Re: Trial delays: discovery? Usual thing?

vj wrote:
vj found this in rec.arts.mystery, from Pogonip <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxx> :

]Instead of allowing the judge to ]determine the appropriate sentence based on the defendant's history, the ]actual crime, the impact of the crime, etc., (all usually addressed in ]the pre-sentence investigation report) the judge has little or no ]discretion in sentencing.

don't they? the accused may be sure of jail time, but is there a minimum?



In many cases, the legislatures have tied the judges' hands with mandatory prison time, mandatory sentence lengths, and parole eligibility changes. In the case of multiple counts, the judge can usually determine concurrent or consecutive sentences -- bear in mind that multiple counts may arise out of one act due to the presence of more than one person. If a firearm is used, the penalty for that is consecutive. No choices.

OK, I understand that you believe in being hard on crime. But many of these cases are actually "victimless" crimes. Others are property crimes with little or no damage resulting.

I once had a case of a young man who robbed a fast-food restaurant - using a firearm. He jogged into the chicken shack, wearing his jogging shoes and clothes, produced a firearm and showed it to the manager (never did point it, as I recall), demanded money, took it, and left.

Before the police identified him, he mailed the money back to the restaurant. However, he had often jogged by there, and it was only a matter of time before he was identified and arrested. He was an engineer. Actually, he held degrees in electrical engineering and civil engineering, and was working as an engineer. His father was an engineer. He hated, loathed, and despised engineering. Father wanted him to be an engineer, father paid for college, he was an engineer. When he was unhappy in one engineering field, he went back to school (on his own dime, I believe) and got a second degree in the other...engineering...field. He was very unhappy, and he felt trapped. He robbed the chicken take-out as an act of desperation, although he couldn't tell you that, because he didn't even know.

Fortunately, this was before the mandatory prison sentencing for use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and I was able to recommend to the judge that he be placed on supervised probation with a counseling requirement, and the judge liked that enough to impose it. I think we threw in some community service. ;-)

OK, that's one case out of millions. But each case is one. Each crime is one. Each defendant is one. Under our system of law, each should be weighed and considered on its own merits, not forced through a sieve or done by a computer program.

Fascinating statistics are out there somewhere on the 18-year old underachieving male, often a school drop-out, but with above average intelligence, no sense of direction in his life, who commits a serious first offense. Do we want to throw them all away? We already have the highest non-political incarceration rate in the world.
--
Joanne
stitches @ singerlady.reno.nv.us.earth.milky-way.com
http://members.tripod.com/~bernardschopen/
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