Justice can be agonizing, even when the jury gets it right.Little peace, or that chimerical thing called closure, can be found in a guilty verdict for the murderers of Laura Babcock. Not for her parents and not for her friends, just as there was precious little comfort for Tim Bosma’s widow and the child who will grow up never knowing her dad.A six-week funeral, Clayton Babcock described the trial, after the jury returned its verdict on Saturday: First-degree murder convictions for Dellen Millard and Mark Smich, life sentences with no possibility of parole for 25 years. Sentences that could, depending on how the judge decides, run consecutively – a quarter-century more on top of the quarter-century imprisonment they’re already serving for the Bosma killing.Either way, Millard and Smich will grow old behind bars, well into their 50s before they can breathe air again as free mortals.“Today’s verdict really brings us little joy,” Mr. Babcock said outside the courthouse. “The loss of Laura is no less painful today than when it was realized five years ago. Like any parent that loses a child we can only move forward with the thoughts of what might have been.” A grieving father forced to answer questions in cross-examination from the defendant accused of slaying her — Millard was self-represented — could finally unleash just a little bit of his fury.“You all know what a wonderful woman (Laura) was, as well as all the pains and struggles that she faced. You also know about the evil beings that took her life. And if society’s lucky, we will not see them again in the streets.”But we will see one of them again — Millard — in court, facing a third first-degree murder trial, in the death of his own father, initially ruled a suicide.That’s serial murderer territory. Dangerous offender territory. Life ever after behind bars territory.It took the jury five days of deliberation to agr ...
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