So what you're saying is Trump is probably going to pardon at least 2 of them.

Exactly, it's not about the broken people doing unspeakable things.

It's about stooping to their level as a society, about being loathsome enough to demand an eye for an eye instead of being compassionate in the face of cruelty.

Honestly, you show me a serial killer, and I'll show you someone who almost certainly has clinical sociopathy in addition to other diagnoses which means they belong in a maximum security psychiatric hospital for the rest of their lives out of public safety, just like the sociopaths who hoard extreme levels of wealth to buy politicians and hurt/murder people through policy beyond their single vote for private profit who are clearly mentally ill should be.

The thing about the US though, is that we are a bloodthirsty, vengeful, schaudenfreude addicted society.

I've heard my fellow Americans wish death upon the homeless without the slightest bit of shame, whose only crime was failing to be good capital batteries, on the basis of lowering property values.

It's true no society should be judged by their elite citizens, but by how we treat our prisoners. By that metric, there are few societies lower than ours with the world's largest, often for profit prison population provided virtually no rehabilitation and literally set up to fail when they get out.

We are a monstrous nation. Not the only monstrous nation by any means, but up there with the worst by the scale of cruelty inflicted.

Sorry, no. Disagree. There should not be exceptions to basic human rights no matter how terrible those people are. We have no problem keeping other people just as bad in federal supermax prison for life, and, in fact, that's where everyone else who got their sentences commuted will be going.

No state should have the power of life and death over its citizenry and exceptions to rules are not a good idea.