Well some of you might be. But your justice system isn’t - and possibly as much as half the voting public. I’d suggest as a nation you’re fairly ambivalent about it.
I’d suggest that you take your complaints to that half of the voting public.
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I agree. I just think that the arguments for prison reform in the abstract tend not to show up when people are talking about specific sentences for offences by asshats like this guy. In those cases the discussion seems almost always to say “throw the book at him”. Aside from that, this person isn’t convicted of trying to violently overthrow the government.
I would be heartened if this were a step to something but it’s not like this sentence is the result of a considered effort to find alternatives to long prison sentences. It’s more just that I think we need to continue to criticize stupidly long sentences and unfair sentencing without the balance being that other people need to get longer sentences.
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He was convicted of a single count of “obstructing an official proceeding” which is a non-violent offence. They can’t sentence him for crimes for which he wasn’t convicted.
I’m not suggesting that his sentence is a great step for reform, only that sentencing anyone for longer doesn’t help. The fight for reform, fairness, accountability, and consistency needs to be fought to reduce prison time generally.
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And hopefully that will stick in the minds of would-be planners of any future events, especially if we see considerable ramping up of convictions against the hard core.
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Having studied history, I wouldn’t count on police informants, especially those serving fundamentally conservative authorities, to save any country from fascism. From Der Wiki:
The DAP was a comparatively small group with fewer than 60 members.[32] Nevertheless, it attracted the attention of the German authorities, who were suspicious of any organisation that appeared to have subversive tendencies. In July 1919, while stationed in Munich, army Gefreiter Adolf Hitler was appointed a Verbindungsmann (intelligence agent) of an Aufklärungskommando (reconnaissance unit) of the Reichswehr (army) by Captain Mayr, the head of the Education and Propaganda Department (Dept Ib/P) in Bavaria. Hitler was assigned to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the DAP.[35] While attending a party meeting on 12 September 1919 at Munich’s Sterneckerbräu, Hitler became involved in a heated argument with a visitor, Professor Baumann, who questioned the soundness of Gottfried Feder’s arguments against capitalism; Baumann proposed that Bavaria should break away from Prussia and found a new South German nation with Austria. In vehemently attacking the man’s arguments, Hitler made an impression on the other party members with his oratorical skills; according to Hitler, the “professor” left the hall acknowledging unequivocal defeat.[36] Drexler encouraged him to join the DAP.[36] On the orders of his army superiors, Hitler applied to join the party[37] and within a week was accepted as party member 555 (the party began counting membership at 500 to give the impression they were a much larger party).
Less than five years later, he was a ringleader in the Beer Hall Putsch I mentioned above, where the perpetrators were let off with wrist-slaps or cushy sentences.
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You’re succumbing to the Functionary’s Falsity: “if it isn’t official, it hasn’t happened.” Once again, perhaps the systemic biases emerged prior to the sentencing phase.
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Beau of the Fifth Column has IMO a good take on this (as usual). One of his key points is that the injustice isn’t this guy getting eight months in prison, but people getting much longer sentences for lesser crimes.
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You’re putting words in my mouth. I’m commenting on his sentence, not what he did or didn’t do. No one is going to be sentenced for a crime for which they haven’t been convicted.
We’ve yet to see how this plays out against more serious charges, especially with conspiracy multipliers against organizers.
According to court documents reviewed by CBS News, 39 defendants have been accused of wielding “deadly or dangerous” weapons that weren’t firearms, including Tasers, tomahawk axes, crowbars, flagpoles, a knife, an ice axe, a firecracker, a stun gun, baseball bats, fire extinguishers, a wooden club and chemical spray.
eta: Knowing that the lesser members will turn informant, hopefully proto-leaders will insist on paranoid loyalty tests, and tighter control of their groups, making them easier for the FBI to keep track of.
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I hope it does play out that way, but given the tendency of the authorities to avoid subjecting violent white right-wing insurrectionists to the same penalties they impose on peaceful left-wing PoC who protest I’m not holding my breath.
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You’re commenting on the sentence itself when the actual problem occurs earlier in the process. Yes, you are plainly correct that a person cannot be sentenced for a crime of which they have not been found guilty. But if you’re focused on the relationship between the charged crime and the sentence, you’re looking at the wrong thing.
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I think we might have gone off track here somewhere. I was commenting on the sentence in reaction to other people saying it wasn’t long enough because that was most of what the discussion was when I joined it. The response I was getting is that this person committed violent crimes.
That is because the person committed violent crimes. The reason he was able to get away with this lamentable sentence was that he didn’t get adequately charged for said crimes.
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Just long enough to write about his struggle 
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The crime that prosecutors decided to charge him with. Whereas police and prosecutors are hitting BLM protesters with conspiracy charges and gang-enhancements for peaceful protests…
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Yes. We know that too. I’ve often made strong comments about the absolute NEED to reform our criminal justice system. But you know, I can’t wave a wand and make the changes all by myself.
Some people are ambivalent about it. The ones who benefit from it or have not had direct encounters with it or don’t give a shit about the rest of humanity. You won’t mind much of that ambivalence among the people here who are Americans.
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The enhancements got dropped, thousands of the BLM protesters that got arrested at all had their entire cases dropped. That DA in Utah in the case you repeatedly cited got chewed out by a judge and the gang enhancements tossed the month after the story element viral when the judge lessened every single charge the guy brought forward about BLM stuff.
The police and DA reaction to BLM is vastly different, but the cases are not just thousands of felonies being brought to trial. The GOP literally had to invent laws to try and screw further protestors.
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“I thought trying to over throw the government would come with a higher penalty.”
Not what he was convicted of. This is why we have “rule of law” not “rule of emotions”.
We cannot hang a person just because we think they got off too lightly or we “know” they are guilty of far worse than they were convicted for. That’s called lynching and let us never ever go back down that route.
As what used to be called conservative before the current madmen polluted that word beyond redemption, I find it amusing to see what are generally considered liberals essentially chanting “Lock 'em up!” and demanding harsh penalties for even relatively minor crimes.
To make it clear, I’d like to see some of these people locked up for a couple of decades, possibly even execution for sedition in the worst cases but to do that they need to be charged and convicted of serious things involving actual intent to overthrow and most of these fools are mindless dupes rather than the leaders and organizers who really do envision “restoring” Trump to power by the light of a burning Constitution.
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