Ariel Castro, the man from Cleveland who kidnapped three girls and held them captive in his home has agreed to plead guilty. His sentence:
I’m a little confused here. Why the need for both parts of the sentence?
I can see life without parole. I can even see 1,000 years (or any sufficiently large number that guarantees that he will spend the rest of his life in prison). But what is the point of sentencing him to both?
Thanks,
Zev Steinhardt
The way I was always taught this was that giving more than one life sentence without parole or giving life without parole plus X years was to help keep them in jail in case one of the sentences is later overturned, reduced, or pardoned. Maybe Castro can find a flaw in one of the charges and get one of the life sentences overturned on appeal, but because he still has a few more life sentences, nothing really happens except he gets some paperwork saying sorry. If he was only given one sentence, a flaw in that one sentence could make him a free man.
Fair enough – and that makes sense in cases where the sentence is not the result of an agreement between the court, prosecution and defendant. However, in this case, couldn’t the plea deal be structured in such a way that he gives up any right to appeal?
Zev Steinhardt
And how would sentencing him to 1000 years keep him in jail any longer than sentencing him to 100 years?
I think of it as “Sprinkles on the icing on the cake.” Sort of like after you charge someone with 45 counts of 1st degree murder for opening up with a converted AK-47 in a crowded church you tack on charges of Trespassing and “discharging a firearm within city limits” just to let them know you care.
I don’t see any absolute bar on the increasing of human life expectancy over the next few decades through medical advances. It may be very unlikely that people live to be 170 100 years from now, but it isn’t impossible (to the best of my knowledge).
Should we also mandate that all prisoners be cremated immediately after death occurs just in case our first aid skills advance to the point that we can revive someone who has been dead for a few hours?
Well, life plus 1000 years means they’re going to keep his corpse around an awful long time.
Just in case.
Not to mention preventing a future admirer from cloning his DNA.
That’s not “the book”, that’s the entire Library of Congress. 
I suspect that his remaining life will be nasty, brutish and short.
A thousand years after death?
What’s the life expectancy of a zombie, anyway?
I think part of the idea is that a prisoner has to serve a certain portion of his sentence before becoming eligible for parole. The 1000 years is in case they change the sentence from LWOP to just a life sentence. A life sentence does not mean he will die in prison, necessarily, so they tack on the 1,000 years so he will not get parole even if they commute the LWOP sentence.
Of course they can always reduce the sentence, which makes the whole exercise pointless, but that was true the minute “Life” no longer meant life. The DP is the only sentence that reaches a point where it can’t be changed (after execution). For some, that’s a bug; for others, it’s a feature.
Regards,
Shodan
QFT
Good job he didn’t try to fight it or they’d really have come down on him.
A few weeks back the police were chasing a car that took off from a traffic stop. The vehicle portion of the chase ended in my parking lot where he (oddly, very nicely) parked his car and took off running. The cops caught up with him later that night but the one that stayed back while they searched the car and got the tow truck to haul it away was chit chatting with me for a while. At some point he said “I assume this person doesn’t have permission to park here”. I was a bit confused at first and said something like “I don’t really care where he parks” and he again said “I assume he doesn’t have permission to park here [wink wink]” and then I said “Oh, got it, no he’s not a customer, he was trespassing on my property and he abandoned his car on my parking lot, no he didn’t have permission to park here” to which the officer responded “Great, that gives us a few more things to hit him with on top of what he’s already got coming”.
I assume you had signs posted stating that unauthorized cars would be towed, and that you had previous history of having cars towed after such a short period of time? [wink wink]
Please let us how that works out for you in court when his lawyer asks you for specifics.
If some form of resurrection becomes possible and we still have the death penalty on the books, it will certainly need to be addressed.
The cop just asked if he had permission to park there, I said no. What happened after that wasn’t up to me.
Also, if you look at the sequence of events, the car was already getting towed. Hell, the car was already connected to the tow truck when he asked me that question. I think he was just looking to add some extra charge to everything else. What it was, I’m not sure, if I were speculating, I’d say abandoning his car or trespassing on private property, but I don’t have his name so I don’t know.
I’ll let you know if it causes any trouble for me, but it’s doubtful.
When I was a kid, I actually believed that prisons had cemeteries for exactly this type of situation.
Well, if you want to go back a bit, there’s an example of a prisoner being kept after death. However, the prisioner was being held for ransom, not for a crime.
Zev Steinhardt