Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!
I dont want that kind of retribution, I am not asking for him to be accosted or hurt, I want him scared. The retribution is that he will spend the rest of his life on the registry. The rehabilitation comes from him being scared straight. I want him to never want to go back to prison THAT is where rehab comes in.
So what is your solution Mr. Accusatory Tone? Can I not turn your argument into a complete indictment of the criminal justice system as a whole? It isnt like recidivism rates arent high...obviously the "rehab" portion you seem so hell bent on pointing out (I assume you are anti death penalty since you cant rehab the dead right?) is failing pretty badly. Should we just abolish the jailing system as a whole? Why do I get the feeling you arent for that in any way? So why make your stand here? Why is this kid so different and why does he deserve leniency where others dont? Is it cause he only screwed a drunk girl and didnt hold a knife to her throat? What he did is a violation of the highest order...
How about instead of standing up on your soapbox and pointing your finger at everyone who feels the kid was given a gift he doesnt deserve you pull your pants out of your crack and actually try and have a discussion. No one in here is attacking you or your opinion (I did just now but only to prove a point) so why are you so bent out of shape? Why do you assume you know what I want or how I feel because I posted an article and said I think that it is wrong? I never said I wanted him to be beaten or raped (nor did anyone though Brent kind of implied it) I never said the judge should be fired or attacked, I said the judge was wrong. If the judge was following the guidelines than guess what THE FLIPPING GUIDELINES ARE WRONG! I want them changed, guess how you do that, express outrage over them. Funny how that works...
Maybe you dont agree and that is fine, but from where some of us are sitting there is definitely a massive disconnect going on. Why is a violent crime...a friggin rape...not being punished harder? There are people caught with dime bags of weed that serve harder time than this kid. That sticks in my craw. There are very few crimes that I have zero tolerance for...rape is in the Top 2. He was convicted, as such he should be punished accordingly. The problem is he didnt do it by pulling a knife or a gun on a girl, he waited for her to pass out and couldnt stop him. He doesnt even have the balls to use his strength against her...he is an impotent little puke who could only rape a defenseless person. Problem is there is a still a culture "Date rape is lesser than" and that needs to change. Why is the impact of his CHOSEN ACTION (he wasnt fooled into raping her, she didnt lead him on he admitted she rebuffed him he is a friggin predator) on himself given as much weight as the impact on the victim? There is no logic behind it he forfeits that when he does what he did.
Go ahead, have at it. Put on your outrage hat (you might want to pick a better person to defend though...just saying) and try and prove to me that I am somehow some neanderthal vigilante looking for blood despite saying multiple times I want nothing of the sort. Pretend I am some internet justice warrior looking to get the judge disbarred and the lawyers drawn and quartered in the town square even though I never did close to that.
I don't think you'll see any post by me defending rape or rapists. It's a terrible crime and deserves punishment. I was prompted to respond to your post (and similar posts made by others) for a couple of reasons.
First, I found it amusing that people who have so much sympathy for the physical assault that goes to the very being of the rape victim, can be so flippant about similar assaults as a form of justice to the perp, once incarcerated, but I see you have now retreated from that, somewhat.
Second, I personally think we have too much of "lock them up and throw away the key" attitude in this country without thinking about whether its possible to take someone who has committed a foul, evil deed and not only "scare them straight" as you propose for their rehabilitation, but actually turn them into a productive member of society. I agree we have people serving unconscionable sentences for drug offenses. That doesn't justify doing the same for other types of crimes. So we scare this 20 year old kid straight with multiple years in a cell with other criminals. Now what? We let him out with a felony conviction, we literally brand him with Jean Valjean like papers as he goes city to city and the scarlet "R". But have we addressed the mental health issues that obviously exist?
Finally, and maybe this is the thing that most annoys me about posts like your original one, is the arm-chair quarterbacking. People sit in front of their computers or on their phones reading a Deadspin report on a rape sentencing thousands of miles away, and immediately the bile starts building up.
I don't know the exact numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were 20,000+ rape convictions a year in this country. That would mean something like an average of 75 a day that the courts are open. Do you read articles on all those? Do the news outlets cover them when someone gets sentenced to 5 years or 10 years or whatever for rape? Nope. Just a short blurb buried in the local paper. What you hear about are the two a year where the news columnist/blogger feels like the sentence is outside the ordinary, and thus newsworthy. You read that story as filtered by them.
If I had the time, I'd propose an interesting challenge for you. You find links to stories where the rapist goes free, with no jail time, following a conviction, and I'll find stories where they are sentenced to prison, and we'll each share the links here. How do you think you'll come out on that?
Every time I read one of these stories that seems to be outside of the perceived norm, my first thought is not outrage, but more "I wonder what really happened in that case." I wonder what it was that the judge saw or heard that caused him to rule that way. I wonder what evidence the jury heard. I wonder what was in that pre-sentence investigation report. I'd encourage you to do the same. The judge, who was actually there, who heard the testimony, who listened to the victims statement, who read the police reports, who read the pre-sentence investigation report, who heard from the attorneys, who studied the law of that state, and who maybe even heard from the perpetrator, reached the decision he did. I'm going to guess that he was just a little bit better informed than those of us reading two paragraphs about it a thousand miles away.