The fairness of multiple charges / enhanced sentencing

Well, if we're going to throw every robber into prison for the rest of their lives, don't you think that's going to make robberies much more deadly? And why wouldn't the robber shoot? If he's caught he's basically going to spend the rest of his life in prison anyway.

Honestly, some people are just stupid. You pass laws that are not morally right, there's going to be consequences.

 

He wasn't just a thief. He was an ARMED robber. When you use a firearm to commit a crime, the penalty is always going to be harsh. I'm glad. People like that give gun owners a bad name. That is what needs to happen . . . very HARSH sentences for those who abuse their 2nd amendment right.

 

I don't disagree. Someone who uses a firearm to commit a crime is choosing to take the risk of being shot, potentially fatally. And if you intentionally kill someone completely innocent, you really can't be surprised if you get the death penalty. But this man was simply a robber. And most robbers are armed (How else are they going to rob someone?). He did not end up killing or hurting anyone. I agree there needs to be a hefty punishment to deter criminals from robbing, and punish them for the risk they took with people's lives (whenever there's an armed robbery, there's the possibility something could go wrong and someone could get shot). But there still needs to be some leeway to incentivize them not to kill. If we just hand out life sentences for robberies, once a robber has struck once, there's really no legal disincentive why they should not do whatever it is they care to do. The repercussions are not any worse than they already face. That creates a very dangerous situation.

If a robber knows he will probably only face a 9 year sentence and he's surrounded with slim chance of escape, it's most likely he will just give up. But routinely hand out life sentences, and chances are he won't hesitate to shoot dead whoever stands in his way if there's even the slightest possibility of escape.

But supporters of "getting tough on crime" don't bother to think about this.

Most robbers really don't actually want to shoot anyone, they just want the money. But to get that money, they put themselves in a position where they may have to shoot to protect themselves. And there are people who just made terrible mistakes in their life, never planning to actually shoot anyone. For them to spend the rest of their lives in prison when they did not particularly intend to hurt anyone... just doesn't really seem right.

I think there's a way to both have guns, and not overpunish the people who misuse them. It's the people who want to kill people that need to be removed.

 

Bad checks. If you pass a bad check in my state you can be charged with passing the check (uttering) and with larceny for what you got with the check. It does not happen often because of the "Knowingly" part of the uttering statute being hard to prove, and the courts hate people being prosecuted for bad checks generally. When it does happen, it is usually because somebody wrote way more checks than they had money in their account or checks for more than their deposits for the month. The cases I know first hand where it has happened locally all involved people trying to use overdraft protection like a credit card--depositing $200 and then writing several checks totaling $1,000.00 or more and the like and the banks themselves called the police when all these checks came pouring in.

 

Plenty of robbers shoot and kill people. P-L-E-N-T-Y. I don't feel sorry. *shrugs*

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Okay, that's a fair example . . . so a person is not only charged with a felony for writing a bad check over a certain amount but also charged with the merchandise as stealing? It actually is kind of like stealing though, if you don't have the funds to pay for it.

 

Maybe it's because they know they're already a robber and have nothing to lose.
You can thank the charge-stacking tactics of many prosecutors.

 

Oh baloney! That is NOT why they rob with guns and abuse their rights. Armed robbers SHOULD get a long, long sentence. It is people like them who are the reason why our 2nd amendment right is so scrutinized.

 

And if serious criminals actually had some incentive not to kill people (other than just relying on the court's mercy, which doesn't seem to get dished out very often) maybe there'd be fewer shootings.

There will always be people who commit crimes. No one goes out and commits a crime if they think they're going to be caught. Harsh law just turns every armed robber into a dangerous fugitive. Sorry if that sounds like just a truism, but maybe that will lead some of the people reading this to possibly rethink things they might have long just taken for granted.

 

Passing bad checks in any amount is considered larceny by check whether it is petit or grand larceny depending on the amount (there are a multitude of ways larceny is reframed for the situation in our code, but it all boils down to petit being misdemeanor- or grand being felony). To me it is stacking because uttering requires knowingly writing a bad check and larceny require intentionally depriving the owner, which are basically the same under the situation. The other similar situation is if you steal one of my checks and try to pass it--you get forgery for signing my name to it, uttering for passing the check that you know is no good (because you signed my name to it instead of me) and larceny for what you get for the check, be it cash, service, or goods.

 

Yes, but it's like the person stole from a store if they buy something with the bad check. So, the one crime is writing the bad check, and the other is for stealing merchandise from a vendor. I see two separate crimes there. Two victims, the bank the check was written from (or a person, whatever), and the vendor.

 

You'd make a good prosecutor. (or a bad one)

If you really think a criminal should be punished for each element of the crime, maybe the penalties for each law broken should be less.

The real problem is that these laws were passed at different times and the legislators who approved the laws never considered how the various laws could be used in conjunction with each other. The more laws that are passed, the more the prosecutors have in their arsenal.

It would be one thing if the legislators actually sat down and consciously decided that robbers should get life in prison. But that's not what happened. This is an unintentional consequence of various separate laws that various different legislatures passed over the years. This is an important issue that needs to be resolved.

 

Derivative charges should not be added. ie: if you murdered someone you shouldn't face murder, manslaughter, GBH, and assault.

 

Why should they be any less? Absolutely not. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. This is why it is not worth it to rob a bank or what not in MANY peoples' eyes.

