Here in Oregon we have mandatory minimum sentencing for a long list of crimes. Judges have little or no authority to excercise their judgement, their hands are tied. This may be fine with murderers and other like-felons, but stupid crap happens too. High School kids (with no priors) getting in fist fights, arrested and sent away for 5 years or so. The judge has no ability to use logic or common sence here, they may as well be a machine saying “Convicted - 5 years”. The biggest money/jail space drain is on first time drug convictions. A first time conviction for having pot can send 'em a way for years. How much does that crap cost taxpayers? Is that the intent of the people? This law was enacted back in the late-80’s/early-90’s in the Regan/Bush ‘Tough on Crime’ period. Despite numerous examples of the morinic nature of this law (and little or no allowance for rehabilitation), Oregon voters did not repeal this lame law this year when they could have. Think about this: What if it was you. Somehow manage to find yourself in a tussle and the next thing you know you are forced to spend the next five years behind bars, no if ands or buts that you had no priors or that you were a decent person. The law is the law. Are we so afraid of crime that this is acceptable?
Yes. We are so afraid of crime, and so convinced that “get tough” is the only possible response to that fear, that a lot of foolishness has become acceptable.
But fortuatly Mandatory Minimums have met with a lot of resistance (starting with the judges) and are beginning to be overturned (some of them anyway).
Here’s the site for Families Against Mandatory Minimums:
Quote:
“High School kids (with no priors) getting in fist fights, arrested and sent away for 5 years or so.”
Do you have any cites? I live in Oregon also and I can’t say that I ever heard of any kid going to jail for 1 day let alone 5 years for getting in a fight. It is probably quite the opposite. My son got his butt beat up a year ago and the lousy cops wouldn’t even let us press assault charges on the jerk that did it because “there weren’t any witnesses”. They just didn’t look for witnesses. It happened right in the middle of the busyiest street in town. Bruises all over his body and both eyes black weren’t good enough. All that happened to the guy was that the cops told him “not to do it again”.
Don’t even get me started on drug abuse and jail time. Suffice it to say that anyone who does drugs deserves any jail time he gets. Period. IMHO.
I don’t think the problem is so much with “mandatory minimums” as with what those minimums are. I really don’t think anyone is going to want it to be possible for someone to plead guilty to murder the day after the arrest and be sentenced to “time served”, which, in theory, could hapen with no minimums at all.
As for the five year sentence for a fight, do you have any more information? I don’t live in Oregon, but I find it hard to imagine that there are enough empty prison beds anywhere in the US to send someone to prison for five years for a fight without complicating factors ( someone was seriously injured, original sentence was probation which was then violated,history of being assaultive, etc)
I believe that we should have sentencing guidelines, but that judges and commisioners should be able to excercise their own good judgement during sentencing. Duh.
But it’s not that easy, is it? It’s the ridculous cases that get the press, and people get all riled up and pass some insane laws.
And don’t get me started on strikes. Since the first two strikes are violent and/or very serious crimes, I don’t give a rat’s ass if the third offence was shoplifting a 50 cent candy bar while on probation or parole. The idea is recidivism. If said schmo can’t even keep his hands off the candy bar, can he really keep from doing other crime?
One chance should be all you get for violent crime. Could any of you look a rape victim or murdered man’s spouse in the eye and explain that the five-time loser who did the crime deserved the extra opportunity to destroy their lives?
Not me, baby.
Not to put too fine a point on it – but nationally it was the Democrats who pushed for many of these laws in the mid to late 80s because they did not want to be seen as soft on crime.
I’m surprised that SCOTUS hasn’t struck any of those laws down based on the separation of powers issue.
But, people don’t care about unjust laws until the gavel falls on them. At which point they are criminals, so who cares what they think?
Costs Money. 
Which is the problem in my State. It’s expensive to house people under a law which states you must serve 85% of your time for even non-violent crimes. I say give them some leeway in sentencing non-violent offenders. But if Mr. two time felon shoplifts… Well, he knew the rules.
First things first, the idea that someone is a criminal so ‘who cares’ is pathetic and I hope you said it sarcasticly. My girlfriends sister got a DUI after two drinks. Her fault- yes. Should she be held responsible - yes. Who cares - me. She is not a bad person. In fact I have had the discussion with many old college pals that ‘there but for the grace of God’ they never got one when they were young, drunk and stupid. I bet the same can be said about MANY people here. Being convicted of a crime does not make one a bad person. Be careful in your harshness, it could be you someday.
