“But Mom,” I said. “It’s killing Nazis!” Which didn’t win her over, exactly, but I did get to keep the game, and I managed to waste some moderate portion of my youth Playing Violent Video Games without ever killing anybody.
We live in society that will devote many fatuous hours discussing and deliberating the ill effects of video games and movies and rap songs and what have you. They are contributing to a “culture of violence” or some such. Meanwhile, the president actually has a kill list, and we accept the following as so banal that they escape the necessity of daily reporting:
You gonna blame Quentin Tarantino and Halo for that?
Jacob Bacharach 
on Dr. Phil last night (don’t ask) they were discussing Ashley Toye, a teen who was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for tasking part in the torture and murder of two teens.
while hawking his upcoming book _The Life Code_, Dr. Phil cited his “evil 8” traits of evil people. one being “Arrogant Entitlement,” another being “Lack of Empathy,” both of which he found to be evident in the story of Ashley Toye, whom he seems to judge unworthy of a “second chance.”
i didn’t see the whole show, so i don’t know to what extent folks feel the young torturer/killer may have been influenced by video games. but, in playing the role of Donny, the child who wanders in in the middle of a movie and wants to know– i couldn’t help but associate “Arrogant Entitlement” with American Exceptionalism and “Lack of Empathy” with, well, state torture and collective punishment via drone strikes.
i spotted the same dissonance illustrated here in the OP: the recoil from whatever factors and motives could drive a 17 year old to commit such a crime, and the relish for the punishment that has been doled out: life without the possibility of parole in a prison system where inmates routinely suffer rape and torture at the hands of their guards and each other, in this case i reiterate, until death.