Posted on 01/05/2006 5:23:48 PM PST by wagglebee
BURLINGTON, January 5, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - According to a Vermont judge, serious crime should not be subject to punishment. “The one message I want to get through is that anger doesn't solve anything. It just corrodes your soul.” So said Judge Edward Cashman who then gave a 60-day jail sentence to a man who raped a little girl repeatedly for four years starting when the girl – the child of a friend - was six and ending when she was ten.
Mark Hulett, 34, pleaded guilty in District Court in Burlington to two counts of aggravated sexual assault and one charge of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child, all felonies. The law allowed for him to face up to life in prison on the charges, but the judge decided that he should be let go after 60 days, since the state Corrections Department would not offer Hulett sex-offender counseling until after his release.
Only if Hulett fails to obtain counseling or otherwise follow instructions once he is freed
will he face the full sentence.
The state prosecutors, along with the girl’s family were seeking the maximum sentence of 8 to 20 years in a federal prison.
“Punishment is a valid purpose,” Chittenden Deputy Prosecutor Nicole Andreson argued. “This is not only about Mr. Hulett. To sentence him to any less demeans the level of trauma he has caused. To sentence him to any less will send a disturbing message of tolerance to the community.”
“The state recognizes that the court may not agree or subscribe to that method of sentencing but the state does. The state thinks that it is a very important factor for the court to consider,” Andreson added.
After ruling that the self-confessed child rapist should be back in the community, Cashman told the family, “This is not a situation where I'm doing this for the family”
“My heart goes out to this family, and I would hate to be in the situation this family is. But there's other families out there, and there's other people who could be victimized, and I'm trying to take the long view,” he said.
Cashman added that a lengthy prison term “will accomplish nothing but to harden this fellow.”
The girl’s mother, however, thought that keeping her child’s rapist off the streets would accomplish something. “Mark should be taken off the street so it is not possible for her to cross his path. She will see Mark enough in her mind,” she said.
Contacts:
Vermont Governor Jim Douglas
109 State Street, Pavilion
Montpelier, VT 05609-0101
Phone: 802 828-3333
(toll-free in VT only: 800 649-6825)
Fax: 802 828-3339
Online communications form at http://www.vermont.gov/governor/contact.html
Vermont Judicial Conduct Board
http://www.vermontjudiciary.org/Committes/boards/j...
Chairman Christopher Davis
802-864-0217
WTF!?!?!?
I hope this is being brought to O'Reilly's attention. He may be a pompous jerk, but this is the sort of thing he sinks his teeth into and doesn't let go of. And that's a good thing. This is simply outrageous.
I can't think of a better example for the need for vigilante justice.
The American justice system is dead. Can we bury it and start dealing with pieces of $hit like this ourselves?
This is the justice system for liberals who elect liberals who appoint liberals...I have a feeling the mother and father of this poor girl will become 'converts' to the conservative side in the near future. Maybe we can help...
Moral absolutes ping,
Hey judge: you know what else corrodes your soul? GETTING REPEATEDLY RAPED FOR FOUR YEARS.
I'd say this girl's parents were just assaulted big-time.
And sixty days of coddling will make your state a child-molester Mecca, judge.
Someone else said it better than me: "We don't have a justice system, we have a legal system."
Good idea about sending it to O'Reilly. It's just his kind of outrageous case to want to publicize.
You're right. I can't stand O'Reilly either. But we should put our emotions aside at times. O'Reilly can be a useful idiot pitbull on issues like this.
This judge is a psychopath all too willing to further experiment on the public with this ridiculous ruling.
I live for the day when these judges can be held criminally responsible for insane sentences like this one.
It's time to end the little fiefdoms that these judges create for themselves.
Anger has absolutely nothing to do with the sentencing of criminals (like the rapist in question), and if anyone should know that it's a judge.
Agreed, we cannot just dump the system.
But we can go to the old tried and true method of shame and humiliation. Put this guys picture everywhere as a scum.
Jail for Judges!!! Jail for Judges!! There are no words to describe my disdain for the Men In Black sometimes.
"The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum.
Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles."
AYN RAND
They dang well better keep this prevert on the west side of the Connecticut River.
Maybe with any luck, during that 60 days his fellow inmates will give this skinner what he deserves since the judge obviously hasn't got a lick of sense or common decency in him.
The "judge" is unfit to sit on the bench. Time to remove this monster.
"After ruling that the self-confessed child rapist should be back in the community, Cashman told the family, “This is not a situation where I'm doing this for the family” "
Understatement of the decade.
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