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
Let Oprah know too...she is hunting sex offenders like a bounty hunter!
Liberalism is a mental disorder. This is a case where the cops should look the other way as a mob snatches up two people to tar and feather. The rapist and the judge.
The final moments of both low lifes should be hanging from a tree.
I hope somebody offs the rapist, and then goes after the Judge.
There is little or no relationship between justice and the law. Source: me, based on many years experience.
So I guess that rape is to be considered a misdemeanor now. Un-$%&@ing-believable.
I recently read a book about vigilante justice called the Justice Cooperative. The premise is that if a person is the victim of a crime, and their attacker does not get a real sentence, the cooperative will take care of the perp, after the victim takes out a different perp. Everybody has an alibi and no apparent motive. The only thing lacking was justice for the judges who were too lenient.
If Vermont citizens are allowed to elect their judges, here's one judge who should be out of a job asap. If judges can be impeached in Vermont, here's the posterboy.
It's the judge's job to enact punishment on criminals. If he can't do that, he has no business being a judge just like a person who's scared of heights has no business being a window washer on the Empire State Buliding.
Heh, heh, time to wake up the gimp.
Amen to that.
Another insane sentence from Judge Cashman: "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. This sentence is insane AND ungrammatical.
Vermont is rife with idiots (all Freepers excluded, of course) and I'm not just saying that because my awful, raging liberal sister-in-law lives there. She's in Burlington, in fact, and has a young daughter. Wonder if she agrees with Cashman that a lengthy prison term “will accomplish nothing but to harden this fellow.”
I disagree, they should slowly castrate him with a dull knife first and let him suffer for a few days and then execute him.
Perhaps your heart really does go out to the family, your Honor, but for some reason I don't believe you. These sound like empty words to me.
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.
This makes no sense at all. The "long view" would seem to require serious prison sentences for serious crimes, to serve as a deterrent.
(Oh, and by the way, the Judge's grammar is no better that his jurisprudence. He should have said, "There are other families out there. . . .")
I can only think that this judge is corrupt and on the take, no other reason for what he said makes any sense.
We've had "jury nullification" (OJ, etc.). Now we have a liberal judge providing an example of "judicial nullification." Who cares about justice when you can be a liberal weenie judge deciding that it's better to free a vicious rapist after only 60 days so that he can work on his tan and maybe attend counseling????
Moral Absolutes Ping.
Way, way beyond disgusting. Kindness to the cruel is cruelty to the innocent. This judge should be removed immediately. Vigilante justice will be seen more and more if insanity like this increases. Anyone notice a connection between the promotion of child/adult sex as benign or even good and this madness?
The poor girl will likely never get over this. Child sexual abuse generally ruins people for life. Child molesters of this magnitude need KILLING.
Freepmail me if you want on/off this pinglist.
Liberalism.
The judge should be dragged from the courthouse and hanged from a tree. The degenerates in this country have long ago made this place worse than Sodom and Gomorrah were. I guess the guy won't be in a maximum security prison either, but I still hope another inmate kills him and does us all a favor.
I think the little girl's father should be given the opportunity the day this POS walks out of jail, I can't imagine a that jury would convict him.
The people suffer when under an unjust king.
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