Life in prison versus the death penalty. That was not a decision that Common Pleas Judge William Shaffer had to ponder before sentencing Ishemer Ramsey for the murder of Missy Barto.

Those who were closest to Missy had every reason to hope the judge would hand down a death penalty sentence and avenge the horrible crime Ramsey committed. That would have been easy to do and probably would have done the most to satisfy the masses.

But despite the horrific details concerning this monster’s crime, it still did not satisfy the requirements for imposing the death penalty. Such a decision was out of Judge Shaffer’s hands.

The community is better served bypassing the pretense of a death penalty that we all know would never be carried out in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Instead Missy’s family, and the public, would have been subjected to a series of ploys by Ramsey’s attorney aimed at dragging out the sentence until the day he dies of some other cause in prison, rather than the designated lethal injection.

That is what a court-appointed attorney gets paid to do. Ramsey’s appeals and the follow-up challenges to the legality of giving him a death far less vicious than the one he imposed on his victim will be debated through the highest courts of Pennsylvania and even the Supreme Court of the United States.

The back and forth battle will continue for decades.

We are glad to have it end now. Glad we can lock the door and throw away the key to the animal’s cell.

He will most likely die in a cold prison cell long after most of us have forgotten his name.

Why give him any more headlines or splash his photo all over the media? His infamy is done.

He is just another inmate and subject to the rules inside a maximum-security prison — both the legal ones and the inmate structure.

He will never abuse another young woman, and he will never tear another family’s heart out.

No, Judge Shaffer didn’t sentence him to death, but a death sentence nevertheless. He just won’t get to subject the Barto family and Missy’s friends to any more of his lies and details of his cowardly actions.

In this case the judge got it right.

The prisoner crawls into his new hole and gets to wake up every morning for the rest of his miserable life remembering what he did. Meanwhile, the ones who cherished Missy can try to move on without having to include Ramsey in their efforts to hold her close in their hearts.

Whether it’s life in prison without parole, or life in prison plus four days, it’s a good sentence for him.