4 ms·
I think you can argue about the efficacy of deterrence/justice but it seems wrong to judge any sentence based on the person and their family as the focus. There
by fasthands9 4y ago
I think you can argue about the efficacy of deterrence/justice but it seems wrong to judge any sentence based on the person and their family as the focus. There are zero individuals for whom a sentence would help - but if you had no (or greatly reduced) sentences for all crime then society as a whole could suffer.
In this case it seems even more obviously bad to factor this since she got pregnant when she knew she was going to trial and likely to be convicted. Some even say the defense team wanted her pregnant for the trial. If the rule is "if you have a baby you don't have to go to jail" what type of moral hazard is this?
- Avicebron 4y agoNot sure on the modern context nowadays, but historically "pleading the belly" defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleading_the_belly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleading_the_belly existed in English common law.
- hunglee2 4y agothanks for the well thought out reply! this case got me thinking, clearly Holmes needs to be punished for wrong doing, clearly there also needs to be a deterrence, and yet the trade off in damaging the life of an innocent seems unnecessary for me. What kind of penalty would serve the first two aims yet not result on the third?
- fasthands9 4y agoAre we even sure that a child would be better off with a woman who is a pathological liar? You could easily argue the type of woman who would choose to get pregnant when staring down a ten year prison sentence is exactly the type of woman who would not be a good mother. I would still argue you are to fixated on the singular case of the child. The harm Holmes did here effected hundreds if not tens of thousands of people extremely negatively (think of all the years/funding for bio research thrown down the toilet) and any future deterrence of behavior like this is worth it.