[MonaroSS]

Didn't the dumbass know it's the wheelbarrows you are meant to steal, not what you carry out of the factory in them...

http://lifeexplainedinjokes.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/hes-stealing-wheelbarrows/

 

[MonaroSS]

Now I realize that I don't have all the information, but it seems to me that a person of "good character" does not get involved in a theft scheme.

And about that "contrition", I'm sure he is sorry.....sorry he got caught. Would he have been as sorry if he had not gotten caught?

If you want to take a narrow view I am sure that is true.

However criminal justice is charged with being a management tool of society, and we need to manage those who fail to comply with our laws in the most effective way. I don't think it is effective for people who say they are sorry when caught and who act contrite, and for whom a proper check of their life and behavior to that point shows them as an OK bloke, to be treated the same as the guy with a long history of getting drunk and beating his wife and who tells the police and judge to go get ****ed.

I am thinking the contrite fellow might respond to rehabilitation a little better than the determined sociopath. So I would husband my limited criminal justice budget and spend it more on detaining the guy who figuratively and literally gives justice the finger, than on wasting years of costly jail time on the guy more likely to have learned his lesson...

 

[MonaroSS]

By "good character" the judge meant that the defendant had refered to him as "sir" (or your honor, or your majesty, or you handsome devil you, etc). See? There's a good boy!

Did you just make that **** up?

In Australia we are serious about criminal justice and we have strict legislative guidelines for what constitutes 'good character' and 'contrition', which the judge must follow based on a pre-sentencing investigation and actual evidence of good character and evidence of contrition. Saying you are contrite or have good character is worth zip unless evidence proves it.

 

[MonaroSS]

yes you are correct monaro but thing that always gets my dander up is when someone pleads not guilty and the judge finds them guilty and then gives them a harsher sentence because they were not contrite! They did plead not guilty so why should they have any contrition.

Actually the person found guilty after a not guilty plea is not getting a harsher sentence, they are getting the correct sentence according to the sentencing guidelines.

The person who pleads guilty gets a lesser sentence under the heading of 'contrition' but in fact the lighter sentence is not based on a moral premise but an economic one. The lighter sentence is indeed in exchange for not making the state, victims, police and witnesses suffer the stress, time and the cost of a trial.

It's the oldest quid pro quo going. You make it easier on us, we make it easier on you.

You don't make it easier on us, you get the standard sentence....

 

[MonaroSS]

The biggest problem I have with this sentence is.....people perceive theft from a Corporation and theft from individuals as two separate issues....if this guy had stolen engines out of your car I doubt you would be so lenient....its a progressive narrative that big Corporations are bad so theft against their property either intellectually or goods is some how just some harmless act......

In Australia we don't believe in warehousing criminals like in America, so 6 years with a 2.5 year non-parole period is quite stiff for a non-violent offence of theft.

And by the way, under sentencing guidelines the law actually says that a person stealing from a corporation like GM should get a lighter sentence than if they stole from an individual person.

Sentencing guidelines must include the impact of the crime on the victim. If you steal the engine from a little old lady's Camry you leave her with no transport and a load of distress and the anxiety that especially old and vulnerable people feel after being robbed. Sometimes they become too scared to go out.

When you steal several dozen engines by deception from GM (probably less than GM mistakenly sends to landfills each year) and nobody even knows they are gone and each shareholder loses what? - a millionth of a cent per share (although with the insurance refund shareholders probably make more profit than had the engines not been stolen) - how is that impact morally equivalent to impact on the little old lady?

So sentencing guidelines make it the law that harsher sentences go to crimes victimizing real people and not so much those fake people called corporations. I don't think I have ever seen a corporation cry or be afraid to go down to the shops...

So you can forget progressive/conservative crap, reality and the law says real people are harmed more....

 

[MonaroSS]

That may be so but why do judges tell that to a person who says they are not guilty and they still stick to that. It is meaningless to them as they still maintain their innocence. They are empty words.

Yes, but you can't see it as one simple situation, it is either one or the other of two more complicated situations.

The first and most likely with a person found guilty after a plea of not guilty is that they are indeed guilty and they further compounded their crime by not being contrite and honest about it and pleading guilty, as they should have if they were not going to also lie. So in this first possibility they are found to be a bad person for committing the crime and a badder person for wanting to avoid being found guilty when they indeed were, and also they were prepared to lie and create a false narrative in order to try and get away with their crime.

I find nothing wrong with giving that person a stiff or even stiffer sentence.

The second less likely possibility, but still an all too possible scenario, is that an innocent person was charged and they rightfully plead not guilty but a miscarriage of justice occurred and that innocent person was found guilty. So in this second possibility it is really semantics to call it unjust that they get a 2.5 year sentence because they plead not guilty as opposed to a 2 year sentence had they plead guilty. In either case the difference is a small injustice compared to the real injustice of incarceration an innocent person in the first place.

And the truly innocent person should never plead guilty or admit guilt or regret ever as it terminates the appeal possibilities. In fact, I have no sympathy for any innocent person, no matter the pressure put on them, who falsely pleads guilty for a plea bargain or lesser sentence. Because, even if they were innocent of the original crime, they just became one of the worst types of criminal when they plead guilty to a crime they didn't commit - a perverter of the course of justice. They are just as bad as if they bribed a judge or tampered with a jury.

 

[MonaroSS]

Didn't George Costanza say 'it's not a lie if you believe it'? Perhaps, 'It's not a crime if you don't believe it is' would also apply to some of these folks.

Well now you just opened up a can of worms.

The core topic becomes Objectivity verses Subjectivity.

Are you examining the lie with regard to it's Objective Truthfulness, or with regard to it's Subjective Intent to Mislead?