 

I see one continuous transaction. It is comparable to say charging someone with discharging a firearm and then murder when the bullet hits somebody, or you are pulled over going 55 in a 40, charge you with speeding going 41, 42, 43, etc because you could not get to 55 without going through all those other illegal speeds too at a different point in time before you get to 55. It is possible to parse things to death, especially in federal court, because of ambiguous racketeering charges. It is like when you see these corruption prosecutions, they always throw in that using the telephone or internet in furtherance of a crime nonsense. As I said, from a practical standpoint, judges tend to not really punish people for these silly add-on charges even if they are convicted or allows the sentences to run concurrently, but as has been pointed out, it is little more than an effort to run up the record on the accused. Fortunately my state does not have a three strikes law except as to very violent offenses like rape, killing, and malicious wounding, but I could see how this really screw people in other states.

 

Nope, in your example, it's two separate crimes with two separate victims. One victim being the bank (if you just wrote a bad check) or an individual (if you stole a check from another person), and the other victim being the vendor where you passed the bad check.

So, how long would a person have to serve for writing a bad check in your state? For serious crimes or violent crimes, I think any charges they can add on to increase the sentence is a GOOD thing. Keep those people separated from the civilized people in society. Besides, a lot of these sentences that seem very harsh probably also stem from a person having a lengthy record and being in trouble with the law a lot in the past.

 

It would depend on the check and the person and their history. The longest one can be sentenced to on any misdemeanor is one year (but you only serve half that time) but if it became a grand larceny, I think it is ten years max (not that I have ever heard of anyone getting that for a check charge). The Judge usually gives someone a chance to pay before they are officially convicted and otherwise they will be convicted and ordered to make restitution and be jailable if they do not on a show cause hearing. I recall reading of a local business owner getting a year on a felony bad check charge where he sent a check to a supplier but from what I have heard of the guy, it was more likely the result of the judge being sick of hearing all the civil suits against him because he would take people's money and then take his own sweet time delivering their purchases, often not until they sued him. IIRC, he was charged with uttering and for obtaining goods by false pretenses over that same transaction.

 

You see? This kind of thing does not bother me so much. I feel that if you are going to knowingly break the law and behave like a criminal, then be prepared to be treated as such. I have a very hard time having any kind of sympathy for criminals who intentionally break the law.

 

And this is exactly why this problem has never been fixed, because there are plenty of politicians who want to see "criminals" put in prison as long as possible.

But these types of laws would never have passed the legislature together, where it would be obvious how overlapping they are (or can be).

Again, even if you think sentences should be very long, the potential combination of some of these different laws can be completely asinine. It defies reason, commonsense, and justice.

If you want to give the perpetrator 50 years, fine. But don't charge him with aggravated assault, discharge of a firearm, weapons possession, armed robbery, having a weapon in a no-gun zone, resisting an officer, criminal intimidation, attempted murder, making criminal threats, all for what is basically the same act. Throw in theft of a firearm if the security guards gives up and surrenders his firearm, even if the robber does not leave the scene with it. Just ridiculous.

 

So be it, but the more charges that are piled on someone, the more their court appointed lawyer gets paid by the state to defend them, and the more grounds they have to appeal, and the more their court appointed lawyer gets paid to file and argue those appeals.

 

Well, to be honest, I've seen very FEW examples of these "overlapping" charges you keep talking about. Most of the things mentioned, I really don't have an issue with. A lot of them are actually several crimes. Just because they all occurred in one instance, does not make them less viable as crimes.

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Hey, if a person commits a crime and happens to break more than one law while doing so, it is only appropriate that the person be charged with all of the laws that he or she broke.

 

Unless he is a politician, broker, or bank employee and then some symbolic fine or public inconvenience will do...

 

Well, that's another topic entirely. Of course, if you have a lot of money, you can pretty much get off easy from almost any charges.

 

The government can charge a defendant with both a crime and the conspiracy to commit that crime. The U.S. Supreme Court has said this is not a violation of double jeopardy. This gives the government two opportunities to convict for essentially the same offense.

Another problem is that in many cases judges have used their discretionary sentencing powers to punish people who committed minor crimes for other more serious crimes a jury did not find them guilty of. Because even small crimes can carry long potential sentences. In 2007, after being convicted for selling half an ounce of crack (worth $600), a federal judge in Washington D.C. sentenced a man named Antwuan Ball to 18 years in prison for this reason.

 

I can't read that link for some reason. Anyways, did he have prior offenses? A person might be sentenced longer if they have prior convictions. Then they are considered career criminals. Maybe it had something to do with the 3 strikes law?

 

The sentence was still within the statutory maximum for the crime he was convicted of (distribution); under federal statute he could have received up to 40 years. 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B). The judge used sentence enhancement based upon acquitted conduct. This practice is based on the fact that the standard of proof differs from trial to sentencing. Trials require proof beyond a reasonable doubt, while sentencing requires proof by a preponderance of the evidence (a lower standard). Thus, the judge took into account conduct related to a drug conspiracy, which he found had been proven by a preponderance of the evidence, but which the jury felt had not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The Supreme Court has affirmed this practice. U.S. v. Watts, 519 U.S. 148 (1997). In addition, Ball challenged his sentence at the D.C. Circuit and the sentence was upheld.

http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/EF97673D47DDE5AE85257C9B004E5DA0/$file/08-3033-1483944.pdf