Database Finds Fugitive After 35 Years

Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian has a story on a woman who was claims she is innocent and was apprehended 35 years after escaping prison by a computer database created by the Department of Homeland Security. Linda Darby was convicted of killing her husband in 1970 and sentenced to life at an Indiana prison but escaped two years later by climbing over a barbed-wire fence at the Indiana Women's Prison. She knocked on a stranger's door in Indianapolis, telling the woman who answered that her cuts and scratches were from a fight with her boyfriend. In Indianapolis she met the man who would become her third husband and moved to his hometown of Pulaski, where they raised their two children and watched eight grandchildren grow up. As Linda Jo McElroy, she used a similar date of birth and social security number to her real ones which allowed a computer database created by the Department of Homeland Security to identify her. Darby says she is innocent and fled prison because she did not want to serve time for another person's crime."

Comments

Re:Has she offended since?

[Elemenope]

(Bracing for the bitchslaps...)

You know, this is what drives me crazy about how our justice system deals with murder. On the long list of crimes ranked by recidivism rates, murder ranks very near the bottom. Except for the few sociopaths who see murder as acceptable means for financial or personal gain, and the even fewer number who kill to indulge a predatory instinct or because it's just fun for them, the vast majority of murders are very obviously one-time affairs. Most murderers are far less of a continuing threat to society than, say, rapists and molesters.

So, why do we impose the heaviest sentences for murder, regardless of circumstance, heavier than those crimes that indicate a far more sociopathic personality, if the justice system is first and foremost about protecting society and its interests?