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
This is one takes the cake.
unbelievable
Judge Edward Cashman is a democrat party appointee. That about says it all. One can assume he is just protecting a fellow democrat party voter (the sociopath serial rapist).
Be a shame if someone kidnapped the judge and reamed his butt for 4 years. Heh, heh. No big crime in that, right?
Unbelievable.
Sixty days and you're a free man! Hooray! I mean, anger only corrodes your soul, right? The judge should sit back and enjoy it!
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
And naturally, that judge should invite the child rapist to live in his home for a year after his sixty day sentence is completed. Perhaps if the Judge and his significant other gives him enough love and attention the poor, misguided man will repent, and no longer have any desire to rape little girls.
(Sarcasm off)
I simply don't believe this. Is this an Onion article?
No.
Well, we don't want him hardened, or the next thing you know he'll be so callous he'll be raping six year olds.
Oh, wait...
Man, where's a good lynch mob when you need them?
Hatred for President Bush is the driving force of the Democratic Party in America... I guess the judge was simply trying to illustrate what hating Bush has accomplished for his party.
You knew one of the communist objectives was penetrating our education system. That has been accomplished. With the fall of the soviet union, where are all the other marxists? Many places. Our justice system is one of them.
A lynch mob with TWO ropes, I might add...
All i can say is that he can give thanks to the Good Lord that she was not my daughter.
If she was, I would be in state prison now but he would be in Hell providing that the Good Lord gave me the strenght to pull a trigger and gunpowder burns.
My heart grieves for the poor child. Please God, have mercy on her and her family and comfort them in their great time of need. In Christ's name, Amen.
This poor little girl has to live with what he did to her for the rest of her life! And he only gets 60 days??????
Does this idiot judge have any kids? Isn't he smart enough to know how badly something like this can damage them??
Unbelievable!!!
The people of Vermont were the first to jump on the homosexual "civil union" bandwagon, AND they reelected Howard Dean FIVE times (to two year terms), so it's questionable how controversial a ruling this even was for them.
They don't believe in punishment, because it gives them the willies. For the most obvious of reasons - they know they deserve heaps. So they instead think the purpose of "corrections" (notice that term?) is not a just and proportional penalty for a crime, but a clinical intervention to reprogram or heal, not the victims or the community or the society as a whole, but precisely the criminal. As far as this liberal judge is concerned, he is a doctor prescribing treatment for a patient. And the state says "counseling X for released sex offenders", because the state imagined they would have already done hard time but still need watching. The judge only wants said treatment, so he hits the fast forward button.
Besides the stupidity in the philosophy behind it, you have to be gob-smacked by the world-historical arrogance in utterly ignoring both the law and the rest of the state, let alone the people, involved. His own pet theory of things simply overrides all. Why? Because otherwise he'd get the willies at night thinking he might have been mean to somebody. Nevermind how mean he is being to all the girls in his state, indirectly. Only the direct stuff gives him the willies. And his willies, don't you know, are what all of this is about. That's the real secret.
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