Just fighting ignorance, you know.
I get tired of the inaccurate and biased way conservatives are often portrayed around here. You can’t offer defamatory opinions and expect to have them go unchallenged.
If you are really concerned with not wanting to hijack threads you shouldn’t make biased broad brush political assertions that have nothing to do with the OP.
You fight your ignorance and leave me to fight mine: I repeat, my comments and my opinion were NOT directed at you; you have chosen to believe that they were. If the shoe fits, wear it. If not, butt out.
Bearing in mind that I think she should do at least six months for the escape, I don’t think any more time serves any purpose. If she hadn’t served a year, my view would be different. This is somewhat influenced by the fact that I don’t believe in harsh drug laws and I don’t think dealers should do anymore time than users, unless they sell to minors.
None of this is going to happen, anyhow. She’ll be returned to prison to complete her sentence. Any “mercy” she receives will be a suspended or concurrent sentence for the escape.
Let’s see in 1974 gas was about $0.60 cents a gallon, today it is about $3.85/ gallon. close enough to 5X what it was then. So in today’s dollars she was involved in a roughly a $3,000 heroin transaction.
I would note that this is not a couple of joints, or a dime bag. This qualifies as a lot of smack.
:rolleyes: Nice strawman there. I don’t think I have ever read of anyone breaking into someones house to steal so they could feed their Big Mac habit. On the other hand my house has been burgled by drug addicts. So if you don’t mind, I won’t shed too many tears for drug dealers that get caught.
As others have said, just because she kept her nose clean is no reason for her to get a get out of jail free card. She does need to serve some time on both the original charge and time for the jail break.
Oh, and Magiver California has taken prints for as long as I have been licensed here (1968), either index finger or thumb.
I don’t think that “humanitarian” is part of the job description for a Sheriff, nor do I think it should be. Sheriff Arpaio needs to keep tighter control over his men WRT prisoner abuse, but other than that, if all Sheriffs in the US had a similar commitment to arresting criminals and making jail the punishment it should be, this would be a much better country.
This is odd, i consider myself pretty damn liberal in most aspects yet i have absolutely no problem with this. Also, i think if she was a scary looking black guy most people wouldn’t either and it wouldn’t even be on the news.
That’s the saddest thing about it for me personally. If she was male, there’s no news here, move along people. Black male…even less news.
But unfortunately, there is a bias in our society that says that women somehow do not deserve to be in jail. That it is a crime against society to jail mothers. About every year or two, we get some big front page story in our local paper about the hardship of women in prison, what a tragedy it is for the mothers and how hard it is on their families. But never a single similar word about men in jail.
Sorry, no sympathy here because she’s a woman or a mother. Equal rights for all people is what I believe, and that requires equal responsibility for our actions and equal punishment for our crimes.
The only possible sympathy I could have given would have been in relation to the sentence for the crime, as I indicated earlier. If she’d have gotten that for a minor marijuana conviction, I would say that they should pardon her for that, but still require her to serve 6-12 months for the escape. (IMHO)
However, $600 in HEROIN in 1976 was a pretty big amount, which means I don’t have a lot of sympathy over a 10 year sentence, of which she would have likely served no more than 3 years.
So back to jail with her, for at least a couple of years, plus 6-12 months for the escape.
Her being a good mother and a nice person has nothing to do with anything.
The words “A real humanitarian” were intended to be applied to Collaborator; I hoped they would help to express my contempt for his attitude. I can see how you might think I meant to apply them to Sheriff Arpio but that wasn’t my intent. Sorry for the confusion. With all due respect and with no intention of picking a fight or a quarrel, I beg to disagree with your opinion that more Sheriffs should emulate Arpaio. If it is true that his men are guilty of abusing prisoners, I can only sat that as the twig is bent, so it the tree inclined.
I don’t recall reading anything that suggests that this woman either broke into someone’s hope to steal, or forced anyone else to. With regard to whether drug dealers are evil, evil people, you’re free to your own opinion, of course, as this is IMHO. I respectfully disagree.
For me, the clues in this puzzle seem to jibe with what Zebra said.
