Crime: Jean-Pierre Orlewicz Sentenced

Jean-Pierre Orlewicz

The psychopathic little wretch will get life in prison without possibility of parole. He was seventeen years old when he committed his crime. He is eighteen years old today.

We have mixed feelings about Mr. Orlewicz' sentence. There is no denying that he is a detestable little boil without the slightest trace, apparently, of what makes people human beings &mdash that is, a capacity for empathy, for understanding the pain that others suffer and therefore being incapable of inflicting it upon them.

Mr. Orlewicz' crime, in case you're not up on details, involved luring a supposed friend to the Orlewicz grandparental home, having first prepared the garage with tarps to minimize cleanup of blood. He then set upon his victim, Daniel Sorenson, and stabbed him repeatedly, which caused Mr. Sorenson's death.

Having murdered Mr. Sorenson, whose only crime appears to have been borrowing money from Mr. Orlewicz and failing to repay it, he then cut off Mr. Sorenson's head and applied a blowtorch to the hands and feet, to make identification more difficult. He bullied another debtor and friend into helping him transport the body to an open area, where he doused it with flammables and set it on fire. He disposed of the head in a river.

The friend and fellow-debtor in the case, one Alexander James Letkemann, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, for aiding and abetting inthe crime. Although Mr. Letkemann, who was 18 years old at the time, did not actually assist in killing Mr. Sorenson, he helped prepare the scene and helped dispose of the body. Foolish boy. He may never see his parents alive again.

Orlewicz did not speak at the sentencing hearing, having, apparently, already seriously damaged his case by taking the stand in his own defense. However, the judge who sentenced him, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Annette Berry said she was grateful he was convicted.

"I am grateful that you are going away for the rest of your life, because in my view I believe you will kill again," Berry said.

[...]

The judge called the killing "an evil act." "There is a difference between mental illness in this country and evil," Berry said. "But your actions, sir, are tantamount to evil. No two ways about it."

Judges, in our estimation, are not always the best evaluators of character. Like any other human being, they have their own biases and their life experiences shape much of what they see and how they think. However, the judge's assessment in this case makes us wonder what she saw in this teenage boy &mdash because we saw some evidence of psychopathic behaviour, but we freely admit that we are very prejudiced against him &mdash that would cause her to say such things.

We understand that there is a video clip on YouTube of Mr. Orlewicz testifying on the stand. For reasons we don't understand, and don't want to troubleshoot, we cannot view the clip. But we are told by those who have viewed it that it revealed Mr. Orlewicz to be a nasty little wretch and pretty much guaranteed his conviction.

Mr. Orlewicz' attorneys will appeal. Let us hope they meet with no success. We really do not think this teenager should be allowed to find potential new victims. The parents of both these children and the murdered man have our deepest sympathies. What must it be like to know that you have raised a monster, and that your own flesh and blood is condemned by society at large never to walk free again?

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