Would You Have Mercy If You Were the Judge?

@Ceili,

Who are you referring to?

1 Reply

@Arella Mae,

Miller.

1 Reply

@Ceili,

Okay, thanx.

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@Arella Mae,

You, Arella Mae, self proclaimed wretch that you are, do not deserve to live the high life that you do. Liquidate all your holdings and send the funds to me. I'll do dog's, errr, god's ummm God's work with the money.

You can keep your mule and trade it for a donkey, get some sack cloth and ashes and ride the countryside toiling for your daily bread.

1 Reply

@JTT,

Are you mocking me?

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@Arella Mae,

Nope, pullin' your leg, Arella Mae.

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@JTT,

Okay, I just didn't want to assume anything.

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I wish I had an answer.

On one hand, I think that people who do terrible things need to know that they are never safe.

On the other hand, how do you put some bewildered old person in prison?

If they are bewildered! It's easy to act thus.

This came as a clear dilemma for me a number of years ago when Jewish organizations tracked down a few geriatric Nazis right here in little old Adelaide.

They weren't big league...they'd allegedly "only" ordered the odd massacre of helpless folk here and there.

They appeared to be demented old people....as were the poor bloody witnesses, lord help them.

It seemed to me that the chances of a conviction were pretty much nil, (it turned out I was right) and it was going to cost my state millions...at a time when the government was bankrupt, so we were all going to suffer (relatively speaking....some hundreds of folk in the public sector would lose their jobs etc.)

We did it. It came to nothing. I THINK it was overall a moral good, but I am damned if I know.

On balance I think it was, but it sure felt awful.

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@joefromchicago,

Quote:

"The Sonny Franzese I know as my grandfather is kind considerate, warm, and funny," wrote one granddaughter. "When he is around family he just loves to tell jokes, watch baseball on television, nap, and tell stories about the past."

joefromchicago wrote:

Ya' just gotta' remember
to keep the little ones outta' the kiddie pool -- ya'
know what I'm sayin'?

when he is using it, anyway

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His family can visit him in prison, can't they? Many families visit their elderly relatives in nursing homes because they have special needs and circumstances and can't live at home.
How would this be so different?

This man's special circumstance is that he spent his life taking other people from their families- so his little room will be a cell behind bars instead of a room in a nursing home.

You know, I don't think he should be treated inhumanely or cruelly. If he's sick, he should get medicine. He should have a bed to sleep in and food to eat. That's all a lot of elderly people who never committed ANY crime, much less systematic and repeated murder as a BUSINESS no less - get in their little rooms in the nursing home. And he might even get his own bathroom- that's a luxury not a lot of them get.

He can hang out in his cell and read or write or watch tv. Again, as far as I can see, that's what a lot of elderly people in nursing homes do.

If my grandfather had murdered sixty people - I wouldn't be able to look at him pretending to be this little, sad, old benign guy trying to play the sweet, little great-grandpa to my kids.

And it's devaluing to the lives and families of the people he killed to make it seem like they may as well not have existed and their deaths were nothing because he got away with it for decades and now he's old and just wants to be with his family.

It should count for something. There should be some interruption in your routine - no matter how old you are - if you've murdered sixty people.

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@Miller,

Miller wrote:

Quote:
The Quality of Mercy

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself;
And earthly power doth then show like God's
When mercy seasons justice.
William Shakespeare

SO STIPULATED, Dr. Miller.

If I were the sentencing judge,
I 'd let him go.

but make him promise to stop shaking down the strip clubs and the pizzeria

David, J

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Why David? I'm sincerely interested to know.

I'd also be interested to know what your cut-off age is in terms of sentencing someone to prison. And how you justify it?

Is it 70? Or is it 80? Or 90?

If my dad had been sentenced to prison for eight years when he was seventy - he'd have died behind bars.
But if he'd killed sixty people in his life - I wouldn't have wanted that fact to be ignored.
I wouldn't want to live in a society where justice was meted out so inconsistently and arbitrarily - even if it benefitted my own dad.

That's just me. I believe in consistence and equality when it comes to justice.
In other words, if you kill my loved one, and are convicted of it, I can have some faith in the notion that the same thing will happen to you that would happen to me if I killed your loved one.
Does that not enter into sentencing at all?

1 Reply

@aidan,

aidan wrote:

Why David? I'm sincerely interested to know.

When I skimmed the opening paragraf, I failed to see that he had been convicted.

I might change my mind if his extortion victims
demanded to be avenged.
(I assume that thay testified against him.)

aidan wrote:

I'd also be interested to know what your cut-off age is in terms of sentencing someone to prison. And how you justify it?

Is it 70? Or is it 80? Or 90?

I have not selected one yet.

aidan wrote:

If my dad had been sentenced to prison for eight years when he was seventy - he'd have died behind bars.
But if he'd killed sixty people in his life - I wouldn't have wanted that fact to be ignored.

no double jeopardy
(I don 't care WHAT Trebec says.)

aidan wrote:

I wouldn't want to live in a society
where justice was meted out so inconsistently
and arbitrarily - even if it benefitted my own dad.

That's just me. I believe in consistence and equality when it comes to justice.
In other words, if you kill my loved one, and are convicted of it,
I can have some faith in the notion that the same thing will happen to you
that would happen to me if I killed your loved one.
Does that not enter into sentencing at all?

I agree about avenging murders,
but he was not convicted of murder
insofar as the sentencing is concerned, as I understand.
Its only a question of extortion.

Upon the basis of the data of the opening paragraf,
that is my tentative decision.

IF his victims demanded vengeance,
I might have to re-consider.

