The notion that a prison term, whatever its length, is proportionate justice for crimes like this is absurd  --  not that absurdity ever stopped the pro-criminal lobby.

The case dates back to October 2013, when prosecutors said several of the defendants plotted to kill a member believed to be cooperating with police.

...gang members killed Nelson Omar Quintanilla Trujillo, who was suspected of alerting police to the failed murder plot, prosecutors said. After luring Trujillo into Holmes Run Park in Fairfax County, they stabbed him to death, dismembered him and buried him in the woods. Several months later, they stabbed and decapitated Gerson Adoni Martinez Aguilar, an MS-13 recruit who was accused of stealing gang money and having sex with an incarcerated member's girlfriend. They buried him in the same park.

The third murder took place in June 2014, when Chavez and two other gang members shot and killed Julio Urrutia in Alexandria, mistaking him for a rival gang member, according to the prosecutors.

Three murders, stabbing, dismemberment, decapitation  --  hey, look, these are merely "justice involved" youth in need of counseling.