151–160 of 173 posts
3-5 years?! THREE TO FIVE YEARS???!!! There are no words. Agents of the law need to be held more accountable for their actions than your average citizen, not less. This is disgusting.
Oh, don't worry. She screwed over 40000 people. The number of lawsuits she'll have to defend against should see her ass parked in court for a decade. Even without any conviction.
Those convicted should be released pending retrial immediately.
Judging by the article she wasn't fabricating evidence, but rather she was "strengthening" what she was given. All her cases clealry need to be re-evaluated, but unconditionally releasing everyone convicted is hardly a sensible option.
I have absolutely no idea how you can interpret that as "not fabricating evidence"!
3-5 years?! THREE TO FIVE YEARS???!!! There are no words. Agents of the law need to be held more accountable for their actions than your average citizen, not less. This is disgusting.
Completely agreed. I think a workable compromise would be to sentence her to 3-5 years for each count -- or even, hell, let's be generous... 1 day for each count of tampering. That's 40,000 counts, 1 day per, continuous -- 109 years and change. Those entrusted with protecting the law should have far more obligation to uphold its tenets than the hoi polloi, lest we start conceding that there really are two classes of…
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Completely agreed. I think a workable compromise would be to sentence her to 3-5 years for each count -- or even, hell, let's be generous... 1 day for each count of tampering. That's 40,000 counts, 1 day per, continuous -- 109 years and change. Those entrusted with protecting the law should have far more obligation to uphold its tenets than the hoi polloi, lest we start conceding that there really are two classes of…
isn't it weird that that the numbers of years is 109? A whole number? Which also happens to be a prime.
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The racial and class disparities in sentencing is well established. Also, the fact that you say she's brown shows you don't understand how race impacts sentences. Its not a matter of being light or dark. Its a matter of being black or Hispanic and the economic and social status of blacks and Hispanics and how voters react to the kinds of crimes endemic in black and Hispanic communities. Why is the sentence so light?…
Nothing in your response excuses you throwing race into the mix. Race has nothing to do with it. Economic standing does . Yes, blacks and hispanics suffer disproportionately for the very reasons you cite, but they do not suffer because they are black or hispanic ... they do so because they are disproportionately poor. Rather than focusing on the real issue, insane sentencing for crimes common in poor neighborhoods, y…
Again, I'm not bringing it up randomly. What drives sentences? Fear. You think fear has nothing to do with race? That's utterly naive. Nobody who has even the barest experience with the criminal justice system can come away without the feeling that racial issues pervade how it works.
[1] Even less. Sentence inflation in the US started in the 70s and 80s, just a decade after George Wallace proclaimed "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" Sentence inflation happened in the aftermath of desegregation, race riots, and white flight. Even if people are much more open minded today, the legal structures and policing apparatus we still have today were forged then.
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I don't know how Massachusetts law -- or US Federal law -- swings, but here in the UK there's a specific crime, magnificently called Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice, which covers everything from perjury to faking evidence. And while the average sentence is on the order of 2 years, there's no upper limit: a life sentence is possible in sufficiently extreme cases.
With 40k counts here, it can be a matter of deciding whether the sentences --no matter how light--should be served concurrently or sequentially.
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Like many "criminal-friendly" aspects of criminal law, the opposition to the death penalty goes beyond compassion for the guilty; it is motivated by a desire to protect the other innocent from abuse of power, and principled belief that forcibly ending a life is unacceptable because no person is capable and trustworthy to accurately and fairly determining which cases deserve it, and drawing a bright line to separates…
That's a very good point! I might counter-argue that at some point there's no doubt and being permanently removed from the pool of people who are alive might be OK. What I mean is that if someone is attempting to murder me and I manage to kill them first that it was a justifiable homicide and that I shouldn't be punished in any way. That's in the law and it even makes sense to a great many people even if they're not…
And that is the argument of why there should not be a death penalty, even for people who you are really sure that they really deserve it. It's a form of humility: To admit that there can be wrongs in the legal system, and so to be very sure not to do anything completely irreversible.
That's why people argue that the death penalty is unacceptable in any case whatsoever: the system has to be able to admit that sometimes it is wrong.
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What is the punishment for helping somebody to hold a person captive in their basement? The sentence should be that times sixhundred (how many wrongful convictions she caused, number might rise yet).
Honestly I think this is a situation where the death penalty is entirely appropriate. I don't like the idea of more suffering when there is already plenty to go around here, but I can't see how you can call it "justice" if she is allowed to live. An example must be set that this kind of thing is so repugnant to civilized societies that it WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. EDIT: The scale of her crimes is thousands of person-yea…
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With 40k counts here, it can be a matter of deciding whether the sentences --no matter how light--should be served concurrently or sequentially.
How does one serve multiple jail terms concurrently? The whole idea makes no sense.
Those convicted should be released pending retrial immediately.
Judging by the article she wasn't fabricating evidence, but rather she was "strengthening" what she was given. All her cases clealry need to be re-evaluated, but unconditionally releasing everyone convicted is hardly a sensible option.
I am not a lawyer or a constitutional scholar.