A New York judge sentenced a woman who pleaded guilty to fatally shoving an 87-year-old Broadway singing coach onto a Manhattan sidewalk to six months more in prison than the eight years that had been previously reached in a plea deal.
A New York judge sentenced a woman who pleaded guilty to fatally shoving an 87-year-old Broadway singing coach onto a Manhattan sidewalk to six months more in prison than the eight years that had been previously reached in a plea deal.
This fella…just 4 years for killing someone and you still want to white knight here?
He’s not being a white knight towards this specific woman.
He’s raising the topic of what is best for society.
I agree with his point. Law and order doesn’t exist to punish people or to get revenge. It exists for the benefit of society. And putting people in jail, making them unable to contribute to society and becoming a permanent burden on society is bad for society. It doesn’t do any good.
Frankly, I think it’s better for society to just bring back the guillotine if we aren’t going to rehabilitate.
You’re assuming four years in prison won’t allow her to rehabilitate. It very well might.
We have the data for this that it won’t. The US doesn’t have rehabilitation programs. We have punishment programs. We don’t really provide tools for people to improve their lives when they’re out. If anything, we do the opposite. If you have a criminal record of any kind, getting a job is significantly harder, which pushes people into illegal work again.
We have the data that it LIKELY won’t, but that just means we need to do better with our prisoners and rehab programs. It’s not an excuse to let someone who killed someone right back onto the streets.
Are other countries with better rehab programs letting manslaughter convicts out in less than four years?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_Swedish_law
Apparently in Sweden you get 6-10 for manslaughter.
Looks like it’d be this one, so yeah they are more lenient:
Causing the death of another (Vållande till annans död, literally ‘causing another’s death’). It roughly corresponds to negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter. The law reads: “A person who causes the death of another person through negligence is guilty of causing the death of another and is sentenced […]” The punishment for Vållande till annans död is:
A fine (day-fines) if the crime is petty,
Any prison term up to 2 years, or
Any prison term between 1 year and 6 years “if the offence is gross”.[2]
We’re talking about voluntary manslaughter. “Drap” or whatever. That’s 6-10 in Sweden.
That requires intent. I’m pretty certain intent can’t be implied in this case. She pushed her and she fell, but was old and frail and died. She did not kill her on purpose. It’s involuntary.
That’s exactly the manslaughter part. She voluntarily shoved her, which is a crime, with the unintended but reasonably possible consequence of homicide.
If she intended to kill her, that would rise to murder.
I ‘m sure it has nothing to do with her being a white rich woman
I see a discussion about rehabilitating everyone or guillotining everyone. I don’t think there’s any need to mix race into these extremes.
It’s true though. I have a family member who is a white woman that has repeatedly crashed her car into buildings while trying to run people down, fractured skulls with hammers, thrown people into oncoming traffic. She’s just got a bad temper. Nothing ever happens to her. Cops talk people out of pressing charges, she’s never even spent a night in jail.
Wait, but the NY woman did go to jail, didn’t she? I don’t think anyone was suggesting here that she shouldn’t have been sentenced.
Where did you get 4 years? Plea deal was for 8, judge added 6 months to that.
This isn’t a rebuttal against what you’re saying overall btw, just a correction on the 4 years. 8.5 years still seems too short.
The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world by a large margin. How do you see that as acceptable? We have a culture of revenge and it doesn’t do any good. Shouldn’t the purpose of laws be to do as much good as possible, not to make people feel nice because they got revenge?
There are people doing more time than her for having weed on their person or passing a bad check to buy groceries or pay rent. Let’s start there, not with people who kill old ladies because they’re mad about being asked to leave an establishment that is closing.
We need to reform the system completely. Saying we need to start with only one crime is being shortsighted. It’s all fucked, and it’s fucked so some people can profit off of it. I agree those people serving more time is worse, but it’s a symptom of a rotten system, not something we can fix one case at a time.
System reform doesnt start with the crimes you feel morally okay with. It starts with systemic issues.
There are better ways to bring down incarceration rates than to go easy on casual murderers.