victims were targeted because of their race.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/man-convicted-of-fatally-beating-transients-faces-sentencing/2016/02/04/ca648bd2-cbc4-11e5-b9ab-26591104bb19_story.html

[houston16revival]

1. The Most Important Human Value

is empathy.

I've met many who had none. Unbelievable to me at the time, and
unnoticed, but truly they were unable to feel sorry for anyone for anything.
It was all about their own ego and self-importance and dominance.

I have come to probe the people I meet for empathy if I think they might
be around awhile. Those who fail are soon gone.

[BlueJazz]

2. Absolutely. The Political scene is infested with them and (from personal experience),

...I can say the the entertainment industry is almost as bad.

[Aristus]

3. He was shown more mercy than he showed his victims.

I oppose the death penalty. And there's a reason for that. Killing people is a bad thing. He must know that by now, and that he got out of it without suffering what his victims went through.