chamoisee wrote:
I've never claimed to be perfect, but I'm certainly not on par with this guy!

Child molesters almost never change their ways. Who knows how many more babies and little kids this creep will victimize before he gets caught again and gets his hand slapped again, and released....IMHO a crime of this nature is as bad as murder or worse.
Oh yeah, I agree with you that this crime is on a par with murder. It is very, very unhealthy for the human race - the kind of behaviour he is perpetuating. However, up to the point he was prosecuted he wouldn't have been identifiable as a paedophile so he never got a chance to receive help or his problem.
Once someone is known to be a paedophile they go on lists which restrict them from working in jobs with children and which allow the police to monitor them. He will never find it easy to abuse a child again when he is freed on parole.
Now that his problem has been identified he can be medicated to have his sex drive diminished so he won't feel the inclination to do it again. It's not fair to say somebody should kill him because he doesn't have awareness of how bad he is - paedophiles are severely mentally ill.