He followed girls he found attractive and imagined touching their breasts and stabbing them in the back.

Over nine months in 2010, full-time national serviceman Soh Wee Kian, who was then 20, knifed four women.

He fatally stabbed one woman, caused grievious hurt to another and slashed two others.

Soh could have been sentenced to hang but the charge was reduced to culpable homicide. He escaped the gallows and could be given a life sentence on condition he pleaded guilty. Which he did.

Interestingly, the Institute of Mental Health psychiatrist Jerome Goh found Soh to be “not of unsound mind” at the time of the offences and fit to plead in a court of law.

So, the question: [quip float="pqright"]Why was he pardoned given the savagery of his assaults?[/quip]

Onus on anti-death penalty camp

We've heard numerous times before the anti-death penalty camp rationalising why state execution should be abolished.

But where do they stand in this specific case? And how should they explain their case that the death penalty has no room whatsoever in our society?

It's relatively easy to argue against the death penalty in general: One crucial argument being that the state should not be vested with the power to coolly and calmly pronounce who lives and who dies.

And paying for a life with another life doesn't make things better in the general sum of things. Plus, the death penalty is irreversible and there is no rehabilitative effect.

However, such a case involving the random killing and harming of women puts the onus on the anti-death penalty camp to explain eloquently and elegantly why the killer should escape the death penalty.

Why? Because whenever someone is on death row, we hear quite a bit from them. So, when someone gets off the noose, we should expect a response.

And they would have to tread carefully.

Because what is repugnant to the wider public is that we'd be keeping the killer alive in prison for a very long time using taxpayers' money.

Top photo from Google Street View showing the vicinity around Woodlands Drive 50, where the fatal stabbing took place.