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Seems like the right decision under these circumstances: > Mr. Sullivan, 34, had committed a string of crimes by the time he was charged with raping a 72-year-

Seems like the right decision under these circumstances: > Mr. Sullivan, 34, had committed a string of crimes by the time he was charged with raping a 72-year-old woman after a burglary in 1989 in Pensacola. String of crimes including raping an elderly woman? Probably just better off locking up people like that forever. Heck, if even 1 out of 10 of them repeated if let out at age 40, what a horrible mess for no good cause. String of crimes including violently abusing an elderly woman? Yeah, that pretty much forfeits all claims on your sovereignty and freedom. > Mr. Graham, 22, was sentenced to a year in jail and three years’ probation for a 2003 robbery of a Jacksonville restaurant, during which an accomplice beat the manager with a steel bar. Mr. Graham was sentenced to life in 2005 for violating probation by committing a home invasion robbery when he was 17. Repeated violent crime, followed by more crime on probation? Again, what's the downside of locking him up forever? That it might be nicer or more proper to let him go after a long time, let him back into society with no skills or acclimation to the outside world? In days before society had resources to imprison people, both of those violent criminals almost certainly would've been executed and society would've moved on. Now, I'm against the death penalty typically outside of states of emergency, because executing even one innocent man is a terrible thing. But if someone's repeatedly hurting people from a very young age, it doesn't seem like there's any gain to letting them loose after 20 years, and potentially a heck of a lot of bad that could happen.

ojbyrne 17y ago
Just to be clear, Mr. Sullivan was 13 years old. In most of the world (apparently not Florida) that's an age where there's at least some questions about you being responsible for your own actions.
- lionhearted 17y ago
  > Just to be clear, Mr. Sullivan was 13 years old. In most of the world (apparently not Florida) that's an age where there's at least some questions about you being responsible for your own actions. He raped an elderly woman - regardless of any questions about whether he should be responsible for that in a philosophical sense, don't you think it'd be incredibly reckless to let him back into society?
  - rms 17y ago
    I think that is up to psychiatrists decide, judges don't have the proper education to determine whether or not Mr. Sullivan is dangerous.
  - ojbyrne 17y ago
    I think it's incredibly reckless to write him off at 13 years old. There's plenty of examples out there of people who committed horrendous crimes as teenagers, paid appropriately for their mistakes, and went on to productive lives.
    - lionhearted 17y ago
      > I think it's incredibly reckless to write him off at 13 years old. Serious question - what percent of repeat offenders would be acceptable to you? Because if 95% of the extremely brutal, violent people we lock up forever could've been rehabilitated, but the other 5% would've raped/murdered/assaulted/brutalized someone innocent, that seems like a tradeoff worth making. If you let extremely violent criminals go, some of them will repeat. I'm okay locking up someone who does such heinous thing forever, and I don't feel that's reckless. Put this way - if one elderly woman isn't violently raped by a repeat offender, and 99 violent criminals spend their lives behind bars who could've been rehabilitated, that's a fine tradeoff to me. So in such a horrific incidence, I'm not okay with a repeat rate of 1%. You?
    - ezy 17y ago
      I don't want to be a complete turd, but you haven't given any examples of such people -- or even really made an argument that whatever examples you would have given are a significant proportion. I can think of a few, and in all but one case, their "conversion" is rather suspect. Or "horrendous" means some form of not-so-violent larceny (e.g. about as far as brandishing a weapon to intimidate) -- not rape or violent assault. One uncomfortable thing you have to face in life is that some people are worth significantly less than others. I'd rather save an animal at the shelter than save the examples of utter trash the article mentions. There are billions of people on the planet, you're not going to miss these bits of broken humanity (and no, I don't particularly care about their families). Would you really trust some of these people you talk about in the abstract? It's one thing to say that you read about Joe Thug turning his life around in Salon. It's quite another to trust your life around this person.
mynameishere 17y ago
In olden times they would hang or severely flog such people. I have no idea what is best, but in some instances you are essentially dealing with broken specimens of humanity. Maybe a good lobotomy would be best. They could ask me whether I prefer plastic or paper. I prefer plastic.
- daeken 17y ago
  As much as I agree that such people are "inhuman", and my first instinct (like many, if not most, other people, I'd imagine) is that these people don't deserve to be treated like 'normal' people... they do deserve it. If you act in a violent way against someone who is not actively dangerous (e.g. waving a weapon around), you're not better than they are. We have laws for a reason, and this guy probably should spend the rest of his life in jail, but doing physical harm to him just brings you down to his level. When it's done by our government (e.g. capital punishment), it's just making us all responsible.

