Free Republic

t's rare for Bill DiMascio, an advocate for prisoners, to argue that a criminal sentence is too light. It's even more unusual for him to rally behind Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham - in his words, an "ultra-punitive" prosecutor. But Common Pleas Court Judge Rayford A. Means has forced him to do just that. Means has caused a furor with his handling of the sexual-assault case of Tracy McIntosh, a former University of Pennsylvania professor, who last year pleaded no contest to assaulting a graduate student and niece of a close friend. Last March, Means sentenced McIntosh, an expert...

A Montgomery County judge yesterday returned to prison a Derwood man who many think should never have been released into the home of his teen victim. Circuit Court Judge Durke H. Thompson reinstated the 81/2 years remaining in Sidney Ray Richardson's sentence for raping his 9-year-old stepdaughter from 1995 to 1997. In 1998, Judge Thompson sentenced Richardson, 53, to 10 years, suspending all but 18 months. Judge Thompson then allowed Richardson back into the child's home at the request of the mother, Cynthia Richardson, in 2001. The child gave birth to a baby girl in November of that year, and...