Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
What is the white guys background? Alcoholic mother and absentee father who spent years teaching his kid to hate growing up without a support system or positive mail role model and became a white supremiscist as a function of his upbringing? Or some rich kid with too much time on his hands that should know better?
Race isn't the mitigating factors, it makes it more likely that mitigating factors exist but its not because of race that anyone is getting special treatment. Using your example the race of the person from Palestine likely doesn't matter. Anyone's whose family was blown up by rockets would likely have the same mitigating factors regardless of race. It just happens that that particular case would be more likely to occur to a Palestinian.
What I am saying is the law as written is a good law. It asks for the context that led to the crime be considered The law isn't about racial background of the person. The law applies to people regardless of race.
Do you believe that the background of a person (ignoring race completely) that led up to the committing of a crime be considered at all in sentencing? or should every act be just considered based on the act itself?
Essentially would Jean Vel Jean deserve special treatment because he stole bread to feed is starving family
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Maybe I'm wrong and a lawyer can correct me, but under the purist form of the law, its the act that is supposed to be judged and nothing else.
Again and its a question for a lawyer, but in a lot of trials that I've followed, defense lawyers fight tooth and nail to exclude any prior criminal history or acts from a current trial because it can prejudice a judge or a jury. Wouldn't the same be considered in terms of sentencing? Instead of creating multiple different standards under the law which is kind of what this is proposing, isn't the proper thing to reform the law so everyone is treated the same way based on the act or the crime?
I love the Jean Vel Jean example of the man stealing bread to feed his family. We all feel sympathetic to this example and it maybe allows us to romanticize a criminal act as somewhat heroic, and the criminal as the victim. But its at least to me a flawed example, when he stole the bread did he deprive the person that he stole the bread from the ability to feed his family? Should we not in the purest sense say that the man stole a loaf of bread which is against the commonly accepted law and that a judge can only really judge on whether he broke the law or not and the sentencing is between this much time and this much time?
This is where my confusion lies. Do we view the Law now as a social services agency? Or is it the rules and guidelines that guide our society as a complete body regardless of race and color and influence.
Because if its the first, then the law has to be reformed and rewritten and made far more complex.