Carlie Brucia found, dead

WCBS newsradio, cnn

[YankeeGirl]

Just heard on WCBS newsradio NY that CNN reports Carlie Brucia found dead in Sarasota.

[SarahW]

Hold the phone. I think we have to, or at least I'm going to, backpeddle off criticism of the judge.

It seems the drug test failure was only technical. He was on *prescribed* medication that accounted for the positive result for opiates.

The judge could not reasonably have revoked parole for taking the prescribed medication.

Joe Smith was unemployed and unable to make any payments...so the judge did not find him in willful violation of parole.

Smith had tried to kill himself earlier in the year and went through rehab. I think the judge thought he was trying to get himself together.

MY BEEF is the way this guys earlier violent assaults against women were brushed off. (see one below from a Sarasota news site, Bradenton.com)

I get the idea that this fellow is a master manipulator, who puts on a very effective act to gain sympathy. He must have a mope face, when it will do him some good.

In April 1993 Sarasota County Sheriff's deputies arrested Smith on charges of aggravated battery, loitering and prowling. According to reports, 21-year-old waitress Michelle Warner ran up to a deputy. She was "hysterical and bleeding profusely from her face," according to a sheriff's report.

Warner told the deputy she was walking home from the Beach Club just after 2 a.m. when Smith approached her at the corner of Ocean Boulevard and Beach Road. She didn't know Smith. Without saying anything to her, he struck her in the face with a white motorcycle helmet, according to reports.

Minutes later deputies found Smith's motorcycle and helmet in a yard behind a business 500 feet from where Warner said she was attacked, according to the report. Smith ran from authorities and when they caught up with him, Warner was able to identify him. Warner sat in the back of a patrol car and "cried hysterically and exclaimed 'That's him, that's him - oh my God. That's the bastard,' " according to the report. Smith told deputies the motorcycle belonged to him, but the helmet belonged to his friend.

In September 1993 Smith was sentenced to two years of community control supervision, according to the Florida Department of Corrections data base. It was unclear Thursday if Warner still lives in the area; there is no listing for that name in the local phone directory.

COMMUNITY CONTROL SUPERVISION!!!! That guy should have done time.

[spectre]

Way to go, Kim!

The judge could resign...LOL!

[SarahW]

See my #421 for one of his earlier "stranger" attacks.

OMG. And to think they only gave him community supervision.

Guys who pull that kind of thing need to go to JAIL.

[Steelerfan]

Not in a criminal case. A judge can't reverse or set aside a jury verdict of innocent under the double jeopardy clause.

[Catspaw]

Exactly. Bet he started out hitting girlfriends who never reported him. Then it escalated to a few date rapes and stranger rapes, again going unreported or he was never ID'ed. These people don't just wake up one day and decide to kidnap and murder a child, there is always an escalating history.

I wonder if there are unsolved rapes and/or murders in the region. If so, if they have his DNA, they should run it though the system to see what comes up. And now that his picture has been seen widely in the region I wonder if more women will come forward to say, "that's him."

[Freedom2specul8]

He should resign....I don't see how he lives with himself! It makes me wanna just puke.

[Iwo Jima]

There can never be a directed verdict of guilty in a criminal trial. NEVER! An acquittal by a jury in a criminal trial is always the final say as to that charge. ALWAYS!

And we wouldn't want it any other way, even when (as appears to have happened here) the jury brought in the wrong verdict.

[SarahW]

When the actual facts are known, the judge HAD to decline revoking parole, at least on the issue of the positive drug test.

Joe Smith failed it because of medicine prescribed to him to treat illness. His medical records were presented to the judge, and he really had no choice on that issue.

I also think it's fairly common, when a parolee is unable to make payments on fines and court costs because of unemployment (especially when the unemployment is related to underlying medical conditions), and is otherwise in compliance with parole restrictions, not to re-incarcerate on that basis.

The real problem is the way this mope's earlier violent assaults agains women went unpunished.

[Beck_isright]

"Maybe not. They say he told them where to find the body. Any Floridians out there? Did he make a deal?"

Nothing on the local Sarasota news yet. But I'll let everyone know the minute I hear something else.

[SarahW]

Joseph Smith must have an uncommon ability to manipulate folks into feeling sorry for him.

[Blue Highway]

His neighbor was on TV last night and said this shocked him. The neighbor commented that this guy would have him watch out for his wife and kids when he was away. The neighbor also said that his granddaughter used to go over and play with this guy's daughters and he never felt uncomfortable about him.

Apparantly the neighbor had no idea this guy was a drug addict or was tolerant of it. Sickens me to see peoples tolerance for scumbags like this!

[floriduh voter]

Kick Judge Ripken off the bench AND STRIP HIM OF HIS PENSION. Money is the only punishment activist judges understand. Judge Ripken #1-941-861-7972

Governor Jeb Bush: jeb.bush@myflorida.com

[Beck_isright]

"So how do we get this guy, FV? Impeachment? FReep?"

Both. I've already emailed Jeb Bush. This judge needs to be fired.

