4 ms·

According to the article he was convicted of "felony petty theft." > Williams, who testified in his own defense during his trial, > testified that some of

• mikeash 14y ago
  > Sounds like implicit intimidation. I think that if there were claims that he threatened violence, it would have been quoted in the article. This confuses me a bit. I would personally put "implicit intimidation" under the category of "threatened violence", and it seems that the state agreed.
  • pyre 14y ago
    If you look (by your nature) intimidating and give someone a grim look, they could be intimidated (especially a 13 year old). Does that mean that you should treat this the same as if he had said aloud, "I'll break your bones if you don't give me that piece of pizza?" [This is all speculation anyways since we don't really have the full story.]
    • mikeash 14y ago
      There are really two separate questions here which are getting tangled up. The first question is what crime he was convicted of. The answer to that seems pretty clear: theft with assault or intimidation. The second question is what he actually did. The answer to that is much less clear. But the second question doesn't really matter to this specific discussion, although it's obviously highly important in the grand scheme of things. He was sentenced based on the crime he was convicted of, so it was theft with assault or intimidation which got him a life sentence, and characterizing it as "stealing a slice of pizza" is tremendously misleading. Whether he did something that deserves to be considered that crime is another question, but a completely different discussion. If I get life in prison for a murder I didn't commit, I still got life "for murder", and it would be wrong to characterize it as e.g. harsh sentencing for a lesser crime.
      • pyre 14y ago
        > The answer to that seems pretty clear: theft with > assault or intimidation. I don't see any references to 'assault or intimidation' being part of the charge in that article. There's also the part where the prosecutor got the charge 'upgraded' to a felony instead of a misdemeanor, which was based on his prior record rather than the facts of this particular case (at least according to the article).
        • mikeash 14y ago
          Well, a felony implies a serious crime. For a theft to be felony-level, it either needs to be theft of extremely valuable goods, or the act of stealing needs to be be aggravated. The pizza was presumably not value, so process of elimination leaves us with the second. So again, maybe he didn't actually do what he was convicted of, but that's a separate question altogether.
          • pyre 14y ago
            You're speculating though. The only 'hard information' that we're going on here is the article that says this: > While petty theft is typically a misdemeanor charge, > Williams' earlier convictions allowed prosecutors to > upgrade it to a felony. Sounds more like a "pattern of law breaking" argument was used to upgrade it rather than the facts of this particular matter, but again this is just speculation because we're not reading a blow-by-blow account of the trial.
            • mikeash 14y ago
              Again, doesn't matter. He was convicted of felony theft, a serious crime, and sentenced accordingly. To say he was sentenced for stealing a slice of pizza is entirely wrong. Whether the additional factors were threats at the time of the theft or previous crimes or whatever, that's what he was sentenced for.
              • pyre 14y ago
                Is it so hard to believe that a prosecutor used the 'stole a slice of pizza' incident as a foot in the door, and pushed hard to upgrade it to a felony just to get a feather in his hat (i.e. as a political power-play)? Would you be singing the same tune if a prosecutor had tried to get him convicted of 'felony jay-walking' and then sent him away for 25 to life? If 2 felony convictions + 1 minor infraction are enough to get you to do hard time, can we really claim that it's a '3 strikes policy?' Though, not a resident of California, I was under the impression that 3 strikes laws were sold to the public under the guise of hard criminals that are repeat offenders. This guy doesn't sound like a hard criminal, so I would venture that this situation is one that violates the intent of the law (or at least the advertised intent that the public was sold on).
  • flyinRyan 14y ago
    This is disgusting. So if you're insecure, suddenly other people need to go to jail?