Judge sentences man to 25 years for beating trick-or-treater

AP ^ | June 12, 2002

[Cultural Jihad]

VICTORVILLE, Calif. (AP) - A man described by a judge as "an evil monster" was sentenced to 25 years in prison for using a baseball bat, metal pipe and golf club to attack a 12-year-old Halloween trick-or-treater on his doorstep.

[tpaine]

Here's a bit of elementary legal logic, for you clowns, from findlaw:

Due process is a difficult thing to define, and the Supreme Court has not been much help over the years. Here's what we can say about due process: In the Magna Carta, due process is referred to as "law of the land" and "legal judgment of his peers." Some state constitutions continue to use these phrases.

The reference in the 5th Amendment applies only to the federal government and its courts and agencies. The reference in the 14th Amendment extends protection of due process to all state governments, agencies, and courts.

Due process, in the context of the United States, refers to how and why laws are enforced. It applies to all persons, citizen or alien, as well as to corporations.

In that, the "how" is procedural due process. Is a law too vague? Is it applied fairly to all? Does a law presume guilt? A vagrancy law might be declared too vague if the definition of a vagrant is not detailed enough. A law that makes wife beating illegal but permits husband beating might be declared to be an unfair application. A law must be clear, fair, and have a presumption of innocence to comply with procedural due process.
--- Even if an unreasonable law is passed and signed into law legally, substantive due process can make the law unconstitutional.

[Age of Reason]

Only 25 years?? This moron will be back on the streets in 5 to 7 years

Of course.

He'll be out along with other violent offenders, like rapists, kidnappers, child-molesters, and murderers; because we have no room in prisons thanks to all the petty drug offenders we lock up.

I say legalize drugs--if unconcious addicts litter the streets, we should step over them and leave them there. It's Darwin in action.

[Alan Chapman]

"Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819.

[Roscoe]

A law must be clear, fair, and have a presumption of innocence to comply with procedural due process.

Someone accused of violating a legal prohibition in entitled to a hearing.

[Texaggie79]

Wow, thanks. That even proved my point more. Just and even application of the law. Arrest is followed by a trial by peers........ The law is quite just......

[Roscoe]

"But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others." --Thomas Jefferson.

If society grants you a right to swim in a public pool, others will enjoy that right equally.

[Alan Chapman]

And how are the equal rights of others defined?

[Roscoe]

Just one question, yes or no. Should alcohol be outlawed?

Some is, some isn't. 50% vodka is legal, 50% beer isn't.

[Roscoe]

And how are the equal rights of others defined?

By law.

Where does the right to swim in a public pool come from?

[Alan Chapman]

If society grants you a right to swim in a public pool...

You're confusing a right with getting permission to enter private property from the property owner. You don't have to ask permission to exercise a right.

[Roscoe]

You're confusing a right with getting permission to enter private property from the property owner.

A public pool is public property. If a white child may swim there, a black child has an equal right to so.

Where does the right to swim in a public pool come from?

[tpaine]

It's not the mere possesion, but the possesion of it in a state that outlaws it. Just as it would be prohibited for you to own a nuke in your garage. The fact that it is too dangerous and violates the rights of your neighbors is plenty reason to arrest you. You will then go to court, as with drug possession. Due process all the way. - 294 by Texaggie79

Prohibitory type law is not due process, it is a taking, an unreasonable banning of property prior to a criminal misuse. - See my post on due process from findlaw.

Trying to equate inherently unstable substances like nukes or bio-weapons with 'drugs' is a sophomoric dodge, tex.
-- Get off it, - we've done it before ad-nauseum.

[Roscoe]

Prohibitory type law is not due process, it is a taking, an unreasonable banning of property prior to a criminal misuse.

False, unsupported, refuted.

"The coasting trade did, indeed, exist before the constitution was adopted; it might safely be admitted, that it existed by the jus commune of nations; that it existed by an imperfect right; and that the States might prohibit or permit it at their pleasure, imposing upon it any regulations they thought fit, within the limits of their respective territorial jurisdictions. But those regulations were as various as the States; continually conflicting, and the source of perpetual discord and confusion. In this condition, the constitution found the coasting trade. It was not a thing which required to be created, for it already existed. But it was a thing which demanded regulation, and the power of regulating it was given to Congress." --U.S. Supreme Court, GIBBONS v. OGDEN, 22 U.S. 1 (1824)

[Texaggie79]

The fact that they have a trial and are convicted by their peers as a threat goes against your stance.

[Alan Chapman]

A public pool is public property. If a white child may swim there, a black child has an equal right to so.

If a white child urinates in the pool does a black child have the equal right to do likewise?

Where does the right to swim in a public pool come from?

Permission to swim in the pool comes from the property owner. Disposition of property lies in the perview of the property owner.

[tpaine]

You read, but you cannot understand the principles of liberty. - More on due process:

In its discussion of the scope of "liberty" protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment the Court stated:

Neither the Bill of Rights nor the specific practices of the States at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment marks the outer limits of the substantive sphere of liberty which the Fourteenth Amendment protects. See U.S. Const., Amend. 9. As the second Justice Harlan recognized:

     "[T]he full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause `cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the Constitution. This `liberty´ is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on.  It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints, . . . and which also recognizes, what a reasonable and sensitive judgment must, that certain interests require particularly careful scrutiny of the state needs asserted to justify their abridgment."

Poe v. Ullman, supra, 367 U.S. at 543, 81 S.Ct., at 1777

------------------------------

If you can understand this aggie, -- it 'boldly' says that we are to be free of arbitrary takings of property.
- Prohibitions are not due process, they are prior restraints on the possession of quite ordinary substances or property, -- that granted, - can be criminally abused.
-- And again, granted, - states have the power to regulate public use of such substances. But not ban or criminalize their mere possession.

[Texaggie79]

An exponentially more amount of people consume alcohol than hard drugs. As I said, it's legal........

[Roscoe]

If a white child urinates in the pool does a black child have the equal right to do likewise?

If both are observed doing so and only the black child is forced to leave, that child's rights have been violated. 14th Amendment.

[Where does the right to swim in a public pool come from?]

Permission to swim in the pool comes from the property owner. Disposition of property lies in the perview of the property owner.

The public holds the property rights to a public pool. The public facility may NOT violate the equal right of both black and white children to swim there.

"All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it." --Benjamin Franklin

[Texaggie79]

It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints

ar·bi·trar·y   Pronunciation Key  (ärb-trr)
adj.

1. Determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle: stopped at the first motel we passed, an arbitrary choice.
2. Based on or subject to individual judgment or preference: The diet imposes overall calorie limits, but daily menus are arbitrary.
3. Established by a court or judge rather than by a specific law or statute: an arbitrary penalty.

pur·pose·less   Pronunciation Key  (pûrps-ls)
adj.

Lacking a purpose; meaningless or aimless.

Laws that prohibit the ownership of substances where mere possesion is a threat to others, and is supported by the majority of the state are neither arbitrary or purposeless. If the state, without consent of the majority suddenly banned bicycles just for the heck of it, that would be arbitrary and purposeless.