Color me amazed. In sixteen years, he has averaged fourteen arrests per year-- more than one a month. (This guy really should realize that a Life of Crime isn’t working out for him.) But he’s not the record holder, not by a long shot:
The mind really does boggle.
However, I felt a twinge at this:
Something about this doesn’t sit right with me. In essence, he will be given an extra sentence because he’s a pain in society’s collective ass.
There’s no doubt that he’s a reprehensible human being, but it still strikes me as somewhat . . . well,* unconstitutional*. (Though the courts must disagree.) He served his jail-time/prison sentences, i.e, did the time for his crimes. When he’s done with serving them, he’s supposed to be “square” with the justice system, barring any parole or the like. Now he’s facing additional time which is not proportionate to crime with which he is currently charged.
Should this Habitual Offender law be considered a form of probation? How many arrests/convictions should a person be allowed before the Habitual Offender status takes effect? What about if it’s just a series of petty crimes? (This seems to be his fourth felony-- the rest were all misdemeanors.)
I dunno . . . I’m still on the fence. It doesn’t quite seem fair to me even though I know that he probably deserves it. However, our legal system isn’t based on what you deserve. It’s supposed to be based on impartial enforcement of the law.
They take possession of burgler’s tools pretty damn seriously if you’re a first-time offender. This guy is a three-time felon, plus multiple misdemeanors, so they’re liable to hand him his ass.
These things do and should add up. Obviously, nothing that has happened to this guy since 1980 has dissuaded him from his life of crime, petty or not.
Even a slow learner should be getting the point by now… and a couple of those worry me.
Based on a three paragraph news story ( ) I would probably consider the guy a habitual offender. Any idea how many of those arrests resulted in convictions?
Slightly off the subject, there was a recent furore in the UK where a guy was given bail after he confessed to 420 burglaries.
He was picked up for something unrelated, and gave the police a guided tour of the houses he had burgled (it must have taken weeks). He got a bit under £1,000 from each one.
While I fully support the right of a householder to personally enforce Sharia law on any burglar (a hand and a foot would look nice hanging in the front window), this case really amused me.
Of course it is just possible that the local plod decided to radically improve its clear up rate.
A rather disturbing thought.
Personally I reckon that repeat offenders should serve the penalty for the current offence, plus the sum of all prior penalties within the last 10 years which does not include time in jail.
Why are previous convictions for the same or similar crimes ,not allowed as evidence in a trial. Always wonderered as I think it should be part of the story .
I have heard interviews of jurists after acquitting a person to be told he had been convicted of the same type crime before, and say if they knew they would have voted differently.
I’m kind of on the fence here, as well. I think that things like mandatory “three strikes” rules are probably a bit draconian, especially if there is no provision for extenuating circumstances.
However, I would have absolutely no problem with piling on all previous “suspended sentences” and “early parole” time for a repeat offender, and requiring that the full sentences be served for those.
If someone has done something before, then it is human nature to assume that they will do it again.
If the prosecution’s evidence is sufficiently weak, that the jury brings in a not guilty verdict (which is really normally ‘not sure’, as a judge is entitled to throw a case out of court, or to ‘direct’ the jury), then a conviction based on past behaviour would be trying the persons past, rather assessing the evidence.
Another unpleasant byproduct is that it would encourage the police to ‘pick up the usual suspects’ - and they can be pretty unscrupulous when it comes to evidence. I can think of a number of cases where they have decided that someone is guilty - despite glaring anomalies.
One being the UK school teacher who was convicted and later cleared of killing his foster daughter. The one anomaly was that someone had stuffed a bit of plastic bag up her nose. The police case was that he had embellished his CV, and that he had microscopic bits of her blood on his jacket - since he found her while she was dying - item two was unsurprizing.
Because then, even after you were “square” with the law, they could – intentionally or not – frame you for any crime similar to the ones you’d done. A man steals one car, does his 90 days in prison, and repents. Then a second car goes missing. The cops ask him where he was and he says “I was home alone with a good book.” They don’t believe him, arrest him because he’d done it once, he might well have been the guy. A witness says “yeah, it kinda looked like him” and he gets another 90 days. He gets out, and not a week later another car gets stolen. Was it him? Who cares, it’s an easy conviction for the D.A., and the chief loves having a 100% success rate! The mayor’s getting re-elected for sure! :rolleyes:
…six years later another car goes missing. This poor sonofabitch is out patrolling the street with a flashlight trying to prevent break-ins because every time a car gets stolen, he gets thrown in jail for 90 days!
