September 05, 2003
Legal misgivings
Just because we took a week or so off from this site doesn't mean that we stopped being stupefied.
Fortunately, most other people were also dumbfounded that a man who augmented his already large child pornography collection with the pictures he took of himself raping his 13-month-old baby only received a 5-year sentence. Bad sentencing also made it possible for a serial killer described by police as a "murder machine" to go free after only 20 years in prison. Still, a 20-year sentence seems fair for an 86-year-old man who killed his 89-year-old wife.
The court's wisdom also can be questioned when a man who was awaiting trial on charges of assault and battery with intent to kill his girlfriend - she suffered broken bones in her face - posted only US$4,500 of his US$45,000 bond before being released. He then proceeded to take her hostage for hours and eventually gun her down. With a shotgun. From behind.
Sometimes, there just doesn't seem to be a law severe enough to punish people like the South African serial killer/cannibal, or a Delaware man who killed (and possibly raped) a baby llama in a zoo.
Other times, the court's hands are tied because of the limitations of the law itself - since aggravated animal cruelty is only a misdemeanor in Utah, the bastard who smashed a 3-month-old kitten to a pulp against a wall while a 10-year old cried "don't kill my kitty!" only gets 18 months, despite the fact that he continued to mutilate it after he had already smashed it. The Russian mafia's slaughter of bears trained to live peacefully with humans in Siberia at least had a motive, though I'm not sure that makes it much better. The mob's involvement (and their influence over the legal system) almost certainly means that no one will be punished for this.
It only seems natural that all of these legal SNAFUs might drive someone to take the law into his own hands - but a serial killer that targets sex offenders is still a serial killer. Also, it's important to remember that even though the justice system of western countries sometimes produces stupid results, that doesn't mean that those systems are stupid enough to believe someone who says that her boyfriend stabbed himself to death.
When you consider the brutal murder of 3 employees in an Outback Steakhouse in Texas - one of whom was 6 months pregnant - and a madman's rampage through his former workplace in Chicago, going to work is hardly worth it anymore. It seems that work is not only the place to have crimes committed against you, but also to have crimes committed by you too, as was the case when 5 passenger ship crew members gang-raped and murdered a high-school girl.
There's probably no good explanation as to why a mother would buy beer for her son and his three friends (all of whom were under 16), but to strip for them and give them dollar bills to stick in her panties... well, there's definitely no good explanation for that. Almost as unthinkably dumb is the story of a man who would have gotten away with two murders until he bragged about them in jail - to a police informant. While these are some pretty good examples of extreme stupidity, you can always go one step further and sign a contract that prevents you from seeing family members or seeking any psychiatric care not approved by the cult of Scientology.
Making even Scientology look tame is a Brazilian cult that believes if you were born after 1981, then you must be destroyed. As the linked story notes, they have no problem acting on that impulse while waiting for their spaceship to come rescue them.
Speaking of cults, it's hard to separate fact from what appears to be mostly fiction among the stories of members of SMART - Stop Mind Control and Ritual Torture - who claim to be the victims of a vast Illuminati conspiracy which led to their torture by satanic cults, the CIA, the Freemasons, and just about any other secret society you can think of. I can't help but think that SMART probably does more harm than good, preventing justice for real cult victims with their antics.
Posted by stupefied
11:51 AM