As for the kid who recieved the harsh sentence for assault (first offense), you’ll have to give me some time to find a cite. I read about in in Rolling Stone, if I remember correctly, and it’s been a while and I don’t keep back issues. If anyone remembers this issue/article, I request your help. It’s been within the last 5 years.
Again, I am not ‘soft on crime’. Do the crime - do the time. I’m big on personal accountability. There should be minimums for murder/rape/etc. I have no qualms about the third strike law. The point of this thread, however, is about the stupidity of taking decision-making abilities away from elected/appointed officials to inject a little sanity into law. Some may have a personal experience with a drug offender who really is a bad guy, but do we really need harh penalties and long jail terms for those convicted of possession of pot? Shouldn’t a clean record and personal references mitigate the sentence of a first time offender or a relitively ‘minor’ offence. If you’re a hardliner, I won’t change your opinion. If you can see that all crimes are not created equal and that good people can and do do stupid things, I don’t see how you can agree that a blanket sentencing is fair to the convicted or to the Americans who have to pay for such foolishness. Rehabilitation has got to be an option.
In one sense, mandatory minimums have been with us for quite some time - they used to be called ‘guidelines’.
What is different, is that the legislators have gone in and raised the mimumum on many crimes, and yes, that does take a great deal of the discretion away from the judges.
The problem to me, is that human actions are rarely reducable to a few choice words. There are many potential factors. Some are mitigating, some would be enhancing. In the past, we ‘hired’ (elected) our judges to look at all the factors - the exact circumstances of the crime, status of the criminal, realtionship (if any) to the victim, victim’s impact (injuries, costs etc), potential for rehabilitation, potential for re-offending, prior offenses (if any), mitigating factors (including but not limited to IQ, substance abuse history, history of abuse, etc), potential enhancing factors (including special circumstances of the victim- like age, infirmaty etc.).
It is, I think, impossible to legislate a chart that would be both **fair ** and just, which brings me back to , gee, wasn’t that what the judges were supposed to do?
as far as division of power, the judge still has certain jurisdiction (allowing stuff into evidence, the charge to the jury etc), which (at least so far) hasn’t been legislated.
So, what has happened, IMHO, is that no elected official wishes to be seen/called ‘soft’ on crime. And, as a result, we’re locking more and more of our citizens up for longer and longer, and making it more and more difficult for them to go straight again once they’re out. This is not intended to sound like a ‘aawwww poooor them’ but, realisitcally, unless you plan at some point to house 'em all for the rest of their lives, and pay for it, ya might want to change something
And, PepperJett (IMHO) is right - ya never know what can happen - the housewife in the South who had a gun in her SUV for protection certainly never envisioned herself as doing time (she’s been sentenced to prison for shooting another driver in a road rage circumstance - they’d both stopped, and the other driver was approaching her car, unarmed, as it turned out)
What is IMHO?
In My Humble Opinion
(in this case, not so humble - I work with felons for a living)
As I said, there’s a difference between being against mandatory minimums, and disagreeing with where those minimums are set.(I live in the world of Rockefeller drug laws-some of those sentences are bizarre and I don’t agree with them, but that’s a different issue from giving judges no rules at all-if there are no rules, you’ll soon have some judges giving 1 year sentences for murder even while others give a life sentence for possession of a joint) Blanket sentencing is another story altogether. I’ve never heard of a place where everyone convicted of a particular crime gets the same sentence,regardless of the circumstances.Where there is a minimum sentence, there’s also a maximum sentence, and they ain’t likely to be the same ( otherwise it wouldn’t be called a “minimum sentence” ,it would just be “the sentence”).
Yes, a clean record should make some difference, but if say the minimum sentence for your conviction is 2 years, and the maximum is 7, your clean record is the reason you got the minimum,rather than something more. I’m sure you don’t mean the clean record should allow you to escape any sanctions at all.
Rehabilitation often is an option- but the people concerned don’t always want to take advantage of it.I can’t speak for Oregon, but here, by the time someone actually gets sent to prison for drugs, they generally have had a few short-term jail sentences (8 months or less), and been sentenced to probation a time or two.
You’re girlfriend’s sister may not be a bad person- but she did a bad thing.How exactly do you think she should be held responsible and what did happen to her? I’m sure many people can say “there but for the grace of God”, including many lawmakers.Two things though- I bet a first DUI is punished less severely than any other form of reckless endangerment(like throwing things from an overpass),precisely because of this attitude, and the real “grace of God” for all of these people is that they didn’t kill someone,because the punishment for killing someone while driving under the influence is a lot worse,especially if you’re not a bad person (guilt and all of that)
There’s an interesting website http://www.facts1.com/ that catalogues some of the alleged abuses of the CA three strikes law. Out of their list of 100 offenders, I picked one at random. #3, come on down!
