After Jeffrey Dahmer confessed to murdering 16 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, many called for the serial killer to be sent to the electric chair. Instead, he was sentenced to 16 life terms in prison, equivalent to 957 years behind bars.
Making a statement following a trial that determined Dahmer was sane when he committed the murders, Dahmer told the court: "I know society will never be able to forgive me. I take all the blame for what I did.
"This has never been a case of trying to get free, I didn't ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself."
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Why didn't Jeffrey Dahmer get the death penalty?
Despite many calling for it, Wisconsin is one of just 12 states that does not have the death penalty. It was officially abolished in the state in 1853 and hasn't existed in the state ever since.
Wisconsin was the first state to abolish the death penalty, followed by Maine in 1887, Hawaii and Alaska in 1957 and Michigan in 1963. That means when Dahmer went on trial in 1991, he couldn’t be sentenced to death despite the extremity of his heinous crimes.
Initially, a Wisconsin court sentenced Dahmer to 15 life sentences, one for each of the men he had killed in his home city of Milwaukee. Three months later, he was extradited to Ohio and tried for the murder of Steven Hicks, his first victim, and was handed another life term bringing his total to 16 life sentences.
Although Ohio state does have a death penalty, Dahmer was instead handed another life term. According to the New York Times, "Dahmer faces no possibility of execution because the killing occurred in 1978, before the penalty's reinstatement."
How did Jeffrey Dahmer die?
Without a possibility of parole, Dahmer was supposed to spend the rest of his life behind bars. However, his time in the system lasted just three years and four months.
Whilst on work duty, fellow inmate Christopher Scarver fatally wounded Dahmer. He used a 20-inch metal bar that he had removed from the prison weight room to beat Dahmer and another inmate, Jesse Anderson.
Scarver, who was already serving a life sentence for murder, was sentenced to two further life sentences. He remains behind bars in Colorado to this day, now aged 53.
Dahmer was cremated and his ashes were returned to his parents. For a year after his death, Dahmer's brain was preserved whilst his parents argued over whether or not it should be given to scientists to study.
After taking the argument to court, a judge ruled that the serial killer's brain should be cremated instead of studied. It was destroyed in late 1995.
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