There are hundreds if not thousands of mentally unstable people serving long sentences right now in our prisons and well deservedly so.

That guy Bumgartner up in Edmonton who murdered 4 armored car guards, do you think he was stable? He told the court he was crazy, and all the evidence showed he had made no real plan of escape and apparently did it on a random whim because his Mommy yelled at him earlier in the day. He got 40 years in a penitentiary without chance of parole last year, exactly what the Brentwood Butcher deserves.

Canadian Criminal Code section 16 is very specific about wha being "not criminally responsible by mental defect " is and vague "mental instability" is not enough to get off or otherwise our prisons would be empty and almost no murderer would ever be convicted.

To get off under our laws you have to prove, beyond doubt that either

1) you did not even realize you were killing someone

or

2)you did not know it was wrong to kill them

Just from information already known in the media there is no way the killer could claim either of these defenses.

As far as the first defense "not know he was killing people", the police announced he took a huge knife to the party from work hidden under his clothing, and waited chatting normally with other party-goers for over an hour until he was left alone with the victims in small enough numbers that he knew he could kill them all. This all shows careful cool calculated premeditation and planning and it is impossible for him to claim he didn't know what he was doing.

As far as the second possible defense, "not knowing it was wrong to kill people" he can't prove this either because he erased his Facebook 12 hours before the murders except for a single post, the title of a Megadeth song who's lyrics describe a criminal act about to be committed even though the criminal knows it is wrong and evil.

So he has no way of getting away without responsibility for his actions and deserves to die in prison, hopefully after getting beaten and raped every day.