Yes he is. Human beings do horrific things all the time, it doesn’t make them inhuman, it means that human begins are capable of doing horrific things.
I’ll be surprised if he last 40 minutes inside. So not a bad outcome if he gets got.
If they openly refuse to consider evidence adduced at trial they could be held in contempt. More likely they’d be excused and replaced, though.
If I’m not mistaken I’ve heard of some jurors being provided counseling after having to see particularly nasty things during a trial. Could be the court didn’t want to bother with that.
I think the judge was just making an offhand remark about how horrible the crime was. For all practical purposes, 40 years is a long enough sentence for these specific circumstances. I think people are misinterpreting what happened here.
The district attorney made an offer to a man accused of a crime. The offer was “Plead guilty and we guarantee a sentence of only 40 years.” The defendant accepted this offer. This is called a plea deal, and it is one of the most common outcomes of a criminal arrest.
Now a judge, for a variety of reasons, has the right to reject a plea deal. The judge in this case did not reject the plea deal. If the defendant had not accepted the deal, there would have been a jury trial.
IIRC the juries were shown the tapes of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka with the two girls they abducted (most of the girls were found later, pieces embedded in concrete). At the trial of Bernardo the jury, IIRC was shown the tapes but the audience was not. It was not an enjoyable experience from what I’ve read of teh trial.
My understanding is that a plea deal is arranged between the prosecutor and defence. The judge has the option of accepting the plea deal, or refusing it and ordering a trial. Indeed, I seem to recall situations where when a person says “I didn’t do it but I’m pleading guilty to get this crap behind me” the judge will order a trial. They will refuse to accept a plea that apears somehow coerced.
Depends on the judge and their mood. Most judges are professionals, but I’m sure lawyers have some stories of ones that can be petty dickheads.
In this case, 40 years, pretty much guaranteed life, is not bad. IIRC it’s hard to get a sentence over 20 in Canada for anything.
Every adult person convicted of murder in Canada gets a life sentence.
Right, the differences are when you can become eligible for parole.
The child wasn’t murdered.
simster:
Many animals have genders as well.
Yeah, I recall that it’s somewhere around 20 to 25 years you can ask for parole. Some people are still getting the “faint hope” provision which allowed, what? Parole after 12 years for a life sentence?
A lot different than the USA, where downloading freely offered scientific papers can get you threatened with a 35-year sentence if you don’t cooperate and plead guilty.
I doubt he’ll ever make parole. Also, he’ll get his due in prison. I’m sure the guards will turn a blind eye on the man when he takes a shower.
You’re the second poster expecting (and hoping) the culprit wil be raped in prison.
Are rapes and violences in prisons actually as common as many people American people seem to believe? I already asked this question, in fact, and it doesn’t seem to be the case.
Assuming it would be, should people rejoice when told that justice in your country is dealt with by criminals instead of judges?
Why not just directly sentence people to repeated rape or public castration with red hot pincers instead, if people actually expect that to be part of the sentence?
Why are people always assuming that it’s the bad guy of the day who will be subjected to rape? Don’t you envision that a violent rapist could end up being the one raping, say, young inmates sentenced for a much milder offense? If you expect rape to take place and are happy with it, you should certainly envision that the rapists are more likely to be the worst hardened criminals and the raped the weakest targets. If you picture a violent murderer sentenced to life passing the time raping non violent offenders in the showers, do you enjoy the concept nearly as much?
Do you really want to have prison guards looking the other way when violences are commited? That’s the kind of penal system you wish for?
Aren’t pedophiles separated from the general population anyway, making your fantasy even more unrealistic?
Yes, but specifically because, even amongst hardened criminals, being a child molester is considered so bad that violence (including rape) sometimes results.
I’m not arguing with the rest of your post, BTW. I do howeverthink it might be more for GD or IMHO than GQ.
[QUOTE=clairobscur]
[QUOTE=Northern Piper]
Every adult person convicted of murder in Canada gets a life sentence.
[/QUOTE]
The child wasn’t murdered.
[/QUOTE]
I wasn’t speaking to the OP, but responding to this comment:
[QUOTE=md2000]
IIRC it’s hard to get a sentence over 20 in Canada for anything.
[/QUOTE]
For first degree murder, it’s life, and automatically 25 years without parole.
For second degree murder, it’s life, with a minimum of 10 years without parole, but the judge can increase it to up to 25 years in appropriate circumstances. For instance, Robert Picton got convicted of six counts of second degree murder, but the judge gave him parole ineligibility of 25 years, exactly the same as if he’d been convicted of first degree.
There is no “faint hope” any more - the current federal government abolished it. It wasn’t a right to parole; it provided that even if the parole ineligibility was more than 15 years, at 15 years, the inmate could go before a jury and seek to have the ineligibility reduced. If the jury agreed to reduce his parole ineligibility, that didn’t mean he got out; it meant he had the right to apply to the national parole board for parole.
[QUOTE=clairobscur]
You’re the second poster expecting (and hoping) the culprit wil be raped in prison.
Are rapes and violences in prisons actually as common as many people American people seem to believe? I already asked this question, in fact, and it doesn’t seem to be the case.
[/QUOTE]
It seems to be such a common belief that a US federal prosecutor referred to it as a threat to some Canadians who were fighting their extradition to the US on some fraud charges:
Of course, as a result of those threats, the Supreme Court of Canada denied the US request for extradition: United States of America v. Cobb, 2001 SCC 19:
[QUOTE=Supreme Court of Canada]
43 In my opinion, Hawkins J. was correct in deciding in this case that the matter before him should be stayed for abuse of process. The statements made by the American judge and the U.S. attorney may properly be visited upon the Requesting State itself, who was a party before the court. This is particularly so since the U.S. attorney who made the impugned statements was the prosecutor who had carriage of the case and also the principal affiant before the extradition judge in support of the case for the United States. Both statements, or at the very least the prosecutor’s statement, were an attempt to influence the unfolding of the Canadian judicial proceedings by putting undue pressure on the appellants to desist from their objections to the extradition request. The pressures were not only inappropriate but also, in the case of the statements made by the prosecutor on the eve of the opening of the judicial hearing in Canada, unequivocally amounted to an abuse of the process of the court. We do not condone the threat of sexual violence as a means for one party before the court to persuade any opponent to abandon his or her right to a hearing. Nor should we expect litigants to overcome well-founded fears of violent reprisals in order to be participants in a judicial process. Aside from such intimidation itself, it is plain that a committal order requiring a fugitive to return to face such an ominous climate – which was created by those who would play a large, if not decisive role in determining the fugitive’s ultimate fate – would not be consistent with the principles of fundamental justice.
[/QUOTE]