Yeah, there are some gross misuses of law, and some very unjust sentences as a result.
There was a near where I live where a man was exonerated and released after spending 20-25 years in prison. His only crime was being too poor to afford an attorney 20+ years ago.
And while on a complete different scale, an example of how our laws have not kept up with the times: in the US, if someone shoves a cell (mobile) phone in your face and you knock their hand away causing them to drop the phone and break it, you could be charged with a felony and imprisoned in jail for 1+ years. Breaking a cell phone is legally on the same level as aggravated assault, arson, manslaughter, and child molestation.
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He didn't steal 9$, he stole a wallet that just happened to have only 9$ in it but could have had a lot more and did so by attacking a person. It also wasn't his first offense and he was abusing hard drugs. I don't really feel sorry for him.
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He wasn't an angel but man, life without parole? Nobody died. He was not armed. He tackled a guy to the ground and made off with the wallet. I wish all junkies looking for a fix were that soft. His prior offenses were non-violent.
I'm not excusing the crime. He should have been jailed for it, cleaned out of his drug habit and released. That's protecting society.
Life in prison for this is just cruel and unusual punishment. It's not justice, it's a bunch of politicos making a career out of "crime fighting" stats.
My aunt was killed in a car crash. The driver was an intoxicated white college student on a joy ride with his buddies in a sports car his daddy bought him for graduation. You want to guess how long he spent in jail?
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I think it's more about a bunch of capitalists profiting from slave labor.
Free labor in private prisons is not helping the situation for sure. Not to mention whenever the management of those places is asked to give numbers, they obfuscate and the numbers are never shown. Prisoners paying for the cost of their living is one thing but turning a profit on jail by using prisoners as slave labor, that's disgusting. And it corrupts the justice process.
My condolences about your aunt.
Thanks. It was a couple of decades ago. I was just a teen but like everybody whose life gets touched by such events, I had a hard time to cope with how fleeting life is. One minute you're there, the next you're statistics or a line in a newspaper article. All this because some people are never held responsible for their actions.
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so many problems with how laws work....and how intoxicated/impaired, distracted, or careless drivers just don't understand their actions can impact so many others and it's not a solitary cause and effect. so many problems with how technology works too....where they should be and aren't quite there yet.
i'm sorry for your loss. I hope in our generation we will have better preventative safety technology and even more social awareness/condemnation for this. If laws made sense, your aunt would get some justice, and Willie Simmons (OP) would have a chance at redemption outside of prison.
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Thanks. As I told Urthemiel, it was a long time ago and it taught me a big lesson about the value of life when I was young. And cause a lot of anxiety issues back then too.
If laws made sense, your aunt would get some justice, and Willie Simmons (OP) would have a chance at redemption outside of prison.
Agreed. I wish my cousins had not been left with the knowledge that you can buy your way out of taking a life if you have the right connections and enough money. Did Willie Simmons commit a crime? Yes. Should he have paid for it? Sure, ok. I mean again he was not armed, he was on drugs. It seems to me that he needed rehab more than jail, and a way to make restitution more than punishment but whatever, it's the "justice" system. But for life? Who are we protecting ourselves from? An old man who couldn't tackle an old lady to take her wallet anymore?
Lady Justice may be blind but she's also deaf and lobotomized now. Unless you have the cash to buy your way out of meeting her altogether.
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Depends on what he have done each of the 4 times exactly. We don't know the whole story of all 4 times and what he did exactly each time and if he beat or tried to kill someone.
Also just because he "talked to God about it" does not mean he should be free.
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Actually it's right there:
"He told me his priors were 1 grand larceny and 2 receiving stolen property. I could only locate the grand larceny from 1979. He did a year in prison for that conviction, and thinks he did about the same for the other crimes. "But I really can't remember," he said."
But I don't really think it matters. If he was convicted before then he already got his punishment before. I could understand if he got a slightly higher punishment this time due to repeated offense. But going from like 3 years or whatever to life - seems completely unfair. They're destroying a life for a relatively small crime. Doesn't sound like justice to me.
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Well what he says tells us nothing. To know the full story we would have to read all the documents from all the court hearings.
I don't know how this works in USA but in my country there are convicts who say that they only broke in house while the truth is they broke in kill the man raped and killed the woman but when you ask them they only broke in house and got 30 years and it is unfair in their eyes.
Also press makes it worse as there were 2 press articles - one about a man that stole the gas from station and got fine and one about a guy that stole the gas from station and got 25 years. Only after digging deeper it turns out the 1st only tanked his car and forgot to pay while the other one tanked his car and killed the cashier with gas bottle crushing his whole head.
Also the judge must think how much of a threat is the guy he is judging and if he is a drug addict or alcoholic the chance he will hurt or kill someone are higher and people like that get higher sentences.
Also there is a difference if you steal 9$ by pickpocketing / by beating someone and then stealing / by home invasion and destroying everything in the house.
All in all choosing the right punishment for each case is a job for many people during many court hearings.
