From: Michael S. Lorrey (mike@datamann.com)
Date: Wed Apr 12 2000 - 13:13:33 MDT
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > Wow, what a great day for news stories:
> > ...
> > Sounds like a one, two, three punch of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.....
>
> Well, a 1-2 anyway. I don't care how heinous the crime, mandatory
> sentence laws are _always_ bad. We hire judges to do just that--
> judge--and then remove their ability to exercise human judgment in
> favor of blindly following a legislated script.
And another thing.... we already put minimum sentences on lots of crimes. I sure as
hell wouldn't want someone convicted of murder to get a sentence that is part
suspended and the rest as 'time served'. A death sentence is definitely a type of
minimum sentence for capital punishment. You can't just half kill a man... Judges are
given the latitude to impose stiffer sentences if they think a crime is more heinous
than the standard that is recognized for the charges brought. I think that maximum
sentence limits are worse than minimums. The only minimums I oppose are minimums that
don't fit the crime, like posession of ten squares of LSD gets you ten years in prison
minimum. Thats excessive.
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