Tracy (a male) McIntosh pleaded no-contest in court to charges of drugging a woman and sexually assaulting her. Sentencing guidelines typically call for a sentence of five to eleven years. The judge ignored the guidelines and gave McIntosh two years house arrest and probation for twelve.
Why did Mears receive the sentence he did? Because he is the director of Penn’s Head Injury Research Center and does important work with stroke and brain-injury victims.
My first thought was “who cares, he’s a creep?” But then I began thinking about the stroke victims who might suffer because he was in prison.
To be honest, I found that I couldn’t maintain for long that idea. I’ve come to the conclusion that while it is unfortunate that the innocent (stroke victims) must suffer along with the guilty, so be it. Otherwise, you end up with two standards of justice, which, to me anyway, is not acceptable.
But that got me wondering - what if I raised the stakes? What if McIntosh (or any other rapist for that matter) had a real shot at curing cancer, or AIDS, or bringing about world peace, or ending worldwide hunger, or anything else in that scale. And suppose (of course) that sending him to prison would be an absolute bar to the discovery being made (i.e. he wouldn’t be able to just pick up his work after his eleven year stint in prison). Does the benefit to the world outweigh the justice to one individual (the victim of the assault)? Or do we shrug it off and say “it’s the world’s loss?” and let millions of people die for the sake of justice to one individual?
The real problem is that prison is the only sanction we are considering here. Surely we could make the bastards miserable while allowing them to continue to work (with the length of their misery subject to whether or not they produce). Frex, I’ve alwasy thought that the proper punishment for wealthy white collar criminals like Martha Stewart would be making them sell fries at a burger doodle for some fixed amount of time, and forcing them to live on the income they got by doing so. 'Twould be hellish indeed for most of them. Some equivalent punishment for rapists must surely exist. Temporary chemical castration with regular visits from anti-male feminists for long, screech lectures on how bad rapists are?
As someone who’s more likely to be raped than either of you gentlemen, I’d have to say “No.” Think about what it says to the victim or victims. Clearly the individual committing the crime doesn’t think his or her great, life-saving work is worth choosing not to commit a crime. Presumably whatever pleasure Mr. McIntocsh derived from sexually assaulting a person was important enough to him to risk endangering his work.
This is the real world. I doubt one individual alone holds the key to coming up with a cure for cancer or AIDS, let alone world hunger. The other thing is I doubt individuals who are unscrupulous enough to commit a crime in the first place would be above adopting a worldly air of sainthood by working with poor sick or oppressed people if it would reduce the consequences of their acts.
It’s tough enough making accusations against someone with more power or a higher social standing. If sentences are lightened for such people because of the benefit they supposedly pose to society, the incentive to report them when they do something wrong becomes even smaller, and I suspect the likelihood of them doing something wrong goes even greater.
On a more personal note, for me, it would be even worse to be raped by someone I had a reason to trust than a random stranger, especially if people were to say, “How could you say such a thing? He’s such a nice person!”
A lot of what the OP suggests is already built into our system. A persons “worth to society” is usually measured already by the amount of money they have.
If I’m worth more to society, which means I’m worth more money, which means I can hire better lawyers to defend me.
I agree whole-heartedly with Loopydude. “Worth” is a slippery slope. When society starts deciding that a worthy person should get a lighter sentence, how long before it decides that ‘unworthy’ people should get heavier sentences.
Also should a criminal get a heavier sentence for killing a cancer researcher than if he had killed a customer service rep?
Maybe McIntosh got his God Complex from so many people telling him how important he is. Sounds like he felt that he was so important, that rules that bind other people don’t apply to him, and the judge ended up reinforcing that view