I’m certainly not saying the system wasn’t racist, but this case seemed to be about money and class, if you came before him, you went to the private prison, no matter what the charge or who you were. So he seems to be treating everyone equally badly.
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Sure, this appalling asshole probably sent some white kids off to fill up his benefactor’s cells … but let’s be honest with ourselves here: the scales of (in)justice are skewed badly against kids of color. The racism is built-in.
Aside from that, it’s side-splittingly laughable to read that Judge Douchebag claims the “payments” were legitimate within the law. I usually feel bad for nearly anyone who’s made some bad decisions or gets a severe sentence for a victimless crime based on a technicality of the law. In this case, the corruption was egregious and deliberate…with a horrifying number of victims. The law in this case cannot do justice to the crime, even though this guy will likely end his days in prison.
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Go buy a copy of Prison Architect and find out for yourself!
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“Mericle faces up to three years in prison, although he is likely to receive 12 to 18 months under United States Federal Sentencing Guidelines.”
So the guy responsible for the bribes gets a tiny sentence. How is the only charge against him “failing to disclose a felony”?
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Here’s a clue: Follow the money.
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I’d bet that they traded him a joke charge to get testimony against the judge. I’d do it in a minute if that was the only way to nail a corrupt judge who hurt children.
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Not that Wikipedia is necessarily authoritative… the judge was a lifelong Democrat and ran for his judgeship as a Democrat.
Jerry Sandusky was a registered Republican so what? Doltish comment. The crazy mass killer Loughner was a Democrat. What does that matter? It doesn’t of course – unless one who drags a great movie director’s name through the mud making asinine connections where non exists cares nothing except trying to score cheap political points. Good geography though.
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Something is missing from this story: what about the kids? I’m sure they have the right to hire the best attorneys, who can get their sentences overturned.
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Agree but the headline is misleading about the purpose of the scheme. It had nothing intentionally to do with black kids. Racism isn’t the only, or even the greatest evil. Locking anyone up in prison for cash is evil enough. Injecting race merely to add juice to a story is pointless race-baiting.
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their convictions were overturned by the PA Supreme Court and civil lawsuits continue apace
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It’s not entirely unreasonable to hold the judge to a higher standard than the other people involved. The others were “only” being inhuman, money-grubbing monsters; the judge was doing that and also violating a sacred trust to uphold justice.
That said, I’d be perfectly happy to multiply all their sentences by a factor of 10. In fact, sentencing them all to the sum of the lengths of the time served on the tossed-out convictions seems like it’d be fair.
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Like it or not, the PA Republican machine protected Sandusky. And this judge was part of it. And the same machine is behind a lot of corruption int he fracking controversy. And until Pennsylvania throws these crooks out of the state house and into the big house, you can expect derogatory comments about Republicans any time these issues make the news.
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So what happened to the owners of PA Child Care? I haven’t seen any stories indicating that they have been prosecuted.
I honestly think that if we are going to have the death penalty in this country it should be used against people like this.
He and his partners were in the very profitable business of ruining fellow citizines lives to benefit their own, and I’m not sure that there is a higher form of civic treason.
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Hopefully, all of it.
“un-fixable”
That adjective and the phrase “only in America” are becoming synonymous.
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It was actually the current PA governor who was the prosecutor who refused to follow up on the Sandusky investigation, right? Some time around the point where Rick Santorum gave Sandusky an award for his work with children.
But I thought this cash-for-kids judge was a Republican. Well, the scandal has continued to grow and hopefully it will continue to take down corrupt judges and politicians.
Why don’t reporters ask questions any more? That’s great that the judge has been sentenced to prison for his part in racketeering, but what about PA Child Care? Have the owners been convicted? Are they even being tried? Has the prison be shut down? Has the company been put out of business? All of these would be pertinent questions.
Whenever I read news reports anymore, there never seems to be any extraneous information. Even information that would be pertinent to the article. Rolling Out appears to be a professional news website, as opposed to someone’s blog, so there should be some journalistic effort put into it. Of course, I don’t see anything better in articles in my local newspaper or the WSJ or the NYT, so I’m not actually surprised. Am I wrong for expecting more information from an article than can be gleaned from a juicy headline?
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He took $2.6 million in bribes and only had to give back $1 million of it? I suppose they have to leave him something in order to award money for all the civil suits to follow.
The “send black kids to jail” part though is clearly flamebait. Every other article and even wikipedia refers to it as the “kids for cash” scandal. The only thing I can find was a video of 4 victims that were white/hispanic.
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Markets handle everything quicker and more efficiently including inflicting misery and taking away children’s freedom! Ha, I guess this is one of those many instances where vocal libertarians get very quiet…
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