Well, either the DA didn’t present his evidence properly or the evidence wasn’t good enough or the jurors failed in their duty.
If the evidence says “he did it”, then jurors should say “guilty”. They may or may not (depending on the location) be able to say “but don’t go very hard on him” - but they don’t have the power to pardon.
I dunno about you, but I don’t see anything “square” about this. Prison is more than just “you did x, so your punishment is y,” or at least to me, it is. It’s supposed to be dissuading the offender from repeating. If it’s not working, and he keeps repeating, then yes, the stretch of time needs to be increased or the punishment needs to be varied.
My husband woks for the correction system. A couple of times after he’s done the releases, he’s told me that he knew he’d be seeing that guy again in a couple of years. But what to do?
Let’s say the guy is a petty criminal-- breaking into cars or somesuch. He spends his time in prison bragging about his criminal past and his connections and shows utterly no remorse. On the contrary-- he gives every indication of wanting to go back to a life of crime as soon as possible.
What do we do with a guy like that? Judges can’t arbitrarily give life sentences just because the guy shows no remorse and seems to have the intent of doing it again. Our system is reactive, not proactive.
Back during the days of the parole system, indefinate sentences gave prison authorities some measure of control. If an inmate had behaved violently while in prison or had made no efforts toward rehabilitation, they could inform the parole board of that fact and the board would take it into consideration when determining if the offender should be released. Now, with the Truth in Sentencing laws, a guy gets out when his sentence is up regardless of how he behaved inside the pen.*
The three-strikes/habitual offender laws seem to be limited to felonies-- as with the guy in my OP, you can rack up hundreds of misdemeanor offenses without triggering the increased penalty. Would you suggest seeing it expanded to petty crimes as well? How many would be enough?
To a certain extent, of course. He could be convicted of a crime while in prison, but such things are somewhat rare.
I think you’re confusing “punishment” with “guilt/innocence”. Certainly, a person’s guilt or innocence should be judged fairly and impartially, by a jury of one’s peers, and guilt should be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
However, once you’ve passed that point and moved on to deciding punishment, to an extent it is about what the person “deserves.” “Desert” is one of the core theories of criminal punishment, along with deterrence and rehabilitation and vengeance and a handful of others. To give someone the punishment that he deserves is not at odds with American justice.
As for why there are habitual felony offender punishment enhancement statutes: because we, collectively, want them. We want people who have committed crimes in the past and who are likely to do so again in the future to be put away for not a minimum of two or five years, but for at least 15 or 25. The punishment is proportional, because Scumbag McThief didn’t learn from his first incarceration that crime equals punishment, and he needs another, longer lesson. That’s what we’ve told the legislature we want. If you want different, tell them different.
If the prosecutor doesn’t feel that the punishment fits the crime, he doesn’t have to include the enhancements. The prosecutor is, however, responsible to the voters, and voters tend to like long sentences. Again, if you feel different, tell them different.
I wonder how many of those 226 arrests led to convictions, or even trials?
AI don’t think that ANY number of arrests should be used when trying a case, nor for sentencing. An arrest is not a guilty finding. Remember innocent until proven guilty?
As far as repeat convictions? I have no problem with that being used during sentencing, but I don’t like the idea of it coming up during the trial. Per Jurph’s scenario, it could lead to a “he must be guilty, he’s done it before” mentality. Guilt should be judged based on evidence, not on gut instincts and past actions. Me running a red light at some point in the past should play no part in a jury’s decision as to my guilt on a current charge.
I guess I was a bit unclear with that statement. Many people would probably say that a child molester “deserves” a horrible, torturous punishment but our justice system is limited to giving him a few years in prison.
Well, actually you can be punished for something that might happen in the future. Some laws are prophylactic in nature and punish people for what might happen as a result of their actions, as for example drunk driving laws. We say that driving drunk may lead to innocent people being killed, so we punish drunks who drive even if they haven’t killed anybody yet and they might not ever kill anybody with their driving. It is a public safety measure to prevent drunks from driving.
Only in a roundabout way. If, for example, I say I am going to drive drunk tonight and possibly kill someone, you can’t arrest me until I actually do it.
) I would probably consider the guy a habitual offender. Any idea how many of those arrests resulted in convictions?