She was convicted for ****** of the first degree.
Three bodies were found with duct tape over their mouths,
stab wounds in their stomachs,
and their eyes open.
It was five o-clock in the evening.
The world outside was white.
And the sun had already set.
It was the seventh day of December
and it was her Birthday.
And this, apparently, was her present.
Not wrapped in paper or adorned with a bow.
No candles on a cake or cards on the mantle.
Just blood on the walls
and fear in their eyes
and dead people on the floor.
Her trial lasted nine days.
It was clean.
Not messy.
It was tidy.
Not sloppy.
It was simple.
Not abstruse.
It was nothing like what she had left at the crime scene.
But what they decided on in court
might not be what you may imagine.
Because there’s no death penalty or life sentence
for an eleven year old.
So, for her, it was just fifteen cycles of 365.
Just 780 weeks,
131,475 hours,
2,889,235 minutes
behind seventeen bars.