Does the internet breed killers?

(CNN) -- The comment on the Facebook page of the Norwegian tabloid newspaper Verdens Gang last July was unequivocal. "The death penalty is the only just sentence in this case!!!!!!" it said. Written by Thomas Indrebo, the "case" to which the message referred was the meticulously planned mass murder of 77 people in Oslo on July 22, 2011by Anders Behring Breivik.

This week, the Breivik case has finally come to Oslo central criminal court. But Indrebo, who, as it happens, had been selected as a "lay" judge (the Norwegian version of the U.S. and UK jury system), wasn't in court. He had been dismissed for his Facebook comment which the case's presiding judge, Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen, suggested could "weaken trust in his impartiality."

Strangely enough, even Breivik, who posted his murderous intentions on his own Facebook page just before the July rampage, might have agreed with Indrebo's Facebook comment. Speaking in court yesterday, Breivik admitted: "There are only two just and fair outcomes of this case. One is an acquittal, the other is capital punishment."

Breivik's bizarre comment captures the baffling nature of a case that has so far lurched from the grotesque public confessional of a mass murderer to the equally tasteless spectacle of a hatemonger whose racist delusions seem to have been fed, in part at least, by the Internet. Read More