Well-to-do man gets convicted of rape, or a cop gets convicted of murder and the world is full of people saying, “prison doesn’t really do any good.” Every other case and those of us saying “prison doesn’t really do any good,” are on the lunatic fringe.
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Yeah I thought about that after posted it. I guess what you’re left with is an imperfect judicial system. Hopefully they can contest the sentencing but I really don’t know how all that works (a good thing I suppose).
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The logic of this is just beyond me. Let’s substitute another heinous crime, and see how it stacks up:
“Yes, he murdered someone; but he previously had a clean record, and he’s young, and he’s really, really sorry, you guys.”
“Judge” Perksy shouldn’t be able to sleep an untroubled wink for the rest of his miserable life.
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It’s why I hate jumping on the public mob gunning for someone’s head. The reporting tends to make someone look guilty as sin while conveniently leaving out mitigating factors like age or the person themselves being mentally fubar, or other things.
Here however? Kid needs to be made to understand ‘done goofed’ would be putting it comedically lightly. However at the same time i want people like him to be rehabilitated if possible instead of just punished. All punishing teaches is you didn’t hide what you were doing well enough and got caught.
I want people to not feel like they need to impose their will on someone else so completely only violating them intimately will do. I hate it when someone’s an imposing asshat to begin with, much less the whole sexual component.
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I think that our current focus on incarceration as punishment as opposed to rehabilitation is screwed up. However, the issues here are:
- This individual is currently a danger to the public and this needs to be addressed.
- Being a member of a particular class should not exclude someone from being responsible held for their actions.
While a wholesale reworking of our justice system needs to occur, it should be applied universally, not just for the elites.
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Yeah, that’s the problem. You can make lots of good arguments that prison is a problem and we should be using it far, far more sparingly than we do, but hearing those arguments get pulled out only when the criminal is part of some kind of elite or protected class is stomach-turning. I brought up the off-topic murdering cop because in my town we’re awaiting sentencing for one of those right now. Listening to those arguments about how it would just hurt his family to put him in prison I was thinking, “Yeah, it would. And did he stand up and make that same argument for all the people he arrested when they were convicted?” This case gives me that same feeling.
We wouldn’t even think about giving him a lenient sentence if he’d kicked a drunk woman behind an alley, but rape, apparently, isn’t that bad. We wouldn’t even think of giving him a lenient sentence if he was black, or if he was a minimum wage worker instead of a college athlete.
And what’s crazy is that rapists and people who use positions of authority to get away with violence are two examples of people who might actually need to go to prison. The only people we apply the “prison is actually bad” argument to are people who are the most likely to be an ongoing danger to society.
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this is why I want this guy to be punished. To see that abusing what he has needs to stop. I don’t know if ‘breaking a person and then remaking them’ works… but
He isn’t a family man, isn’t someone from a shit background, or a workaday guy. He’s someone that is being heaped and accoladed and if anything those that get looked up to should have it harder because of their position. they should be held to a higher standard because if you want to be there, you have to expect to be what we aspire to, not use your position to get away with maybe a slap on the wrist.
It’s like the fucking affluinza teen. Yes the judge went with it precicely because he knew the fucker would fall off the wagon, but the point I’m seeing is if it hadn’t been someone of wealth/privilege/whiteness/etc they wouldn’t have gotten even that. Off to prison you go brownie, we’re gonna make you look like satan in the news.’ And… it is suprimely unfair, as you said, that reform is only discussed by mainstream media when it’s someone from the privilaged end of things having to see what our ‘punish, bootheel, degrade, demean’ system does.
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Yeah, the federal system has mandatory minimums… that’s worked out so well.
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What I think you’re really coming up against is the lack of actual, honest scientific logic in the judicial process.
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Obviously the Judge was bought off or influenced politically in some way by this kids family or someone the family knew. At the very least…by personal bias. No sane judge would allow the severity of this crime to go unpunished.
Either that or the judge sees nothing wrong with Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. It would do the Prosecution well in this case to look at the Judge’s previous cases as well to establish biases or poor rulings in recommended prosecutorial recommendations.
Everyone in prison (some even innocent) have had their lives affected irreparably as well by often less crimes than this. What makes this kid get special treatment? Someone should look at that!
Her life is changed forever. 6 years in prison is not enough for him. Is he required to be on the sex offender registry for the rest of his life? Far less actions have been acquired far heavier and mandatory sentencing across numerous States and in California as well. The Prosecuting Attorney even accomplished to acquire some form of justice for this Sexual assault. There was so much evidence…not heresay, not speculation, not circumstantial evidence…actual WITNESSES who did all the right things. Rape is hard to prove, hard to prove when intoxicated, hard to prove when intoxicated and unconscious - yet this case was PROVEN!!!
I don’t care about his previous history, his ethnicity, his financial status. He committed a heinous crime. He should receive the maximum sentence for that crime. Even if the first time (which I doubt because studies show people build up to that level of violence) he is ACCOUNTABLE to that crime at the maximum level.
The punishment does not equal the crime here. It undermines it to that girl, to the Prosecution, to those witnesses, and to the International watchful eyes who see how we handle crimes in the United States…or in this Judge’s case…don’t handle it!!!
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Ugh. That means the euphemism is a registered sex offender, right? Do we at least get a lifetime of community ostracism and revilement for him?
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Is “sever” a typo or are you suggesting an anatomical adjustment?
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I have often pondered on a thought experiment. What would it be like if the judicial system was changed so that the defendants were anonymous. Their names, appearance, age, ethnic background were all made irrelevant to the judge and jury. How would this affect the sentencing when suddenly you level the field as far as race and income goes and you judge people primarily based on the facts on what they’ve done.
It’s no secret that rich and/or white people get much more lenient punishment over anyone else even for exactly the same kind of crime committed.
I’d be really interested in hearing thoughts of this from someone in the legal field and what the obstacles are for why it’d be a good/bad idea for the thought experiment.
Edit: I do realize that some cases do hinge upon the physical description of someone to determine if they are in fact the person responsible. I don’t know what the best way to deal with that.
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I’m against frontier justice, but it will happen if people don’t think the courts will hand down a severe enough punishment.
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Excellent point!
This guy is a shitbag. He may not have a criminal record, but given how woman who have been raped are treated in this country, I wonder how many other rapes he’s committed where the woman was too afraid to do anything about it. People don’t just wake up one day and say, “Gee, starting today, I want to be a psychopath.” Not a legal argument, I admit.
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There was a hell of a lot of talk about what a “good family” he came from. As if that had any relevance to the situation… There also seemed to be a whole lot of oblique references to his being a rich white kid “unlike” the “usual” rapists, by both prosecutor and defense. /ragestroke
The sad thing is that Onion article is only barely a joke. I’m reminded of that article published about that former college football player-turned-cop who was a convicted serial rapist, talking about how great he was…
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On average rapists commit 6 sexual assaults, each. This is not a one off thing. It is a pattern of behaviour.
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“I’m sorry to hear you were raped. But hey, it turns out the guy who raped you hasn’t raped a single person before. Like never ever. Not even a teensy bit. Now doesn’t that make you feel better?”
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Good thing there was no severe impact on his victim or anything, right?
If he were black, there would be calls for the death penalty.
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