Posted on 02/22/2005 9:57:10 PM PST by logician2u
In 1988, Brent J. Brents raped a 6-year-old boy by luring him into a secluded spot with a tale about a lost cat. Eight days later, Brents raped a 9-year-old girl at knifepoint, while threatening to kill her if she cried out.
Brents, who already had a long criminal record, was sent to prison, where he served 15 years of a 20-year term. Last summer, state sentencing laws required him to be released, even though he had dropped out of a sex offender rehabilitation program.
Now he is accused of molesting an 8-year-old boy, and raping two grade-school girls and their grandmother, as well as three other adult women.
In the summer of 2002 Weldon Angelos, a 23-year-old with no criminal record, sold $350 worth of marijuana on three different occasions to a man who turned out to be a police informant.
At one of the sales, Angelos had a gun strapped to his ankle. At the others, he had one hidden in his car. (Angelos never brandished the gun, nor did he engage in any other violent behavior).
Last November, in an extraordinary 67-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell sentenced Angelos to 55 years in federal prison, without the possibility of parole.
The opinion was extraordinary in that it called upon President Bush to use his powers of executive clemency to reduce what Cassell considered a barbaric sentence - a sentence that our so-called federal sentencing "guidelines" (somewhere, George Orwell is laughing grimly) required Cassell to impose.
Cassell's opinion, which is well worth reading in its entirety, is both anguished and courageous. The judge is clearly revolted by what he believes the law requires him to do, and he searches for some constitutional argument that would allow him to strike down a law that is sending a 25-year-old nonviolent offender with no criminal record to prison for what may well be the rest of his life.
That he is unable to find it is a tribute to Cassell's intellectual integrity, whether one agrees with his legal conclusions or not.
Cassell is no bleeding-heart liberal. I remember the talk he gave at the University of Colorado law school more than a decade ago, when he was on the market for a legal academic job: it was a frontal assault on the Miranda warning that offended enough of the faculty to preclude him from getting a job offer, despite his obvious talent.
When he was appointed to the federal bench two years ago, Cassell's conservative credentials were considered impeccable. But even the hardest-headed conservative can be horrified by the sheer insanity of the war on drugs.
In sentencing Angelos, Cassell pointed out that he would have gotten a far lighter sentence if he had been a terrorist who detonated a bomb, or if he had been convicted of second-degree murder, or if he had raped a child.
Even in a nation that has found room to put 2 million of its citizens behind bars, there is only so much space in our prisons. Brent J. Brents didn't serve all of his original sentence, in part, because there simply wasn't enough room to lock up everyone who our system says ought to be kept off the street.
It's difficult to express enough outrage at the idea that we release serial child rapists so that nonviolent sellers of a largely harmless drug can be locked up for 55 years.
Paul Cassell, to his credit, has stayed loyal to the principle that legislatures, not judges, should make the laws. But it's yet more to his credit that he doesn't hide his disgust at the inhuman absurdity of some of those laws, even as he fulfills his oath to carry them out.
Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be reached at paul.campos@colorado.edu.
Anyone who doesn't think the War on (some) Drugs affects them personally would have second thoughts if it was one of their children who was attacked by this predator.
Brents gets impaled and left to rot on his pike, as a warning to would-be offenders.
Angelos gets 10 lashes and probation.
Does anyone have any answers?
Gee, here's a thought....kill 'em as soon as possible after trial. Quit wasting the taxpayers money to give murderers and rapists room and board. That would free up a lot of cells for the less violent criminals and put an end to repeat rapists and murderers.
Tie them both face down naked on cots in the center of prison.
There is a reason why we have the right to bear arms.
This is a direct result of mandatory-sentencing laws that say if criminals use a gun in the commission of their crime they'll go to prison for a long, long time. I believe it started as an NRA-backed experiment called "Project Exile." It doesn't much matter if the gun was actually fired, or even brandished. If the perp has one, his sentence will be a long one.
No, child-rape should be a capital offense.
There's a huge difference between the child rapist who served 15 years and someone who sells $350 of marijuana and gets 55 years without possibility of parole.
Your question was "When our justice is unjust"
The government should deal the drugs?
Uh, $350 worth of weed ... that's an ounce!!! Wait, the numb-skull had a gun in his possession. Still that's nuts to send him up for 55 years while a violent child predator is let loose after 15 years. We the people need to sit down with our representatives and set some priorities that make sense.
Decriminalization
Yes, I do.
They're old and the test has probably changed a bit, but here they are:
1) cSorry, I don't at this point remember which class it was for.
2) a
3) c
4) b
5) c
6) T
7) F
8) F
9) T
10) F
No, child rape should be a capital offense.
It is in Florida and Louisiana. Regardless of what state he lives in, though, he should've been executed the first time.
But in their zeal to demonstrate they are tough on crime, sometimes their priorities get misplaced.
That's why we used to have a judiciary which was free to fill in the blanks, as in particular the length of time a convicted criminal should be imprisoned, in proportion to the severity of the crime.
Mandatory sentencing laws have taken that option away from judges, and now we must live with the consequences.
BTW, although the Brent Brents case is new, the fallout from Judge Cassell's sentencing Angelos to 55 years has been ongoing. We may have missed it here on FR, but the legal community did not.
Google on "Weldon Angelos" and you'll be amazed.
As is usual with stories of this nature, important facts are conveniently left out. Missing from the story, of course, is that he turned down a plea bargain that would have gotten him 15 years.
Many people have served long sentances for less. He only has himself to blame - for his actions, and his attempt to avoid the consequences for his actions. Save your pity for the victims who purchased his poison.
This story is simply propaganda for those who want to 'decriminalize' drugs. The article is also deceptive in that it also poses a false premise that their is a "linkage" between these two examples (we are letting out child rapists for innocent pot smokers). The question we should be asking is, "why did the child rapist get off so light ?".
-R
I believe the reason that we don't see child rape being punished as a capital offense is that a large percentage of child rape is perpetrated by a relative of the child (by either blood or marriage). Regardless of what the rapist deserves, most juries would stick at putting a child's father or stepfather to death for raping her (or him). Also, I think you would see a lot less reporting of rape by relatives if they knew upfront that the rapist had a good chance of the death penalty. People tend to protect their relatives whether they deserve it or not.
Regardless, I do think that the death penalty is what is deserved by child rapists.
My guess is that Brent J. Brent will meet vigilante justice.
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