Atlanta courthouse killer avoids death penalty

The reason why I asked is on one local talk radio guy's Web site, after Neil Entwhistle was convicted of murdering his wife and child and sentenced to life without the parole, there was a poll asking if people thought he'd really be in prison for the rest of his life.
Most people said no.
I'm not sure if that means most of those people were too stupid to know what "life without parole" means or if they're smart or cynical enough to know there's a way around everything.

 

Maybe it just shows how little faith most people have in "the system."

 

I just don't understand why people think life without parole would mean something other than life without parole.
I've heard people say that sentence doesn't exist. Of course it exists. Judges sentence people to life without parole all the time.
How could a judge give somebody a sentence that does not exist?

 

Appeals?

 

If I were a betting man I'd go with "too stupid to know"

 

And if the appeal was successful, it was usually because the person was not guilty and didn't belong in prison in the first place.

 

Nichols' sentence was life + 485 years. I'm wondering how they arrived at that particular number, which seems arbitrary.

 

The judge maxed him out on every count, including not just the murders, but all the counts of aggravated assault, kidnapping, car theft, etc. (There were 54 total.) So for any charge that doesn't carry a life sentence, but instead carries, say, 25 years, he got the 25 years. According to the AJC story, he also got seven regular life sentences, in addition to the four without parole.

So that's a lot of marks on the wall.