Anyone who deliberately taints food and then feeds it to the unsuspecting has earned and richly deserves jail time.
If a person wants to imbibe on their own time in private, far be it from me to have a word to say.
These individuals did NOT imbibe on their own time in private though, they suckered other people into imbibing who otherwise would have done no such thing. People who may have allergies. People who may have to pass no-excuses-allowed drug tests at their work. People with ethical or moral or even religious reasons for abstaining. People who might be working on their sobriety.
The law frequently punishes people for what ifs. For starters, there’s a whole line of attempt crimes. “What if his aim were better…”
I think DrDeth is wrong. Twenty years is possibly too stringent, but they deserve at least a year or two. It doesn’t take a lot of abstract thought to arrive at the conclusion that possibly sneaking an intoxicant into food and then serving it to the unsuspecting is a bad idea.
Exactly my point. “Attempted murder” is not punished the same as “Murder”. The law does not determine sentences based on what might have happened. Anyone with even a little imagination could whip up all sorts of horrific hypothetical consequences for the most mundane crimes. That does not mean we should punish the guilty as though those consequences had actually come to pass.
Maybe a lengthy but probated sentence would be appropriate here.
If the boys are to be believed, it’s not just that no harm was intended but that they honestly didn’t even know any would result.
Altering someone’s food with a drug is awfully serious and deserves a serious punishment, maybe 5 to 10 or whatever a judge deems sufficient. Probation would insure that if they’ve learned their lesson they won’t suffer unduly but that if, in fact, they’re really so callous and insincere that they will suffer greviously for their crime.
While what these kids did was wrong and they should be punished for it, I think that any jail time past, say, 3-6 months, would be superfluous and only serve to placate people’s anger.
Besides, the perpetrators will be punished long after their sentences have been carried out. The drug-related felony conviction will cause all sorts of problems for them down the road. They’ll probably be ineligible for federal financial aid. They won’t be able to get a security clearance. Getting a job will be more difficult. And so on.
A suspended sentence seems appropriate here. No one was harmed, but it was silly.
Just wanted to express my admiration for Excalibre’s excellent posts above, one rebutting the NORML cite and one distininguishing between consensual pot use and the situation here. Both points I was going to make… until I saw them done first, and better, by Excalibre.
I don’t think the “allergy” argument is going anyplace. Replace pot with peanuts; I made stir fry and when you ask, I forgot that I used peanut instead of canola oil. One emergency room trip later (plus me frantically searching my cabinet to ruefully realize I did use peanut oil) - what am I guilty of, assuming I was not previously aware of your allergy.
This is NOT to defend the boneheads. This is to diffuse the allergy “what-if”. Start using that, and most people will be guilty of some sort of allergic reaction “what-if” scenario sooner or later.
But that’s not even close to what happened here. Unless they’re completely unfamiliar with marijuana these men knew that, allergic or not, the drug would have some effect on their victims. There’s a huge difference between “forgot about an ingredient” and “deliberately added an ingredient designed to have an effect.”
That said, I agree that the allergy argument is spurious. What they did was bad enough on its own without playing the what if game. They made over a dozen people sick and caused a panic. That in itself is sufficient to warrant some time in Stripe City (as Molly Ivins calls it).
Hey, look! The board’s resident illiterate is actually criticizing someone else for not reading a cite!
Of course, it’s no surprise to anyone that, once again, Humpy hasn’t bothered to read the entire thread before he embarassed himself in it:
Back to the topic at hand, I say lock the dumbfucks up. But anything more than a year is far too excessive. What they did was stupid, and dangerous, but no one actually got hurt, and the odds of them doing it again are nil. Let’s not waste a bunch of taxpayer’s money incarcerating these boobs towards no useful end.
I think people saying ~1 year or more of prison time is underestimating how long one year really is. I was in lockup for 24 hours for a DUI and I can tell you I sure as hell learned my lesson with that alone, not even bringing the other consequences into consideration. Not only that, but until this trial has finished (quite a while away), they have the possibility of spending 20 years in prison on their mind. Waiting 4 months with that on my mind was much, much worse than spending a day with any illness I’ve ever had, and I only had the possiblity of spending a week in prison. Again, not saying they shouldn’t be punished, but there was little harm done and community service + probation is sufficient. I can pretty much garuntee that they never do it again, but if they do, just remove them from the gene pool permanantly.
Advocacy group or not, you might want to try taking notice of the quotation marks and bolding on that page. NORML is quoting the summaries directly from the actual studies, not making up their own. I’ve seen that page before and have tracked down some of those studies to their original sources. They do indeed say what NORML claims.
I just can’t go along with a slap on the wrist here. Sure, 10-50 years (standard sentencing) or 20-100 years (if the prosecutors get their way) is excessive, but a suspended sentence or some community service just doesn’t fit with the severity of slipping illegal drugs to other people without their consent. A few months of real jail time and a felony on their records seems appropriate to me.
They were teachers. I don’t know if that’s a job that requires random drug testing in Dallas, but there are a lot of places where it is.
And what would you expect the boys to say? “Why, yes, officer, we thought it through and realized that these teachers could experience serious problems, but we did it anyway”? Yeah, right.
In this case, the charges are not based on a what if. They did knowingly sneak an illegal substance into foodstuffs passed on to teachers. The twenty years, if they can tack it on, is only a possible maximum and I’d be surprised as hell if they got the maximum. Let’s save the outrage for after they get sentenced.
So when BabaBooey said “remove them from the gene pool permanantly [sic]” it actually meant…if they lace someone’s food with pot again they should be compelled to breed?
No, I think he was suggesting an insanely harsh penalty as a humorous way of advocating a much lighter policy. C’mon, man, read the post again, and tell me you can’t see that he’s making a joke. He goes from “One year is way to harsh,” to “Kill 'em if they do it again.” That’s not a serious suggestion. It’s an ironic jab at the people calling for draconian punitative measures.