John Lennon's killer denied parole for 12th time, New York corrections officials say

[Floyd R. Turbo]

ALBANY, N.Y. — The man who shot and killed John Lennon outside his Manhattan apartment building in 1980 has been denied parole for a 12th time, New York corrections officials said Monday.

Mark David Chapman, 67, appeared before a parole board at the end of August, according to the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

Chapman shot and killed Lennon on the night of Dec. 8, 1980, as Lennon and Yoko Ono were returning to their Upper West Side apartment. Lennon had signed an autograph for Chapman on a copy of his recently released album, “Double Fantasy,” earlier that day.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2022/09/13/john-lennon-killer-denied-parole-12-times/10364372002/

[3Hotdogs]

1. If he had killed someone else, would he be out now?

[BeyondGeography]

3. If he killed somebody else nobody would know his name

Price of fame I guess.

[alphafemale]

14. I don't think any murderer should ever be out.

Let alone a freak stalker murderer.

[MagickMuffin]

2. May he continue to rot away behind bars

He took away a valuable voice that day. He shouldn’t ever be allowed to starting over!

[Beatlelvr]

6. Starting over?

I see what you did there.

This was just so senseless. And to be shot down in the city he loved. And fought the US government no less to be there.

[exboyfil]

4. Prison isn't all bad

He looks a lot fitter now than when he went in. Hope he isn't loving it like Richard Speck.

[tenderfoot]

12. Has he grown breasts and gotten high off of cleaning products?

Sounds like a blast.

[JohnSJ]

5. good. He should NEVER be paroled. As for those who argue if he killed someone less notable, would

he still be denied parole?

Anyone who predmediates the killing of another person, reardless of who it is, should lose their freedom.

Sirhan Sirhan was granted parole by the California Parole Board, and Governor Newsom over-ruled that recommendation. Interestingly, anti-vaxer and fraudster RFK jr. wanted Sirhan Sirhan released, while Robert Kennedy's wife and most of the Kennedy family were oppossed to it. The fact that Sirhan Sirhan

“still lacks the insight that would prevent him from making the kind of dangerous and destructive decisions he made in the past. The most glaring proof of Sirhan’s deficient insight is his shifting narrative about his assassination of Kennedy, and his current refusal to accept responsibility for it.”

was the main reason why Governor Brown rejected it.

[Aristus]

7. Good.

I hope he goes to bed every night for the rest of his life agonizing over the question: "Was it worth it?"

May the answer always be, now and forever, 'No'.

[Goodheart]

8. I know I'm in the minority here, but I believe in the death penalty

for obvious murders with incontrovertible evidence.

That's the case here.


Mark David Chapman should not be alive to enjoy whatever joys he takes from his prison life.

[Mysterian]

9. The government should not have the power of life and death

because of the large number of stupid and corrupt people in the government.

[Goodheart]

10. Well, those would be jury decisions.

[Mysterian]

21. That's an obtuse way to look at it

As if police, prosecutors and judges have no part in the criminal justice system.

[Goodheart]

23. So, if we never trust the government at any level then we shouldn't have prisons at all.

If we never trust juries then we shouldn't have trials.

It's your own post that is "obtuse".

[Mysterian]

24. Riiiiight.

Because no death penalty means no prisons, etc.

[tenderfoot]

11. Prison is so fun, I may commit a crime simply because it'll be like going to Disneyland

[Goodheart]

13. He's having more fun than is John Lennon.

[tenderfoot]

16. And those kids that shot up a school in Arkansas are having more than the people they killed

They're free you know.

At least Chapman will never be release ever.

[FelineOverlord]

19. Jonesboro?

One of the Jonesboro defendants has spent years committing crimes and spending time in jail.

The other was killed in a car crash.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westside_School_shooting

[Goodheart]

29. I have no idea why you're arguing against yourself.

[DFW]

18. Forty plus years of watching your body age away during a life you will never have?

I'm not sure that is a compromise I'd want.

[The Grand Illuminist]

15. With you on that.

nt

[Lancero]

20. You're not in the minority.

A life sentence is, at the end of the day, no different than the death penalty. You'll die in prison either way, life is just slower, more drawn out.

Most people who decry the cruelty of the death penalty relish in the fact that the person 'spared' from such will now suffer for years in a cell.

You're in the minority. Not because you support the death penalty, but because unlike so many moralists you're actually being honest about what you really support.

[USALiberal]

26. Wow, really???

[unblock]

27. Hey why not legalize murder? You're doing the "victim" a favor, they won't suffer a long drawn out

death of natural causes decades later.

I mean, if intervening in someone else's life to cause death much earlier than they would have died otherwise has no moral significance,....

Very nihilistic view. We're all gonna die anyway so nothing matters.

[Lancero]

31. An accurate view. Prison is about rehabilitation, life sentences are counter to that.

[Sugarcoated]

33. Life sentences protect us from dangerous people

[Lancero]

34. So does the death penalty, and better so. Once carried out, you don't need to worry about...

That super duper dangerous prisoner, who we need to be protected from, ever breaking out of prison.

Their is nothing moral about locking someone up in a cage for the rest of their life. Their is no morality, or humanity, to be found in any argument that starts with "And we can never let this person interact with society again".

Life in prison is just the slowest death penalty one could be sentenced to.

[Sugarcoated]

35. But if done in error it can't be reversed

[Lancero]

36. And if a person dies in prison, erroneously being sentenced to spend the rest of it behind bars...

Can that be reversed?

Hell, not just life sentences.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/05/02/the-painful-price-of-aging-in-prison/?itid=lk_inline_manual_24

“Our federal prisons are starting to resemble nursing homes surrounded with razor wire,” said Julie Stewart, president and founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “It makes no sense fiscally, or from the perspective of human compassion, to incarcerate men and women who pose no threat to public safety and have long since paid for their crime. We need to repeal the absurd mandatory minimum sentences that keep them there.”

And these are just the ones lucky enough to actually get some form of medical care. Standards vary, quite a lot, depending on the prison. It's a life sentence, until your health starts to fail. Then it's a death sentence. A slow. And, depending on what ails a person, a potentially painful one.

This is the system that many here are advocating in favor of. A system where people are tossed into a metal cage, and left to die. And people somehow think this is the 'moral' alternative?

That is why everyone here is being hypocritical. Because, at the end of the day, everyone patting themselves on the back over how good they are for 'sparing' this person doesn't actually give a damn about their life. In reality, they want this person to live... for no other reason so that they can continue to suffer.

[USALiberal]

25. Yes, you are a minority, you would love China. Nt

[unblock]

28. Focusing on the criminal misses the point.

Focus on the government.

Should governments have the right to kill heir subjects?

Should governments have the right to decide which offenses warrant killing?

Keeping in mind that our own government has a lengthy and deep history of stricter and biased law enforcement against minorities.

Keeping in mind that the current right wing believes all liberals an democrats are evil traitors

Also fyi, several entire branches of my family tree were killed based on official regulations at the time, essentially for the "crime" of being Jewish.


You don't have to have any love for the criminal to think giving a government the right to kill its subjects is a bad, bad idea.

[Raine]

32. I'm of the same opinion. nt

[DFW]

17. For all the music Chapman stole from the world that night

That alone is a crime that could never, ever be forgiven.

[ZonkerHarris]

22. Chapman should die in prison. He murdered an innocent man in cold blood. Assassin.

[honest.abe]

30. I hope he rots in jail.

He's a monster that stole the life of a person who had so much more to give.