ojbyrne 17y ago

Just to be clear, Mr. Sullivan was 13 years old. In most of the world (apparently not Florida) that's an age where there's at least some questions about you being responsible for your own actions.

lionhearted 17y ago
> Just to be clear, Mr. Sullivan was 13 years old. In most of the world (apparently not Florida) that's an age where there's at least some questions about you being responsible for your own actions. He raped an elderly woman - regardless of any questions about whether he should be responsible for that in a philosophical sense, don't you think it'd be incredibly reckless to let him back into society?
- rms 17y ago
  I think that is up to psychiatrists decide, judges don't have the proper education to determine whether or not Mr. Sullivan is dangerous.
- ojbyrne 17y ago
  I think it's incredibly reckless to write him off at 13 years old. There's plenty of examples out there of people who committed horrendous crimes as teenagers, paid appropriately for their mistakes, and went on to productive lives.
  - lionhearted 17y ago
    > I think it's incredibly reckless to write him off at 13 years old. Serious question - what percent of repeat offenders would be acceptable to you? Because if 95% of the extremely brutal, violent people we lock up forever could've been rehabilitated, but the other 5% would've raped/murdered/assaulted/brutalized someone innocent, that seems like a tradeoff worth making. If you let extremely violent criminals go, some of them will repeat. I'm okay locking up someone who does such heinous thing forever, and I don't feel that's reckless. Put this way - if one elderly woman isn't violently raped by a repeat offender, and 99 violent criminals spend their lives behind bars who could've been rehabilitated, that's a fine tradeoff to me. So in such a horrific incidence, I'm not okay with a repeat rate of 1%. You?
  - ezy 17y ago
    I don't want to be a complete turd, but you haven't given any examples of such people -- or even really made an argument that whatever examples you would have given are a significant proportion. I can think of a few, and in all but one case, their "conversion" is rather suspect. Or "horrendous" means some form of not-so-violent larceny (e.g. about as far as brandishing a weapon to intimidate) -- not rape or violent assault. One uncomfortable thing you have to face in life is that some people are worth significantly less than others. I'd rather save an animal at the shelter than save the examples of utter trash the article mentions. There are billions of people on the planet, you're not going to miss these bits of broken humanity (and no, I don't particularly care about their families). Would you really trust some of these people you talk about in the abstract? It's one thing to say that you read about Joe Thug turning his life around in Salon. It's quite another to trust your life around this person.

mynameishere 17y ago

In olden times they would hang or severely flog such people. I have no idea what is best, but in some instances you are essentially dealing with broken specimens of humanity. Maybe a good lobotomy would be best. They could ask me whether I prefer plastic or paper. I prefer plastic.

daeken 17y ago
As much as I agree that such people are "inhuman", and my first instinct (like many, if not most, other people, I'd imagine) is that these people don't deserve to be treated like 'normal' people... they do deserve it. If you act in a violent way against someone who is not actively dangerous (e.g. waving a weapon around), you're not better than they are. We have laws for a reason, and this guy probably should spend the rest of his life in jail, but doing physical harm to him just brings you down to his level. When it's done by our government (e.g. capital punishment), it's just making us all responsible.