Saturday, June 30, 2007

Double Murderer May Be Outpatient In 2008

By Lenny Roberts
It was reported Friday that Ventura County Superior Judge Edward Brodie has ordered double-murderer Miguel Hugo Garcia transferred from San Bernardino 's Patton institution for the criminally insane to a mental health rehabilitation facility in Sylmar. If Garcia does well there by completing a one-year rehabilitation program, he could be eligible for Ventura County's outpatient mental health program in 2008, effectively returning him to society.

Describing the man who murdered the elderly Upper Ojai cancer patient and his care-giving daughter as a time bomb waiting to go off, Ventura County Superior Court Judge James P. Cloninger sentenced Garica to the San Bernardino maximum security mental facility in October 1997. Garcia, a Glendale businessman, was sentenced just five months after he fired six rounds into 42-year-old Helen Giardina moments after killing 83-year-old Albert Alexander in a flurry of destructive Black Talon bullets. The crimes were committed in the presence of Giardina's 3-year-old son in an Ojai-Santa Paula Road home adjacent to property owned by Garcia.

Do you agree with the judge's decision to transfer Garcia to a rehabilitation center; should he remain locked up in the maximum security facility; or should Garcia have been given the death penalty when convcted of the crime?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Eye for an eye (death penalty).

Anonymous said...

I think anyone, having committed such a crime, is beyond rehabilitation. Many will disagree with that, but even if there were signs of rehabilitation, let him/her enjoy there recovery behind bars away from me.

With the kind of reasoning that recovery is possible, we might as well absolve the mentally ill of Islam and bring them over for therapy.

D.W.

Anonymous said...

I think we should give this Garcia guy the address of Judge Brodie.