I understand MarkTwain’s cool headed approach to Justice...but there are limits and this case is an example. This is a case wherein a message must be sent not only to the malefactors but to all watching. The charge here should be as heavy as possible.
Agree with your post.
There is also a greater issue of the quest for equality before the law in this country having always struggled with how the courts view the treatment of children. In the colonies, all children were chattel of the father. As the pendulum has swung towards abortion, states have struggled with whether or not to charge for double murder when someone kills a woman pregnant with a wanted fetus. You’d think it would be common law to charge for two murders, but many states have had to pass specific laws in support of it, since the femnazis fight against any recognition of the humanity of the unborn.
On the other hand, radical pro-child legislation stemming from other feminist causes such as allowing schools to distribute birth control or to take a 12-year-old girl for an abortion without the parent’s knowledge have gone too far to undermine the rights of parents, and also their responsibilities. It’s a difficult balance.
The challenge of freedom in the U.S. today is that the culture at the Founding was firmly grounded in a common Christian social heritage. There was a widespread consensus about right and wrong, even if one were not a believer or a practitioner of a religion. This radical minting of wholesale “rights” that has gone on since WWII has been destroying political freedom in the greater sense, substituting political correctness and litigation for character development along a consensus ethos.