This link leads to a very interesting story that really makes me want to check the pulse of the SDMB board.
To summarize, a man was convicted in 2000 of armed robbery (no one harmed physically) of a Burger King. After his conviction he was told to wait to be told where and when to report to prison but for 13 years he never heard back. He has since married, had kids, started a business and never did anything to hide his identity. He was even stopped for traffic tickets with proper name and address but was not wanted.
13 years later the Missouri Department of Corrections realized the clerical error and sent a SWAT team to his door. He is now behind bars… 13 years later.
Should he have to serve the sentence?
I am truly on the fence.
On one hand, he definitely did the crime… so damn right… pay the time.
On the other hand, isn’t prison supposed to - at least in part - rehabilitate a person? He has apparently done that, pays taxes, raised a family and kept his nose clean. Adding him to our prison population means taking a citizen who pays taxes and now makes him a burden on the system… plus isn’t there a significant chance he can go back to his old way of life after 10+ years in the system?
I wonder whether him making him pay for his crime, at this time and after all he’s demonstrated, and with the dread he must have experienced on a daily basis (‘when are they coming’), might verge on being ‘cruel and unusual’.
Sentence him to three years, make it retroactive to 2000, suspend it based on good behavior for the next ten years, make that retroactive, and then let him go. Hopefully all at the same time. Or else just pardon him. I’m as law-and-order as the next guy, but if he’s been doing OK for thirteen years I don’t see why he needs to serve time.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - Assuming, as my nastily suspicious mind inclines me to ask, that there is nothing significant that they left out of the story.
I’d be ok converting the sentence to some sort of supervised release with a significant length of time commitment to some community service. Given that he has a business and has learned a trade I’d suggest mentoring at-risk youths and teaching them some job skills would be an ideal community service.
I don’t want to see the guy’s life ruined. And the state did mess up. But he should be made to pay in some way. A year of weekends in lock up? Probably tot severe. Community service of some sort? I don’t know, but he shouldn’t just get a free pass.
He turned his life around and became a definite asset to the community through dedication and hard work. I’d call that self-rehabilitation without cost to the state, not a “free pass”.
He’s been under state supervision for the past 13 years, it’s not his fault the state didn’t do a good job, but to his credit they didn’t need to. Any effort by the state to imprison him or keep him under more supervision is just a distraction from the state’s failure to do their job. He should be ruled free and clear right now, anything else is an injustice.
Yeah, I can’t see the logic of locking him up at this point. It would be a considerable expense to the state, and if the story is accurate, he seems to be rehabilitated on his own.
I can sort of see a case for reducing the sentence down to some kind of community service or something, but I would question whether it is even worth it to put him on parole or probation or whatever. Have him check in every week with a parole officer? Don’t they have enough to deal with?
This to my mind is the crux of the issue. He made himself available to the State of Missouri for incarceration for the last 13 years. They chose to have him serve his sentence in his house - perhaps by ineptitude more than design, but oh well. They had their chance and maybe he didn’t pay as much as they wanted, but that’s the fault of the State of Missouri.