[floriduh voter]

Well, the jury was demented in 1998 then.

[SarahW]

Bradenton.com has more info on the reasons parole was not revoked. The judge really could not have reasonably revoked parole.

My initial disgust with that has been overtaken by the way his previous assaults against women went virtually unpunished.

[Beck_isright]

"Has this weasel even issued a statement to Carlie's family? If not this guy should be rotting in hell along with Smith."

The coward is in hiding.

[Catspaw]

Joseph Smith must have an uncommon ability to manipulate folks into feeling sorry for him.

Ted Bundy was a master at that. It's part of the sociopathy.

[floriduh voter]

They negotiated something re: where he dumped Carlie but the terms have not been publicized.

[labolarueda]

Nothing on Fox so far.

[evad]

Time to polish off the ole "forgiveness speech"

The Sin of Forgiveness

by Dennis Prager Wall Street Journal, December 15, 1997

The bodies of the three teenage girls murdered by a fellow student at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., were not yet cold before the students of the Christian prayer group that was shot at announced, "We forgive you, Mike," referring to Michael Carneal, 14, the murderer.

This immediate and automatic forgiveness is not surprising. Over the past generation, the idea that a central message of Christianity is to forgive everyone who commits evil against anyone, no matter how great and cruel and whether or not the evildoer repents, has been adopted by much of Christendom.

The number of examples is almost as large as the number of heinous crimes. But one other recent example stands out. In August, the pastor at a Martha's Vineyard church service attended by the vacationing President Clinton announced that it was the the duty of all Christians to forgive Timothy McVeigh, the murderer of 168 Americans. "I invite you to look at a picture of Timothy McVeigh and then forgive him," the Rev. John Miller said in his sermon. "I have, and I ask you to do so."

The pastor acknowledged: "Considering what he did, that may be a formidable task. But it is the one that we as Christians are asked to do."

Though I am a Jew, I believe that a vibrant Christianity is essential if America's moral decline is to be reversed and that despite theological differences, there is indeed a Judeo-Christian value system that has served as the bedrock of American civilization. For these reasons I am appalled and frightened by this feel-good doctrine of automatic forgiveness.

This doctrine undermines the moral foundations of American civilization because it advances the amoral notion that no matter how much you hurt other people, millions of your fellow citizens will immediately forgive you. This doctrine destroys Christianity's central moral tenets about forgiveness - that forgiveness, even by God, is contingent on the sinner repenting, and that it can only be given to the sinner by the one against whom he sinned.

These tenets are unambiguously affirmed in Luke 17:3-4: "And if your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if seven times of the day he sins against you, and seven times of the day turns to you saying, I repent, you shall forgive him."

This flies in the face of what passes for Christianity these days - the declaration, often repeated, that "It is the Christian's duty to forgive just as Jesus forgave those who crucified him." Of course, Jesus asked God to forgive those who crucified him. But Jesus never asked God to forgive those who had crucified thousands of other innocent people - presumably because he recognized that no one has the moral right to forgive evil done to others.

You and I have no right, religiously or morally, to forgive Timothy McVeigh or Michael Carneal; only those they sinned against have that right - and those they murdered are dead and therefore cannot forgive them. (Indeed, that is why I believe that humans cannot forgive a murderer.) If we are automatically forgiven no matter what we do - even if we do not repent, why repent? In fact, if we forgive everybody for all the evil they do to anybody, God and his forgiveness are entirely unnecessary. Those who forgive all evil done to others have substituted themselves for God.

When confronted with such arguments, some callers to my radio show offered another defense: "The students were not forgiving Carneal for murdering the three students," these callers argued, "they were forgiving him for the pain he caused them." Let us summarize this argument: You murder my classmates, and the next day I announce that I forgive you for the pain you caused me! That such self-centered thinking masquerades as a religious ideal is a good example of the moral disarray in much of religious life.

Some people have a more sophisticated defense of the forgive-everyone-everything doctrine: Victims should be encouraged to forgive all evil done to them because doing so is psychologically healthy. It brings "closure." This, too, is selfishness masquerading as idealism: "Though you do not deserve to be forgiven, and though you may not even be sorry, I forgive you because I want to feel better." The rise of the theology of automatic "forgiveness" is only one more sign of the decline of traditional religiosity and morality. As Yale Prof. David Gelernter, who was severely injured by the Unabomber, notes in his thoughtful recent book, "Drawing Life," the 1960's made making moral judgments the greatest sin. He points out that none of his pre-1975 dictionaries contains the word "judgmental." Today, judging evil is widely considered worse than doing evil.

Until West Paducah, I believed that Christians will lead America's moral renaissance. Though I still believe that - many Christians are repulsed by the demoralization and dumbing down of religion - the day those students, with the support of their school administration, hung out that sign I became less sanguine. If young Christians have inherited more values from the '60s culture than from their religion, where can we look for help?

Mr. Prager, host of a daily radio talk show in Los Angeles, is the author of "Happiness is a Serious Problem," from Harper Collins.