Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Unfair Sentencing Practices

I had a rather rude awakening regarding our criminal justice system. I was convicted of battery and sentenced to three months in jail. The sentence was based on the fact that this was only my fifth offense not including the domestic charges.

The judge stated, "We can't have people beating others simply because they are driving slower than the speed limit." Fine, I accept that. Albeit, reluctantly. It does make some sense in the fact that I ended up delaying traffic more than the person who started the altercation with their disregard to the flow of traffic.

My problem is with the overly harsh sentence. Now, I think three months is fine if I had knocked out the teeth of a teenager, but I find it unacceptable that someone would be sentenced that long for doing the same thing to someone in their eighties. Where's the fairness in that? It is plain unjust that the sentence wasn't prorated.

I'm not interested in getting into a debate about what the base sentence should be regarding battery. So, let's forget about my personal experience and deal with something a little less abstract such as murder. For the sake of argument let's say we are in some liberal state that only has life in prison. Again, I don't want to get into a debate on this, I'm just trying to simplify my point.

If some doctor performs an abortion on an unborn child then quite obviously that murderer should be sentenced to life in prison along with the mother. The child had all of their natural life taken away from them and it's pretty simple to see that the murderers should have all of their natural life taken away from them. Let them rot in prison.

What about if someone murders a seventy year old? Should that person spend life in prison? What sense would that make? Men are only expected to live to seventy-five in the United States. The victim only lost five years of their life. So, isn't it reasonable for the sentence to be five years?

That's my point. It takes a lot more time to make a younger person whole than it does an older person. Now, statistically, this idiot driver shouldn't even be around. How exactly did I take anything away from someone who, for a lack of a better term, is the walking dead? It seems to me that I should have been convicted, but should not have to serve any time.

Well, we'll see how the appeal goes. This system just sucks time and money from people that don't have the time to figure out all the loopholes.