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Originally Posted by Platapus
Well the law covers if a person commits three felonies they are put away for "life" as a hibitual criminal.
The crimes this person commited ...
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...for being a hibitual criminal. As in the fable about the straw that broke the camel's back, one can't just look at that last straw.
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It'S simply beyond any reasonable scale. Hacking a thief's hand seems to be the more harmless penalty, than this, imo. Third time minor offence can get you more than high-violation crimes (sorry, i do not know all the exact English terms). If a three-time-shoplifter, juvenile age, causing a damage of let's say 50 dollars gets half his life being taken away, while a bank robber who wounded several people, or sexual offender may get away with less because it was his first or second only, then this is simply accepting too much injustice in the legal system, and shows the same acceptance of serious flaws in the legal system as is illustrated by the error statistics concerning procedure mistakes in cases that ended with death penalties. While I welcome increasing intensity of legal penalties in case of repeated crimes, "crime" is not the same like "crime", shoplifting of a perfum does not compare to a shooting incident, and fetching a trouser does not deserve 25 years - chances are that a drug baron will get far shorter penalties.
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Richard Morgan, 25 years for shoplifting a baseball glove; Herman Clifford Smith, 25 years for trying to cash a forged cheque for $193; Gilbert Musgrave, 25 years for possession of a stolen video recorder; George Anderson, 25 years for filing a false driving licence application; Johnny Quirino, 25 years for stealing razor blades; Eric Simmons, 25 years for possessing three stolen ceiling fans. (...)
But unlike the three strikes laws operating in some other states, California's version does not restrict the initiative to violent crimes. Sixty-five per cent of those imprisoned under three strikes in California were convicted of non-violent crimes; 354 of them received 25-years-to-life sentences for petty theft of less than $250.
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Absurd, and more criminal, in my subjective feeling, than the crimes themselves. Sorry, but this is a legal system that is running amok. Justice has nothing to do with it.