YOU Be the Judge!
Over at The Jury Talks Back, JRM (a Deputy District Attorney in real life) asks you what sentences you think would be appropriate in two hypothetical criminal cases:
One of the fairly common issues facing those in the criminal justice system is, “What is this case worth?” How much time should the defendant serve?
. . . .
[H]ere are two scenarios. For each, assume you are the judge and the defendant has pled guilty at an early stage. For a jail or prison sentence, you can impose the exact amount of time a person will do (two years is two actual years in custody.) If you sentence to a year or less, you can also attach whatever terms you like; for more than a year the prison authorities will do that. You can sentence to any amount of time you like for the purposes of this exercise. You must sentence to a specific amount of time, or life without parole.
Please give your proposed dispositions before reading the other comments.
Fascinating stuff — and it’s fascinating to us prosecutors to see how non-lawyers answer these questions. So go weigh in, here.
Dirty slimeball #1 – Natural life.
Dirty slimeball #2 – 80% of statutory max.
JD (7f8e8c) — 12/17/2008 @ 10:47 pmPatterico’s comment in the linked thread that the junkie is already serving life anyway, just on the installment plan, was hilarious.
I don’t know if it is kinder to let the addict stay in prison until he’s very old or to let him out on some kind of drug probation program. he’s done with life either way. A great reason why the war on drugs is not meritless.
The driver committed a serious crime. People go to prison for murder for the exact same behavior (as noted in the other thread). Peer pressure is a bitch… but it goes both ways.
Juan (4cdfb7) — 12/17/2008 @ 11:00 pmPatterico’s comment in the linked thread that the junkie is already serving life anyway, just on the installment plan, was hilarious.
Not intentionally so; it’s not an original observation. That’s a standard phrase you hear from supporters of the Three Strikes law.
Patterico (cc3b34) — 12/17/2008 @ 11:18 pmmaybe we should consider applying sharia law to these cases?
/white smoke
redc1c4 (27fd3e) — 12/18/2008 @ 12:47 am