GETTING TOUGH ON JUDGES (liberals that deviate downard from sentencing guidelines)

NY POST ^ | May 4, 2003 | EDITORIAL

[Liz]

Last week, President Bush signed into law the "Amber Alert" bill. It establishes a nationwide system to help find abducted children and - to the horror of Teddy Kennedy and his ilk - also contains some strong criminal-sentencing reform guidelines.

[GrandMoM]

GEORGE W BUSH = CUTE AND SMART! never, ever, underestimate this man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Copernicus]

I guess I better don my asbestos underwear when I say: be careful for what you wish it may be granted.

We witness across the country incompetent and corrupt police, prosecutors and Judges ruin lives of people on whimsical evidence without out pause or reflection.

Now the toolkit has expanded to exclude any flexibility for checks and balances within the system.

Does anyone remember the two daycare scandals from the early Nineties- one in California and one in North Carolina?

After years of litigation and truly corrupt investigations the principals were released with their lives and reputations ruined and no conclusive proof of any crime other than the crimes committed by the authorities which have gone unpunished to date.

I hope this bill is carefully constructed and limited to only truly heinous crimes.

Best regards,

[arthurus]

Does anyone remember the two daycare scandals from the early Nineties- one in California and one in North Carolina? And one in Miami and the most vicious one in Wennatchee Washington...

[arthurus]

After years of litigation and truly corrupt investigations the principals were released with their lives and reputations ruined and no conclusive proof of any crime other than the crimes committed by the authorities which have gone unpunished to date.

These are bad examples for your implied thesis. These people all got the max and Janet Reno fought the release of the victims in Florida to the bitter end.

[Dark Wing]

You will find this of professional interest.

[proxy_user]

Yes, if a law can be misapplied by morons, it will be. Next headline: "Divorcd dad receives 100 years for returning kids late".

[John Beresford Tipton]

An ill advised proposal:

"GETTING TOUGH ON JUDGES"
no, it is "getting tough on citizens"

"liberals that deviate downard"
no, "liberal" or "conservative" has nothing to do with it

"reform guidelines"
"reform", "improvement", "technical correction", "equity" are words that are thrown around by legislators trying to push bills that often contain none of these qualities, but can be embraced by the ignorant or trusting.

"restricting the ability of judges"
This one is the true beauty, it might more accurately be written as "enhancing the authority of US Attorneys to overcharge defendants"

There are tens of thousands of criminal provisions on the books. It is up to the US Attorney to use good judgment and exercise discretion in deciding what "crimes" to prosecute and what charges to bring. But a US Attorney has the personal goal of making his own record look as good as possible. So there are only two ways a US attorney can be dissuaded from overcharging:
1. the jurors will say, "Life for *that*, give me a freeking break." But jurors are voting in the dark, they do not know what the sentence is for "Count 3 of the indictment". And they are not allowed to be told. That is why we often hear of jurors saying that had they only known what the mandatory sentence was, they never would have voted the way they did.
2. the judge who hears what the case is about, and not merely reads what statute the defendant is charged under will say, "I now what this case is about and the sentence was never meant by the legislature to cover a case like this.

This "Reform" proposal would do away with the power of the judge to make those judgments. Hello, isn't "Judge" supposed to be part of the job description"?

It would greatly increase the power of the prosecutors to either overcharge, or to extort from a possibly innocent defendant a plea to a lesser sentence, so as to avoid draconian penalties if the prosecutor charges him under a bevy of harsh laws not intended to cover the fact pattern.

That there are too many such laws and that a prosecutor can pick his victim and then find the law to nail him is well known. Justice Jackson, a former US Attorney General and later Justice of the Supreme court wrote:

"With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some sort on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who committed it, it is a question of picking the man, and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him."

Also, notice how this is being put forward, as an amendment to the Amber Bill. Oh, that it fool 'em,it must be okay, after all "It's for the children."

[Copernicus]

These are bad examples for your implied thesis. These people all got the max and Janet Reno fought the release of the victims in Florida to the bitter end.

I'm not sure I completely understand, but I probably agree.

My thesis is that unsubstantiated allegations of child abuse and sexual misconduct have already created monstrosities of injustice while actual crimes have been undocumented and unpunished.

In the California case, the authorities may actually have engaged in child abuse in order to prosecute it. Tape recordings of interviews were destroyed and transcripts were incomplete.

Instituting inflexible standards will lead to one of two results: A.Many cases will not be prosecuted at all since the punishment will be way out of proportion with the crime B. the incentive to win at any cost in cases that ARE prosecuted will create an atmosphere of fabricated evidence and exploitation that will taint any outcome regardless of the validity of the evidence.

Remember the joke about O.J. Simpson: "The police were too incompetent to frame a guilty man"

Best regards,

[Copernicus]

Next headline: "Divorcd dad receives 100 years for returning kids late".

Actually, you may be a day late and a dollar short.

The SUPREME COURT recently ruled the police CAN take you into custody for failing to have your seatbelt fastened.

Remember seat belt laws? They were designed to eliminate the horrendous number of traffic deaths and injuries and were A VERY GOOD THING.

You will search long and hard to learn of liabilities such as the infamous Aortal Tear.

Welcome to the 21st Century.

Best regards,

[arthurus]

It is all non sequitur. You examples in no way support your case. A high and rigid minimum sentence would not have affected these cases at all.

[Copernicus]

It is all non sequitur. You examples in no way support your case. A high and rigid minimum sentence would not have affected these cases at all.

I am more than willing to be educated with better examples or good examples of better arguments.

You have the floor.

Best regards,