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An informative read if you're curious about US sentencing: http://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ http://www.p
by Jabbles 13y ago
An informative read if you're curious about US sentencing: http://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ http://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence...;
excerpt: "People reporting on federal criminal justice — whether journalists or bloggers — routinely report on the statutory maximum sentence that a defendant could hypothetically get, an oft-ridiculous figure calculated by taking all the charged crimes and adding up the maximum punishment for each. This is usually followed by some sort of pronouncement that THIS PERSON CHARGED OF MINOR CRIMES FACES MORE JAIL TIME THAN YOU'D GET IF YOU BEAT A TODDLER TO DEATH WITH AN UNCONSCIOUS NUN WHILE RAPING A BLIND LIBRARIAN, or words to that effect."
- TallGuyShort 13y agoWhile that certainly means such stories aren't as serious as they sound, it's still indicative of a pretty messed up sentencing system. Thank you for the link.
- tibbon 13y agoSeems to be a strange thing though in our justice system- that seemingly more minor crimes have greater maximum sentences (and sometimes mandatory minimums) than more violent/harmful crimes. I know it isn't just something we can 'fix' easily, but it does seem to be a bug in the system essentially.
- VladRussian2 13y agothere are crimes against the System and crimes against another person(s). Through the history of the human race the former were punished harder than the latter. Jesus for example. There is a joke in Russia about a person buying a fake money printing device. After discovering that the device itself is a fake (it was loaded with a bit of real money for demo purposes during sale), the buyer reports the fraud to the authorities. As result the seller gets relatively small time for the fraud he committed against the buyer and the buyer gets much bigger time because he tried to commit fraud (ie. intended to print fake money) against the government.
- mjn 13y agoIt's not just "journalists or bloggers" who do that; the government will often quote the maximum possible when discussing the case as well, in order to intimidate the defendant into a plea bargain.
- mpyne 13y agoThe government at least mentions that it's a maximum sentence. There's no other specific number they can quote anyways, it's not like they know what the judge and jury might approve that far ahead of time.
- jessaustin 13y agoA more ethical group of prosecutors than we have (recruited, perhaps, among the sea pirates, slave traders, and drug kingpins of the world?), wouldn't make speculative statements about sentencing at all, much less to the media.
- mpyne 13y agoBecause obviously allowing the media to make speculative statements with are completely unfounded is much better than at least tempering with fact. OK.
- jessaustin 13y ago"Facts" don't miraculously appear out of prosecutors' asses. Prosecutors are not uninterested parties in trials, and if you really cared about the veracity of media reports you would encourage the media to do its own reporting rather than lap up press releases.
- lawnchair_larry 13y agoYep, which is why it's appropriate to quote the same figures when criticizing the bad behavior of the prosecution. Even if they won't get the maximum, the number is still significant, because it serves as the anchor for extorting a plea bargain, as well as sentencing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring