Elizabeth Smart's captor found guilty

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/12/10/utah.smart.trial.verdict/index.html?hpt=T1

"Salt Lake City, Utah (CNN) -- A federal jury on Friday found a homeless street preacher guilty of kidnapping Elizabeth Smart in 2002 and transporting the 14-year-old girl across state lines with the intent to engage in sexual activity."

I haven't followed this trial as closely as I should have, but I'm glad the dude was found guilty, and man, credit Smart. I cannot imagine what she has gone through, but she had managed to pull herself together. God bless her.

 

Good. I hope he rots.

And yes Smart did handle herself well through the proceedings, from what I have read. I read an AP story that ran during the preliminary hearing, I believe, when the prosecutor was quoted as saying he was extremely impressed at her composure when having to testify.

 

Unfortunately, the death penalty is not in play. Mitchell could be a terrific poster boy.

 

Hopefully he'll find enough people in jail who will think up some acceptable alternatives.

 

per elizabeth smart's poise and strength through this entire sordid chapter of her life: she's obviously an extraordinary girl. and much of the credit for that must go to her parents -- we so often blame the parents when a child's behavior seems out of control. by the same token, the loving and positive upbringing elizabeth has enjoyed is clearly evident by the strength she has exhibited throughout.

bravo to the smart family. i won't waste my time typing anything about her abductor. read this heartbreaking, sickening excerpt from the story (not for the faint of heart):

Smart testified that she awoke to find a man holding a cold steel blade to her neck. She was taken from her bed and marched up a rugged mountain path in her red silk pajamas. When they reached Mitchell's remote camp, Smart testified she was "sealed" to her captor in a marriage ceremony, raped and shackled between two trees with a metal cable. She said she was degraded and treated "like an animal."

Smart said she was raped nearly every day during nine months in captivity and forced to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes and watch Mitchell have sex with his legal wife, Wanda Barzee. She was forced to wear robes and a veil in public and was not permitted to speak to other people. She said she feared Mitchell would act on his threats to kill her and her family if she did.

"I felt that because of what he had done to me, I was marked," Smart testified. "I wasn't the same. My personal value had dropped. I was nothing. Another person could never love me," she added. "I felt like I had a burden the size of a mountain to carry around with me the rest of my life."

:'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'(

 

I wish someone had saved the original Elizabeth Smart thread from the old board. It was in such bad taste, but I don't know if I've ever laughed so hard in my entire life.

 

At least Brian David Mitchell has some company in the crazed preacher section.