Three months after that, a judge sentenced him to life imprisonment with hard labor, without the benefit of parole.
Burma? Nope.
North Korea? Nope.
Saudi Arabia? Nope.
USA, USA, USA!!!
Winning the War on Drugs jailing the poor!
U-S-A U-S-A!
Good news everyone; We’ve got a way to feed the hungry and house the homeless and it’ll only cost us five bucks!
Not quite as crazy a story as I was expecting, as this is actually about mandatory minimum sentencing laws (edit: and about racism, too, actually). So, still crazy, just not the crazy that the summary made it out to be.
So the taxpayers of the US (I say it this way because Louisiana is a welfare state when it comes to federal tax disbursements) are on the hook for about $50k/year for the next 30-ish years to house this poor guy because a third(ish) offense involving a plant that shouldn’t even be a scheduled narcotic because it’s not a narcotic.
::golfclap:: What an incredibly productive use of national resources.
That’s one way of dealing with the homelessness problem. But might I suggest a more effective one would be to reform the drug laws and also allowing drug offenders to apply for food stamps. That last one is really a kind of WTF to me, it’s like they wish to push people into desperation and crime.
That will teach that homeless man to run errands for money!
And they got away with it too.
Exertion of material power for sadist pleasure? Check. Victim innocent and in a weak position? Check. Judge, officers, prosecuting attorneys all involved and knowledgeable about it? Check. Probably go to church on Sundays and support patriotic causes all ever so loudly? Probably check. The viciousness of the crime and the displayed power of escaping punishment for it gives them a thrill? Definitely check.
Big payout for getting all the guilty parties sizzled in the national press? Hope so. Names, please. Pictures. Hope it goes to court and challenges that state’s mandatory sentencing guidelines. Get the guy off, get him to sue the people involved, and retire on their new found infamy. That would be nice.
I think it cost more than that, I believe something like $100,000 per year is what it costs to keep someone in prison (a university education would be less). This was from Waiting for Superman - a documentary on education reform.
the other perverted point of view is that so many prisons are privatized because “private corporations are much more “efficient” etc than something that is goverment run” Although of course left out is the fact that it is in the private prisons’ interest to keep people in jail since it is the taxpayer that pays in the end.
Feed the hungry, house the homeless and provide work to the unemployed.
Seems completely reasonable.
Don’t listen to the snack food lobby - weed is a dangerous, life destroying drug.
What the heck? These are crazy ideas. Who are you, Jesus?
Jesus is the war on drugs.
Life in prison with hard labor? It sounds like in Louisiana they found a loophole to bring back slavery.
Remember Midnight Express? (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077928/) I’m beginning to think the US is just trying to prove they are more vindictive than that.
It’s not like it’s hard to find that loophole, it’s written right into the 13th amendment.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Hard labour? Barbaric. I didn’t think the US still did that.
So, you’re becoming tolerant, or indifferent?
The punishment for avoiding hard labor for the lower class is homelessness, then incarceration for life at hard labor.
Tyy to skip prison hard labor, life sentence to solitary until ready to perform hard labor.
