Life isn’t a sentence for killer Michael Woodbury.

It’s a privilege.

The smug triple-murderer smirked his way through a sentencing hearing Friday, blaming everybody but himself for carnage he wreaked inside a New Hampshire Army Barracks Store last month. By pleading guilty, Woodbury at least prevented the spectacle of his trial.

For somebody who has relished the spotlight brought by his crimes, this opportunity must have been difficult to relinquish. Concluding this case quickly was the only tinge of benevolence the cold-blooded Woodbury has displayed to the victims’ families – two from Massachusetts, one from Oxford County – he shattered on July 2.

No systemic failure, childhood trauma, mental illness or missed dosage should be blamed for his crimes. The boy from Windham is a bad seed, plain and simple, a career criminal unable to resist his unlawful urges – who informed everybody within shouting distance about it.

If Woodbury was sure he was traveling a bad path, he could have just stepped off. Instead, he took two teenage sisters and a stolen car on a crime spree though the deep South, just one month after being released from prison in Maine. He’s suspected of robbing banks and burning down houses.

He’s alone to blame, despite his protests to the contrary. More prisons can be built, more guards can be hired, sentences can be doubled, and yet there will still be the ruthless unreformed like Woodbury, who are better locked away for eternity than allowed another second of freedom.

What happened in Conway, N.H., was the tragic punctuation to a wasted life. It’s a shame taxpayers must now feed and clothe him for what’s left of it.