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.
I don’t know anything about this case, but revenge is not a solution. Our penal system is totally fucked, and part of the issue is people have been told that revenge is justice. It isn’t. We will all be paying for this woman to be locked up and she won’t be able to contribute to society. If we tried to rehabilitate, that’d be one thing. We just try to punish though, and people like you act like a harsher punishment is good somehow. What good does it do?
Oh no, who could have ever predicted that actions might have consequences. She killed someone, completely unprovoked to boot. It’s not revenge to lock her ass up, it’s the consequence of her killing someone.
It’s still revenge. I agree there should be some consequences, but should it be for life? I can use your exact argument to just keep increasing the sentence. At what point is it not acceptable? Should every mistake be a life sentence? The US already has the worst incarceration rate by far in the world. Why are people still ok with this shit? Why do they think this argument is acceptable? It doesn’t work as a deterrent, so what’s the point, besides making you feel good about getting revenge?
Guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. Without personal emotion I do not believe it to be revenge and with a professional judge upholding judicial standards set by society I do not believe the consequence bestowed on this woman displays any signs of being revenge. That’s not so say I agree that is true for every punishment but it most certainly aligns in this case, I’m sure that line will look different for different folks. She purposefully acted in a violent manner that directly killed somebody. No unpredictable tools, mechanisms, devices, or external factors were at play. Her hands and her mind alone violently shoved and killed this woman. Eight years seems plenty appropriate to me. Depending on circumstances, some within her control, should could see a meaningful reduction to that sentence. Theirs plenty of incarceration issues to take issue with that display a failed system, this isn’t one of them in my assessment.
My biggest issue is this was obviously spontaneous. The punishment likely would play no factor in preventing this from happening. If the sentence is death, she still probably would have done it because it wasn’t considered. In that case, what does 8 years do that 4 years or life also doesn’t do? The harshness of the sentence doesn’t matter and it’s just another person to pay taxes to keep in prison who is providing nothing in that time. What good does it do besides making people feel like she got what she deserved (aka, revenge).
We get some of that sweet sweet
slavefree labor!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.
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.
There are better ways to bring down incarceration rates than to go easy on casual murderers.
Rehabilitation and revenge are two out of the four aims of sentencing. There’s also deterrence and prevention: sending a message to everyone else that this is not okay, and simply keeping the convict away from the public so they can’t hurt anyone else.
Except we have the data for this. Long sentences don’t work effectively for deterrence. If it did, sure. Since it doesn’t, that’s not valid.
I get your position but killing is where I draw the line.
Let’s say you accidentally hit someone with your car. Does that deserve a life sentence? You killed someone and I draw the line at killing, so I think we should lock you away forever. Stupid, right? I’m not going to argue for a certain amount of punishment (none of it effectively works to deter crime, especially accidental), but I will argue that we need to fix our system. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world and that doesn’t need to be the case. We could have rehabilitation instead of torture too, which would help people when they finally do get out to contribute to society.