Personal bankruptcy is usually out of the question for debts arising from unlawful behaviour. You cannot evade damages or a penalty imposed by a court just by filing bankruptcy.
Imagine a legal system where you could. Preposterous.
That seems mildly misleading. Sentences can be extended beyond 20 years as long as the person is still believed to be dangerous to society.
You may conclude that someone is insane and force them to be institutionalized, but that is not prison, and the decision is not ever final.
I don't believe in the death penalty, but I also believe an essential function of prison is to remove the irredeemable from society so they aren't a threat anymore. I'm not sure you can classify anyone insane just for wanting to kill people, but I'm also not a psychologist. I also would not want to be the psychologist who released a serial murder considering him safe to return to society only for him to on another murder spree...
Then again, I don't think we ever had a serial killer. Maybe one, in the sixties, still unsolved. It's just probabilities at work. At ten million citizens, the odds are low.
It's my opinion that a society cannot simultaneously hope to 'cure mental illness', while also simultaneously locking up people who do the same things as the mentally ill without them ever having any hope of rehabilitation (life imprisonment). I have never felt as if the judiciary system should be an extension of personal vengeance; to take two people out of the active society as a murder/life imprisonment does seems more unhealthy for the society in the long run than if the person in prison had a realistic chance at a productive life through means of rehabilitation.
The placement of blame is just all wrong. I wouldn't feel bad as a psychologist releasing a would-be-future-murderer, because as a psychologist I would understand that it was my job to assess the chances rather than make the person. Of course they know there is a chance of 'relapse', because even a sane person has the outlying chance to snap and become psychotic under the right conditions. I am sure that the psychologist would be saddened at the relapse of his patient and at whatever damage was caused by the patient, but I would surely hope that the psychologist would not feel personally responsible for the actions of their patients.
And what if they're a Schizophrenic, stop taking their meds (as such are wont to do) and murders someone even though they had been receiving help?
N.B.: this is not a hypothetical scenario, it describes one of the things that led to the brutal murder of my mother.
It is my understanding that if you assault someone intending to injure them and accidentally kill them, that is murder in the second degree, unless they provoked you so much that the position of the law is "they were asking for it" (USA) (http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/second-degree-m... , http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/voluntary-mansl...). I can see your objection to serial killers, but the hypothetical 2nd-degree-murderer doesn't seem to be much risk unless you like to get into bar fights.
The same resource also points out that if anyone dies (and there's some sort of iffy connection to you) while you're committing a felony of any kind, you're guilty of murder. Robbing 7-11 with your buddy who you didn't realize was armed will get you convicted of murder if he happens to shoot and kill anyone.