[OT] Horrible Experience - Rabid Possum

On Fri, 13 May 2011 07:36:36 -0700 (PDT), Lesley Madigan
wrote:

On May 13, 6:41*am, dgk wrote:

The whole problem with the death penalty is that it cannot be
reversed. I oppose it, not because it is immoral to kill, but because
it can never be undone.

Agree totally but over here I have a problem with the meaning of "life
sentence". There was a case over here a couple of weeks back where a
guy (can't recall what he was convicted off some sort of sexual
offence) and the judge gave the guy 3 life sentences with a
recommendation that he should serve at least 12 years...I'm confused
by this and if someone here can explain it to me I'd be grateful.
Life should mean just that...you leave prison in a wooden box unless
you;re cleared....but very few prisoners over here get that...I have
no sympathy for our ";local heroes" (if you read the local paper" the
Kray Twins but one of them once said "We're in here because we're
villians fair enough but you have to wonder why we'll die in jail when
we see people who raped and murdered kids come in long after we did
then go out within a few years"

Literally whole life tarrifs are pretty rare and seem to be reserved
for a handful of criminals where the media outrage if they had been
released wouldn't look good to the government people like Ian Huntley
and Myra Hindley

Lesley

Slave of the Fabulous Furballs

I don't know, but we do have "life without possibility of parole".
That does result in incarceration until death.

Even a life sentence doesn't mean that someone can't eventually be
paroled. And, if someone has three life sentences but they run
concurrently, then it's really only one life sentence.

The law can be weird.

dgk wrote:

Even a life sentence doesn't mean that someone can't eventually be
paroled. And, if someone has three life sentences but they run
concurrently, then it's really only one life sentence.

I've never understood the point of sentences running concurrently. I'm
sure it's a great relief to the convict, but why not just give them one
life sentence? Maybe the law is like the human genome - it evolved
organically, with no overall plan. So there's useful stuff, but also
a whole lot of junk DNA that's just dragged along because there isn't
any pressure to get rid of it.

"catlady" wrote in message
...
On May 11, 4:21 pm, "Christina Websell"
wrote:
Pat decided to do what she thought, and it is clear that she agonised
about
it. It does not help for you to make it worse.

She didn't agonize about it. She was Judge, Jury and Executioner and
chose to murder that poor, innocent animal without taking even ONE
simple step that could have resulted in the animal being saved. She
could have called the police (yes, they are open 24/7) and asked for
help. She had control of the animal and, instead of hanging it while
it slowly strangled to death, she could have quickly gotten it into a
carrier and called animal control in the morning to come down and see
about it. They would have told her that the behavior was normal and
let it out. In the meantime, a few minutes of research online would
have given her the answers she needed. She did NONE of these things
and instead thought that hanging an innocent creature by a noose while
it slowly strangled to death was fine and dandy. What she did was not
justified in any way shape or form because SHE HAD OPTIONS. Options
that didn't require cold blooded murder.

She did not *slowly* strangle it to death, did she? She did what she thougt
was right at the time. Whether I'd have done the same thing thing I don't
know since we do not have rabies here in the UK.

On 16 May 2011 19:06:14 GMT, wrote:

dgk wrote:

Even a life sentence doesn't mean that someone can't eventually be
paroled. And, if someone has three life sentences but they run
concurrently, then it's really only one life sentence.

I've never understood the point of sentences running concurrently. I'm
sure it's a great relief to the convict, but why not just give them one
life sentence? Maybe the law is like the human genome - it evolved
organically, with no overall plan. So there's useful stuff, but also
a whole lot of junk DNA that's just dragged along because there isn't
any pressure to get rid of it.

I actually work with the law, as a computer programmer for a large
public defender. The law was not designed to work with computers.
There are just a million exceptions to every rule, and no two
jurisdictions handle things quite the same way.