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

I agree about avenging murders,
but he was not convicted of murder
insofar as the sentencing is concerned, as I understand.
Its only a question of extortion.

Upon the basis of the data of the opening paragraf,
that is my tentative decision.

IF his victims demanded vengeance,
I might have to re-consider.

Yeah - I just reread it too - I don't know where that 60 people murdered figure came from - I read it somewhere in this thread.
But it sounds like he became expert at knowing how to make a body disappear. I guess we could make something of that.

Okay, but even for extortion, if 8-12 years are the sentencing guidelines for people, thems the breaks, innit?
If you extort from me, why should you get less time (because you're older) than me - if I extort from you?

You know - I work in a prison...it's easier to be in prison than to be poor and homeless. You have a roof over your head, three meals, they give you a pillow and duvet for your bed - I'm sure his family will pay for him to have a tv in his cell - and a lot of prison have good libraries. Some even have bathtubs along with the showers.

We should worry about showing mercy to homeless people before we worry about men like this sitting in his cell in a wheelchair and spending his time with the other gangsters telling stories and jokes about the people they've killed or knocked off in their long and full lives.

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Most of their murders are intramural -- not the civilians.

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@OmSigDAVID,

Yeah - but everyone is someone's child David.
I mean, think about all those parents going to their graves not knowing what ever happened to their sons - even if they were mobsters-because they'd been chopped up in a baby pool and had their body parts microwaved and fed down a garbage disposal.

There's a real obvious and seemingly innate lack of empathy or caring or 'mercy' if you want to call it that, evidenced in his behavior toward the families of his victims. Why should his family get so much more consideration than these other families ever got?

1 Reply

@aidan,

aidan wrote:

Yeah - but everyone is someone's child David.
I mean, think about all those parents going to their graves not knowing what ever happened to their sons - even if they were mobsters-because they'd been chopped up in a baby pool and had their body parts microwaved and fed down a garbage disposal.

That 's part of being a mobster; thay knew it.

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Who knew it? The parents? Or do you think that all these little underling thugs who get disposed of or disappear are actual Gambinos or Colombos - in other words genetically related to The Family?

Whatever- all I'm saying is that it's obvious this man doesn't carry much mercy around in his heart and I don't think it's particularly unmerciful to ask him to pay society's price for the activities he knowingly and somewhat gleefully engaged in (from the sound of it - his bragging about how good he was at disposal of bodies).

It's not like he's gonna be out smashing rocks on a chain gang or anything. He will be provided with a room with a bathroom, a bed, medical care if he needs it, a tv, radio, books, visits from his loved ones, etc.
The only thing he won't have is a view and his freedom.
And he had those two things for longer than he probably should have.
He forfeited the chance for them now and to die peacefully in his own bed of old age when he decided to make his living taking things from other people that he had no right to take.

I saw on the other thread that you'd give the looting policemen hard time - but not this murdering,raping life-long professional criminal.

Why? Because the policemen in question were younger? That's reverse age discrimination.

1 Reply

@aidan,

aidan wrote:

Who knew it? The parents? Or do you think that all these little underling thugs who get disposed of or disappear are actual Gambinos or Colombos - in other words genetically related to The Family?

in the family, but not genetically

aidan wrote:

Whatever- all I'm saying is that it's obvious this man doesn't carry much mercy
around in his heart

Probably not thinking too mercifully,
while he was stuffing them down the garbage disposal.

aidan wrote:

and I don't think it's particularly unmerciful to ask him to pay society's price

Its expensive to keep him there.
Let him be gleeful at his own expense.

aidan wrote:

for the activities he knowingly and somewhat gleefully engaged in
(from the sound of it - his bragging about how good he was at disposal of bodies).

Practice makes perfect.

aidan wrote:

It's not like he's gonna be out smashing rocks on a chain gang or anything.
He will be provided with a room with a bathroom, a bed, medical care if he needs it, a tv, radio, books, visits from his loved ones, etc.
The only thing he won't have is a view and his freedom.
And he had those two things for longer than he probably should have.
He forfeited the chance for them now and to die peacefully in his own bed of old age when he decided to make his living taking things from other people that he had no right to take.

I saw on the other thread that you'd give the looting policemen hard time - but not this murdering,raping life-long professional criminal.

aidan wrote:
Why? Because the policemen in question were younger? That's reverse age discrimination.
for looting, on-the-job
and then robbing people of their life-saving guns?????

I think it was yesterday,
I answered u at some length
on another thread; I dunno if u saw it or not.

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

I think it was yesterday,
I answered u at some length
on another thread; I dunno if u saw it or not.

I did see it, but the day I read it, my arm was still really sore and I couldn't type and then a couple of people over there on that thread got all nasty and personal and started calling me names because I disagreed with them and I have no need to subject my good mood to that sort of downer - so I forgot about it- sorry.

I'll go back and look at it again.

What I meant about those guys being in 'The Family' David- is that unless they were genetically related - their parents probably had no idea about what they were doing and why or what happened to them and probably died not knowing what had happened to their sons.

So, if those families had to deal with that sort of sadness and inconvenience - why spare so much thought for the family of the man who brought it all on himself and his family - as well as all the people he took from and their families?

It is expensive. Maybe he should have to pay restitution of all the money he extorted and have his 'FAMILY' pay for his room and board.

I know over here - if someone makes money illegally through drugs or whatever or takes money fraudulently - part of their sentence includes restitution of whatever sum it is they made or took illegally.

Do they do that in the US?

2 Replies

Would You Have Mercy If You Were the Judge?

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