My daily outrage:[10/25/07] Extending prison sentence for a minor offender

[Patroklos]

Your empathy kills me. Of course it's the kids fault his parents are druggies. **** him.

Punishing him until he is a geriatric helps me, which is a concern that always trumps helping murderers.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
What should we do with the kids of awful parents?

Fixed.

Good question.

[Patroklos]

Kids should be raised in government farms/I mean youth centers to be properly raised by momma Hillary

[Vesayen]

Hillary can suck the deepest part of my ###. I do not have all the answers but I know that punishing children for their actions when they were turned into monsters by others instead of helping them, is wrong.


They could of treated the kid like others. In that article it mentioned that most of the minors in that youth detention center did not have terms which extended into older age. He did. It was also mentioned that because of this, he and others felt no point to go along with the program. Perhaps if he was not sentenced to rot in prison half his life, he might of been changed in juvy?

[Patroklos]

I'm not a rehabilitation person Ves, human biengs are capable of making rational decisions and bettering themselves, it is the prisoners responsiblity to rehabilitate during his punishment.

Or, you know, not murder people in the first place.

[Vesayen]

So if a child hits another child, should we throw them in jail for battery? It fits the legal definition. If a child steals a comic book, should we throw them in jail? If a child calls another child a N word, should we throw them in jail for a hate crime? Children are not held to the same standard as adults because.... they are not adults! Children can not make rational decisions on the same basis that we can.

This person was not even a normal child. He had been through circumstances of birth, born into drugs, guns and violence. While drunk, high and 12, his "uncle" calls a cab and tells him to rob it.

He was not able to form a rational decision so we cannot punish him as if he had.

[Japher]

Kids aren't held to the same standard as adults because they are not aware of the consequences of their actions, and thus cannot make rational decisions.

Additionally, those who are aware of the consequences may not have a moral recourse for preventing the consequence. I.e., I tell my daughter to stop eating the dog food or I'll put her in time out, she says to me "time out" and goes and sits in the chair we have designated for time out.

Similarly for kids who are told or know that if you rob a cab you will go to jail, and they do it anyway because to them their is no reason to not go to jail.

Giving the child a moral recourse is required in order for them to be able to make a "right" decision. Those born into poverty or abusive families or drugs do not have this?

Does this make them innocent of their crime? No, because they had the information to make a decision and they knowingly made the wrong decision, on purpose.

Will rehabilitation fix this? No, because when all is said and done they sill have no moral recourse keeping them from doing wrong. They are in the same boat, only 5, 10, 15 years older.

The only ones who are rehabed are those who find religion or get an education while behind bars, because they found something to live for, something to keep them from doing wrong.

[Patroklos]

Throw him into a mental institution if he is so ****ed up in the head.

There is no getting around it Ves, either he is an unredeemable criminal or a criminally insane, either way he is going to be locked up.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Where is Ozzy?

Originally posted by Darius871
Ozzy?????!!?!?!???!??

I feel so loved.

The argument here is kinda silly imho though. One side thinks he should get a slap on the wrist for killing someone and the other think he should fry.

*yawn*

I don't care so much about it. If he killed someone then he should be treated just like any other murderer.

The only exceptional part of this story is the fact that his sentence was changed. The article seemed pretty light on facts and information so I'm not quite sure what is going on. Did he kill someone else in prison? You can't just extend a sentence after it has been handed out. But I'm guessing it was something less exceptional than the OP makes it out to be. In which case my reaction, once again, is *yawn*.

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Throw him into a mental institution if he is so ****ed up in the head.

There is no getting around it Ves, either he is an unredeemable criminal or a criminally insane, either way he is going to be locked up.

Nowhere did I say he should be released, did he? It is too late to "fix" him from the sounds of it. I said:

1. It is cruel and inhumane to extend a prisoners sentence after they are appealing to shorten it!

2. What was done to him as a child was criminal and while he might of been "salvaged" as a youth, the Texas injustice system has made that impossible.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Vesayen
1. It is cruel and inhumane to extend a prisoners sentence after they are appealing to shorten it!

He won his appeal and got a retrial of the sentencing portion. It's bad form to whine when you win an appeal.

[Vesayen]

It is?

We can't lock people up JUST for being human filth. They have to actually do something wrong.

It almost looks like they added years to his sentence because they fear what the guy will do when he gets out.

By that reasoning, jail ceases to be a set punishment for a crime, but a numbers game about what makes society "safest".

Justice ceases to be an issue.

Does this mean you would support throwing unconvicted individuals in jail, if we can be sure they are human waste, for the good of society?

Where do we draw the line? Who gets to decide? Slippery slope, etc etc.

[DinoDoc]

Yes. If you win a retrial and continue to whine, it's annoying. People should remember that.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Yes. If you win a retrial and continue to whine, it's annoying. People should remember that.

Yeah

There has to be some confusion here. There's a difference between the trial phase and the penalty phase in a criminal proceeding. He's not contesting his guilt (well, I'm sure he did, it was just denied). You can appeal both (if you went to trial) or which ever part you want, even though they're probably in the same appeal document, they are really separate facets to the appeal.

When you ask for an appeal on the penalty phase and you get a remand, its not like the range is magically from the minimum (or the time you've served) to what the court gave you, its from the min to the max allowed by the proven charge. The remand merely reset the penalty phase as if it has never taken place. Its a basic cost benefit analysis for the convict, and apparently this guy chose wrong. It happens.

[Lefty Scaevola]

Yes, the defendent appealed the procedure in the sentencing phase and won a rehearing of that, vacating the 27 year sentence. The rehearing was de novo without regard to the result of the prior sentencing hearing. He and counsel rolled the dice and lost. I can only suppose that motivation for doing so at this point was an expectation that he would fail at his next few parole hearings. The defendant, not the state, made the choice to take the prior sentence off the table. It was not an extention of the prior sentence, it was not an addition to the prior sentence, it was vacating the prior sentence and replacing it from scratch.