Certainly she can’t get away scot free, but I’d be content to give her community service. Her lifestyle since her incarceration doesn’t provide her a “get out of jail free card,” (no pun intended) but it does count for something, IMO. She’s shown that she was able to pick her life up, start over, and live clean for over 30 years. She’s not a threat to anyone. Isn’t the idea to rehabilitate, if possible?
I’ll agree that she should answer for the escape charge. Were I the person in power, though, I’d commute her original sentence to time already served.
I’m not sure it figures exactly like that, though. The price of gasoline has quintupled since then, but the price of heroin has actually gone down significantly since the 1970’s, even though it’s paradoxically purer at the street level. $600 was a lot of money then, but may or may not have been a lot of heroin, at least compared to what it would buy today. It would be better if they told us the gram amount that was supposed to be involved.
Will you stop using that phrase then? You’ve now given me the funeral scene from All That Jazz as an earworm. 
(rather the scene at the fund raiser earlier in the movie that the funeral scene riffs off of. You try having Ben Vereen say “A great humanitarian!” over and over again in the back of your mind and see how long it is before you snap!) 
I don’t see how having her serve time in the state of MI, does anthing for the citizens of that state and they will have to pay to incarcerate her.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m 40. I’m nowhere near the same person I was when I was 19. It would be very strange to have to answer for what someone else did. Hell I can’t even remember what I did when I was 19.
The purpose of imprisonment is worthy of its own GD thread. But if we’re looking to punish the criminal…why? To make ourselves feel better? So that we can say, “haHAA! You will obey your masters!” That’s not why I punish my kids. I punish my kids with the intent of having them learn the errors of their ways and to see why what they did was a mistake (outside of “fear of retribution”). So that they 1) don’t do it again and 2) can draw upon the experience of that event when making future decisions. the value of critical independent thought can’t be overstated.
Sounds like our heroine did some thinking when she was in the joint and when she was on the lam because she got right the hell out of that life and became who her punishers wanted her to be in the first place: an upstanding and productive citizen. And best of all, she didn’t do it on our dime! I say The System needs to show a little common sense. People are going to escape their sentences from time to time. That’s not ok. But if they can demonstrate that they no longer “require” the sentence, that they are no longer a threat to Law and Order, then I say we focus our legal efforts on addressing REAL threats and not “potential symbols.”
She should serve time equal to that of her partner when he was paroled (so she owes what, about a year?). She should also serve some time for breaking out of jail.
Basically, I think she owes for the punishment phase.
No time is owed for rehab (she has proven that she is rehabbed).
No time is owed for segregation (she has proven that is not needed).
Now - why punish? For the message it sends to others. If the state lets her go, it is saying that you can break out of prison and suffer NO consequences for it. That is a bad message to send to everyone else sitting in prison.
Does it? Or does it say, “If you break out and don’t cause trouble then carry on not causing trouble.” But I think publicizing cases where the law catches up with escapees is VERY important. That’s what will send the message, “And we will NOT stop looking for you.”
Your edit is appropriate, I agree. However, IMHO it is still making it OK to break out of prison if she serves no time since she has been such a good person since then (aside from the additional crimes of falsifying identity - which I see no reason to prosecute in this case).
Is it a crime to falsify you identity that no longer represents who you are? (esoterically) I don’t think she needs to do any more time. I don’t think who she was exists anymore.
Count me among those not shedding a tear. She was dealing heroin, not smoking a joint. And has been pointed out several times, $600 was a lot of heroin back then.
My elderly parents house was broken into by drug addicts, so don’t tell me this was a victim less crime. She could be living with her husband and children right now if she had serve her time. She had the choice to have this behind her, but she choose to go another route. If we decide to let criminals decide how long to serve in prison, we are all screwed. But she broke the law, broke out of jail, and has been breaking the law every day since. Toss her back in jail.
And I concur with another thing. If she was a black he, this wouldn’t have even made the news. And 'he’d be back in jail for a long time.
I agree with you.
If the message is ‘if you break out of prision and live an exemplary rest of your life without once breaking the law again,THEN there will be few consequences’ - that isn’t such a bad message (there are not “no” consequences, since even being arrested and exposed is a “consequence”).
After all, isn’t the primary purpose of prision to deter bad behaviour?