Betty Broderick Denied Parole: David Loftus

Ms. Broderick was presumably of sound mind when she killed two people, demonstrating a (presumably) temporary but total lack of respect for human life. Since she was not a minor and (presumably) not insane, she’s lucky she didn’t receive a death sentence … a vagary of timing or geography, no doubt. That she thinks she has any right to be set free early is just another presumption of privilege like the one she exercised when she took the lives of two other human beings because she was upset at what they’d done.

So what if Broderick helped her husband through law school and then got dumped by him? We’ve all been cheated by circumstances, lovers, and friends, and I have yet to hear that any court has accepted this as justification for murdering a person, let alone two of them. For all I know, she’s been a model prisoner in prison ever since (although the parole board reported that she appeared to continue to be angry and unrepentant), but that also would be no justification for reducing her sentence. I can’t imagine having to spend 20 years, 32 years, or the rest of my life in prison; but I also can’t imagine killing anyone.

Her deceased ex-husband Daniel Broderick III may well have been a class-A jerk. He may even have beaten her. (She did attempt a battered-wife defense in court, though I find that one hard to swallow since they had been through a four-year divorce battle and he was already married to someone else at the time of his death.) None of this extenuates her act of going into the home of her ex-husband and his new wife and shooting them while they slept in their bed. She also admitted to having bombarded him with obscene phone calls, smearing Boston cream pie on his clothing, and driving a truck through his front door. Whether or not she poses a danger to anyone else is beside the point; this woman should serve out the sentence she was given, for a heinous act committed 20 years ago.