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The point of the 3 strikes and you're out system is to prevent future crimes by people committed to a life of crime, not to punish for what the 3rd offense was. What if that saved his life from a lonely death from the hard drugs he was abusing? So now he lives in prison, got sober and met Jesus all thanks to the life sentence instead of continuing his crime career. He was the one who was destroying his own life before.
Not supporting the system in any way, but neither do I support the "civilized" way of giving more rights to the criminals than their victims, there should be something in the middle that would work better than either I'd imagine.
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The point of the 3 strikes and you're out system is to prevent future crimes by people committed to a life of crime, not to punish for what the 3rd offense was.
Yes, and I think that whole concept is BS.
Is this the 3-strike system, though? This was his 4th offense, if I am not mistaken. Or is this like the old "Lethal Weapon count to three" problem... ;)
What if that saved his life from a lonely death from the hard drugs he was abusing?
What if he would have changed his life anyway after that crime or the next? Also possible. There are a lot of possible outcomes. I feel a life sentence eliminates most of them. We also shouldn't decide the fate of a person based on what-if's.
Not supporting the system in any way, but neither do I support the "civilized" way of giving more rights to the criminals than their victims, there should be something in the middle that would work better than either I'd imagine.
Well, I don't think putting him in jail for a reasonable time for his crime would have meant anything like giving more rights to the victim than to him. Punish him harder for the 3rd or 4th time, sure. Makes sense. But a life sentence? Basically independent of the actual crime? That seems completely insane to me.
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Maybe they added 1 strike to please the democrats whining about silly things like justice or human rights or something? Can't imagine it happening otherwise, but of course anything is possible in a lawyrtopia.
Very few things about the US legal system are civilized or even sensible since it's mainly based on how rich you are. I was referring more to the system in the freest countries in the world where prisons are more like hotels to criminals coming from poorer countries. Like if a gas station owner here has a huge sign at the pumps saying that by stealing gas you agree to your picture being posted on Facebook, they will get punished for violating the rights of the criminal while the thief gets nothing.
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is this the case in your country...in mine it seems to be the case..and where bail seems like a whim of a coin flip too. eg. people who commit crimes with a gun/dangerous weapon shouldn't make bail
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No such thing as bail here, they just keep you in jail as long as they can convince a court that it's necessary for investigating or preventing you from doing some harm. I think bail is one of the most ridiculous systems where rich people can just walk away. People here are first time offenders after not doing crimes for couple years, only serve 1/3-1/2 of first time sentence and very often get suspended sentences which in reality is not any kind of punishment.
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Seems more than likely if they are frat guys on a sports scholarship. But they probably don't end up serving time even once.
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we always talk about the injustice that criminals seem to recieve for their crimes, yet rarely about the injustice that all criminals inflict on their victims. you focus on the $9, but i dont - its more about the mans character. he got his sentence NOT because of $9, but rather because he has proven himself to be a sickness on society. its entirely possible that next time he were to commit a crime, he may have hurt someone... maybe even killed them - society has only improved with this man not being in it. Hes not a good man, and its less about how 'unfair' this sentence was than it is just how unjust the tiny and insignificant punishments so often are for people who choose to hurt society for their own selfish ends.
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He just needed help with his addiction instead they throw him in jail for slave labor. For life.
But didn't it help with his addiction?
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this is why if im at a buffet and there is one item of food left on a tray and i really want it. i dont take it and i let someone else get it.
my guilt gut wont even let me take free food if its the last item. let alone actually steal from someone. i would die if i did that
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Being considerate is not wrong but not everything you think is considerate actually is. I don't know how buffets work over there but here they keep bringing more as soon as they notice some food is almost gone, so any small amount left will be slightly older than the fresh stuff arriving very soon. To be most polite you should get the last one and inform them that it's gone so when the next person comes that really likes that food, they will have a full tray of fresh stuff to gorge on.
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I once went to a buffet that served Parachini noodles for Lo Mein.
They may have been good noodles, but they still couldn't fool me!
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It is clown world where burning the American flag is ok, but burning a rainbow flag gets you 16 years. Sure it wasn't his property, but some laws seem poorly thought out and exist to maintain state dominance over people and rob their efforts in prison.
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He got 16 years because it was his third felony offense. Otherwise it would have been 5 years, which does seem excessive for burning a flag, however it was considered a hate crime, so that increased the sentence.
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That's a problem when you have private prisons that need to be filled
A good state should try to keep it prisons as empty as possible
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It's kinda F'd up but he did do it 3 times.... I mean come on... you did it twice, got caught and KNEW they had a 3-strike rule? Come on man....
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I just want to say in general that its a shame the US criminal system doesnt focus more on rehabilitation than punishment, jails, and probation for the sake of probation.
Of course there's some egregious crimes that merit longer term removal from society and simultaneously some crimes for petty things that come with too much.
I'm not going to claim I know exactly where those lines should be, but something needs to change.
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