PORTLAND, OREGON— A local circuit court judge dismissed all charges against a 14-time convicted murderer on Tuesday, ruling that a strict ten-minute unsupervised timeout in the courthouse corridor was a profoundly adequate consequence for his latest string of fatal stabbings.
The defendant, who has been arrested and convicted multiple times for violent offenses, was reportedly escorted to a quiet section of the hallway following his latest murder charge and instructed to sit in a chair and think carefully about what he had done.
“We must remember that the defendant is the real victim of society’s failure to provide adequate coping mechanisms,” the judge told reporters. “I looked into his eyes when his timeout was over, and I could tell he felt slightly awkward for a few seconds. To put him in a jail cell now would completely erase that therapeutic momentum. At least now he knows that if he does it again, there will be consequences.”
As a condition of his release, the defendant was ordered to promise not to commit any more homicides, a pledge the judge secured by having the serial killer officially cross his heart.
At press time, the judge was reportedly considering replacing prison sentences with increasingly stern looks after determining that disappointed facial expressions could be an effective deterrent for defendants who have already demonstrated that conventional consequences do not work.