JOHNNY QUIRINO
Type:…3rd Striker
Sentence: 25 years to life
For: petty theft of razor blades
Type:… Date:… Strike(s):
Current… 02/15/1996… Petty Theft w Prior
Prior… 04/06/1983… Burglary of inhab dwelling
Prior… 12/05/1989… Burglary of inhab dwelling
Mr. Quirino is currently 48, divorced and has 2 children. He has a history of substance abuse.
Now, is burglary serious? Yup. Traumatic for the victim as well. Is it violent? Well, no (although the building was inhabited at the time). Even given the guy’s previous convictions, I’d still be inclined to give the guy less than 25 years for razor blade theft, although it is a felony. But others may disagree.
As a criminal defense attorney (insert favorite lawyer joke HERE), I truly hate mandatory minimun sentencing laws. They do not allow for the different circumstances of each case and each defendant. The only reason we have these stupid laws is that legislators who want to get reelected want to appear to be “tough on crime” by sponsoring and/or voting for this crap.
Doreen - You mistake sanity and reason for soft on crime. I am not suggesting that any and all criminals should get off with their crime or that a person should not be held accountable for their actions. What I am suggesting is that NOT ALL CRIME IS THE SAME and NOT ALL CRIMINALS ARE THE SAME and NOT ALL SENTENCES SHOULD BE THE SAME and that JUDGES SHOULD BE ABLE TO USE THEIR BRAINS. (Sorry, not shouting, just really trying to stress the important points you seem to be missing). It appears that by your logic, all states should kill like Texas or throw away the keys forever. Damn the consequences. First time offenders for non violent offences should have a chance at rehabilitation before incarceration. Depending on the crime. That’s what judges are supposed to decide and often can’t with mandatory minimums.
Flowbark - Very interesting site (and response). But the third-strike rule isn’t what I’m griping about. MM’s are.
Oh, so you have the complete picture. I’ve never been tried or convicted of a crime and this is not a personal crusade for me. I don’t know anyone personally who’s been affected, but I know when something is wrong. The MM structure is wrong.
You are mistaking a disagreement as to where the problem lies for a disagreement about whether there is a problem.
Not all crimes are the same, not all criminals are the same, and judges should be able to use their brains- I agree with all of that. What I’m saying is the problem is not that there is a minimum, but what the minimum is.Think of the the DUI- if the minimum sentence was a $100 fine, would you have a problem with it? Probably not.If it was 5 years in prison you would (and so would I). That’s not a problem with the concept of a minimum sentence- it’s a problem with where the minimum is set. I don’t know where you got all states should either be like Texas or throw away the key. The closest I came was I said that that if judges have no restrictions, some of them will be lunatics (and some certainly will- I heard a parole violation judge say he didn’t like the idea of sending someone to prison for a year (of a previous sentence-not new time) even though he assaulted and injured the victim, because after all, she didn’t need to be hospitalized)
Ok, I see your point. How do we then get America to understand this and repeal stupid laws and get saner ones enacted? I suppose that’s rethorical. I’ve known guys in my life that sell pot. They are good guys (ignoring they are law-breakers). Clean records all. If one of them were caught and convicted in Oregon, I can hardly support them being sent away for 5 years. They only sell small amounts, and only to adults. Yes, they are breaking the law. Yes they should know what they are doing carried high risk. With the supposition one believes pot is a relitively harmless recreational drug (akin to alcohol) it is hard to imagine the sense in locking these guys away for an extended period of time at our expense.
Ok, I’ve made my point. I think I’m done with this topic. Peace out y’all. And be careful what you do. I’d hate for any of you to be put in this situation.
But doesn’t the fact that they get re elected mean that more people favor MM’s than don’t? Aren’t these officials doing what their constituents want?
Finally we get to PJ’s real beef. He’s not anti-MM, he’s pro-Pot.
And shouldn’t she be let go? I mean by PJ’s arguement it was a non violent act. Why should we have ridiculous DUI laws for non violent offenses?
Oh lord JC, you had to pipe in… First of all I’m not pro-pot. I’m not anti-pot. It was illustrative, not a singular example.
And I’ll assume you are trying to be antagonistic and not stupid with your final remark. Not once in anything I wrote did I say people convicted of DUI should be let go, smart guy. Reread the previous postings if you didn’t understand.
This is a pretty strong statement, cheezit. I’d like a bit more insight into why you feel this way. For one thing, how do you feel about mind-altering drugs that are currently legal? You can get a lot more messed up on alcohol, nutmeg, or salvia than marijuana.