A Contract to Kill but no Intent to

A young Norwegian man has been fined $1,300 for accepting a contract to kill without the intent to follow up on it.  Yes, you read that right: all the authorities could charge this man with was contractual fraud.  Another 21-year old man ordered the killing of a teenage girl who had rejected the man’s romantic advances.  The punishment for the “offeror”?  Two years in prison with most of the sentence suspended because the suspect confessed.

Good thing that these men were caught and convicted of something… sort of a gruesome twist on the old, classic Al Capone story (of course, Capone only pled guilty to tax evasion and prohibition charges).  I know that the Scandinavian countries do not believe in the rehabilitative effects of relatively severe sentences such as those often dished out in the USA, but still…  Two years and $1,300 for an attempted contract on a teenage girl’s head?  That seems too lenient to me.