Our criminal justice system is a farce, and this post from David Boaz provides one of many, many good reminders of why you cannot really talk about concepts like justice in our system today. This is what happens when you entrust the creation of the legal system to people who are as self-serving and prone to change with the direction of the wind as the average politician.
What kind of state allows someone, regardless of the mental state they are in, to shoot someone who is sleeping in the back with a shotgun and get not even one year in prison, while giving ninety three years in prison on the original term to a man who grew a lot of marijuana to treat his chronic pain? By any objective measure, in light of there being no evidence beyond hearsay that Mary Winkler was abused, Winkler should have been sentenced to death and Will Foster shouldn't have even been arrested for possessing a drug he used to treat his own pain.
The criminal statutes in effect today can not only be changed too easily, but they are generally not informed by any meaningful philosophy that would form a solid foundation. Murderers often get not even close to a life sentence, while people who use drugs can have their lives ruined by arbitrary and moronic laws that accuse them of crimes like trafficking without any proof that the person really was engaging in that activity. The only time a system like that can serve justice is by accident.
The solution is that there needs to be an open session, wherein all basic criminal laws are designed and debated in detail with the maximum effort to protect the innocent, the innocently accused, to prosecute the guilty and provide all manner of effective contingencies to fix mistakes. Then rather than get added to the legal code of the state, the criminal statutes are amended to the constitution so that it would take significant effort to tweak with them (ie mess with them to score political points).
Don't forget to thank the Jury for this one. They are the ones who found her guilty of manslaughter instead of murder.
What were the charges in this case? I thought they were manslaughter, not murder in the first degree.
So who benefits from the status quo, Mike?
It's the fruit of moral relativism wherein judges are allowed to interpret the law to their own liking without having to worry about the obvious "disconnects" which result. This is just one shining example of how subjective application of laws result in lunacy. Judges are in fact judging the law, not the cases before them.
Mike, I think they were 1st or 2nd degree murder.
The only way to punish them for doing that is to impeach them and take away any benefits they may have earned in the mean time. If you were to punish judges based on what people might do once they're allowed out of prison, I don't think you'd find any judge who would be willing to show mercy out of fear that he or she would choose the wrong object of mercy and end up in legal trouble. That's why impeaching them is the only way to hold them accountable without making the system worse off.