A story in today’s paper states a California homeless man was sentenced to four years in jail and a $101 million dollar fine for setting wildfires in 2006 and earlier.
I’ve seen this sort of fine for people with modest incomes, and guessed they’d have to pay some periodically for the rest of their lives. But what possible sense does it make to give a fine to somebody with no income?
Do they add prison time for the unpaid fines? Or are the judges just playing games making the publc think justice is being served?
It seems pretty clear from this L.A. Times story that the prosecutors are trying to “send a message”; a representative from the U.S. attorney’s office admitted that “the likelihood of [the homeless man] being able to meet that restitution payment is extremely slim.”
As far as throwing him in jail for unpaid debts, I don’t think that can legally be done; but I’ll let a real lawyer answer that one.
The Eighth Amendment of course prohibits excessive fines, but that hasn’t been fleshed out too much by subsequent case law. The Court doesn’t look too kindly on heavy fines against indigents, but doesn’t bar them. Civil forfeiture is permitted as a remedy to the fine provided such is not excessive.
Recent case law has concentrated on the proportionality of the punishment imposed measured against the offense - in this case the wildfires that caused massive damage would certainly rate a heavy fine.
And while equal protection principles would seem to argue against fining the indigent, frankly, I’m not sure what works here. Prison time might be preferable to living on the streets, depending on the POV of the individual (at least he’ll be fed, clothed, and have a bed). Certainly ramping up the jail time for him and foregoing the fine presents equal protection problems as well.
I suppose they’re worried about setting a precedent. Suppose they had fined him something like $10,000 - a sum he might have been able to pay at some point. Then a few years from now, somebody else with significant assets starts a fire and is fined ten million dollars. He’d argue that the established fine is ten thousand dollars and he’s being unfairly fined an excessive amount just because he’s got money.
I’m not quite catching onto what the problem is supposed to be.
The guy now owes $101 million. That’s a debt, and the existence of the debt gives the debt holder (the gov’t in this case I guess) all the rights against him that debt holders generally have.
I can’t see how it matters that he can’t pay the debt. People incur debts they can’t pay, quite frequently. We can model this guy’s situation after theirs.
Well, I think the question is, what’s the point of fining a homeless person $101 million when there is no realistic chance that the government will ever collect 1/100th of that amount? Personally, I don’t think it’s an unreasonable question. YMMV.
Add to that, how’s he supposed to get to work on earning that $101 million when he’s in jail? Have they got some sort of massive work-release program for him?
How about they throw him in the tank for 4 years, get some analysis on him to find out why he was homeless in the first place? Is he nuts? Does the state now owe him anti-nuts medicine? And then let him participate in getting his education while in the barry place like Bundy did.
Shit, if he’s got to go to jail at least maybe forgive the fine and give him some incentive to participate in society. Like train him to be a fireman or something.
And Frylock answered it quite well. It would make no sense to say"if you are indigent you can do all sorts of nasty things without repercussions". And what if the guy inherits a fortune or wins the lottery tomorrow? What if it turns out he wasn’t indigent after all? Could he just turn around to the judge and say “gotcha!”?
Are you nuts? The absolute last job you want this idiot to have is a fireman. There are already too many disturbing cases of closet firebugs joining fire departments to be near exciting fires - some of them then set fires so that they’ll be the first on the scene to put them out and be a big hero.
This guy is a known firebug - no responsible force would take him, or should.
Actually, it looks like that they didn’t fine him $100 million, but rather assessed him $100 million in restitution.
In other words, they determined that the fire caused (more than) $100 million in damage, and he is required to pay that amount back to restore those who were injured.
It’s as though he had stolen $100 million, and in addition to jail time and any fines (payable to the state), he is also required to restore the money he stole to the people he stole it from.
Of course, it will never get paid by the defendant in this instance, and nobody will get paid back, but in other cases arsonists might have assets which could be used to restore the damage caused by their fires, so as precedent it was important to assess it.
Short of bringing back the lash and the stocks, I don’t see how you can meaningfully punish a destitute indigent. Anything they hit him with is going to be symbolic and meant to set an example for other firebugs. So you might as well order him to pay $101 million as $1000.
But suppose this guy did manage to get a job that paid just barely enough to pay for some basic necessities. Would they try to take the money for restitution?
Of course they would - and they should. Even if they only took fifty bucks or so from the guy for the rest of his life - if he was so dirt poor that that prevented him from seeing a movie or going out to a bar for a night more than rarely, that would sting.
If a man were to father children and become a nonsupporting bum, we wouldn’t let him off the hook because he is a bum - we would order him to pay what he could. Same principle applies here. And if he ends his life having paid only a few thousand back of that $101 million, it doesn’t matter - it matters only that he was hit for that few thousand.
Considering the damage caused (and let’s remember that fires this big have killed people) I won’t feel bad if he suffers some. And while I do want him to get treatment for his problems as well, that does not mean he should not pay in some way for the damage he caused.
Agreed, pretty much. Here are some interesting bits from p. 6 of the article Gfactor posted:
It sounds to me as if this case may set a new extreme with regards to the disparity between the defendant’s earning ability and the amount he is ordered to pay. Maybe it doesn’t matter, though.
“Basic necessities” is food, not movies or booze. Would the government take every cent from this bum or is there some notion of not starving the debtor?
Sure; he’s going to take over as CEO for Goldman Sachs for a couple of years. It wouldn’t have worked out for him this year, but if the economy picks up in 2009, he might be able to get everything paid off in a couple of years.
In all seriousness, I don’t have a cite, but I know from several news stories that I can dig up if necessary that failing to make some payments to the state for criminal matters can often lead to imprisonment.
I don’t think that it can necessarily apply to restitution payments such as the one assigned against the arsonist here, but as terms of parole or probation, convicts often have to make significant payments to the state or to people that provide “services” related to their parole and failing to pay them can result in their going back to prison. For instance, if the terms of your parole state that you have to take a drug test monthly and pay $100 for the test, simply being willing to take a drug test without having or being willing to pay the money to provide for it can mean going back to prison. Failing to be able to get their finances back in order (especially given the difficulty of regaining employment as a convict) is a significant contribution to people “failing” parole.
Well, when my brother first got divorced the original child support agreement did not leave him enough money for rent, and he had to move back in with my folks. Now, this was gradually modified over time, but he certainly was in a major fix then.
I certainly would have more sympathy for someone in this position than someone that intentionally set a fire that cost millions of dollars in damage.
Generally people with debts before a court have to come up with some sort of payment plan - if they don’t, a judge can order wages to be garnished. And that order can certainly leave someone with very little money to live - though it typically won’t leave them totally broke.