I don't get it...

we were in canada over the weekend, and as we were driving home, I tried to get a traffic report to know what we were in for at the border. it can vary, seemingly randomly, from ten minutes to several hours on a sunday night. I generally like to know how pissed off I'll be before I actually get there.

problem was, there was no traffic report. the news station was supposed to do it every ten minutes, but there was non-stop coverage of a verdict in the robert pickton case. I had heard about this earlier in the day, as it was all over the news.

for those unaware, pickton is a pig farmer and serial killer rivaling washington's green river killer. he focused mainly on prostitutes, probably believing they wouldn't be missed or something. he's most known in canada for disposing of the bodies by putting them through a meat grinder and allegedly into sausages he then served to neighbours. it's a notorious case in canada, and the investigation has gone on for years. he was on trial for the first six murders, with twenty more charges queued up, and possibly twice as many unsolved murders with charges yet to be filed.

so as I'm waiting for the damn traffic report, I'm stuck listening to a really boring press release, in both english and french, as they recount just how hard they've worked and how much evidence they've collected. if you stack the boxes on top of each other, it's taller than the space needle. if you lined up the paperwork end to end, it would reach from vancouver to revelstoke. why the police have been spending time quantifying their efforts in such ridiculous means is beyond me... but then they cut to public reactions, including victims families, to the guilty verdicts in the first six cases.

one woman mentioned how it was good for the families of those six victims, but the rest of them still had to wait for justice.

what?

the guy is in jail. he's going to stay there for a long time (and likely get killed there, as serial killers often do). there will likely be years of further trials as they proceed with more charges. the guy is probably never going to get out of jail.

so why does it matter that he's in jail right now because he killed someone OTHER than YOUR daughter? the dude is in jail. he's being punished. they'll get to the rest of the counts eventually. do we really need to divide up his time served based on some arbitrary victim assignment? "these first ten years are for tiffany, the next ten are for susan, etc"... what about those who get tried last? surely the guy isn't going to live to be 300, he's going to be dead long before THOSE sentences come into play. does that mean those women's families won't get to feel justice has been served for them, since he didn't rot in jail for THEIR sentences?

it just seems like a really stupid, almost selfish way of looking at the case. the guy is in jail. you have your closure. even if another charge is never laid, he'll never see life outside those bars ever again. no parole board would ever let him out, and he's already facing six 10-year terms for second degree murder.

I really don't understand people.