Harsh is an undrestatement, this guy should have gotten a few years at most. The sentence he got is absolutely ridiculous.
Would we all agree with this if his victim had been white?
I didn't even look at what race the victim was, you are commenting in bad faith. I don't think the guy should get any time at all for doing this, probation would be more than adequate.
Sorry about that; I need to recalibrate my assumptions. Not everyone reads TFA before commenting. I'm normally not a throw-the-book-at-them kind of person, but I don't think any employer who locks his employee(s) into an uninspected burning deathtrap should get off without prison, regardless of his mental state at the time. There is too much history behind this. I'm also not convinced that this dude actually has any mental problems beyond "asshole with too much money". I already have half of that mental problem...
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."