Judge refuses to reduce killer’s sentence in Va. Tech decapitation case:

A Virginia judge has upheld the life sentence of Zhu Haiyang, the Virginia Tech student who decapitated Yang Xin in front of several onlookers.

Apparently, his attorney thought it would be a good idea to reduce to his sentence to 40 years.

Let’s hear from defense attorney Stephanie Cox…

“The facts of this case are horrific, there’s no getting around that,” Cox said, but other factors should be considered, including the cost to the public of keeping Zhu locked up for life.

Zhu is a well-educated man with no criminal record and no history of violence or anti-social behavior, who has suffered major depression and has a history of mental illness in the family, Cox said.

She said family and academic stressors combined with his mental illness and delusions about Yang “impaired his judgment at the time of the offense.”

I thought the cost issue was the argument against the death penalty. And that is what will happen when you get rid of the death penalty is that people will start saying that life sentences should be done away with. As a taxpayer, I have no problem with my taxes going to keep this psycho behind bars for the rest of his life.

And so what if this was his first offense because he really picked a good one to start with. He took a kitchen knife and basically sawed off the head of Ms. Yang in front of several witnesses and had her head in his hand when police arrived. This isn’t exactly jaywalking.