Crime and Punishment

I've noticed a disturbing trend in criminal defense lately - if a criminal has children, they're using the children as a reason why the criminal should be released from custody.  And get a lighter sentence.  Now, it seems to me that once upon a time, it was opposite.  If you were a criminal, you got your children taken away from you, so you could no longer influence them with your bad behavior.

One would think that having children would be a very good reason to not commit crimes.  One would further think that, even if you weren't concerned how your criminal activities would influence your children, you would care that committing crimes might get your children taken away.

Why does the opposite seem to be happening?

This post actually came about because a woman who was pulled over on suspicion of shoplifting tried to escape by dragging the officer down the road with her car.  And her defense attorney put forth the idea that because she has 4 children, she should be let off.  :blinkblink:

Makes absolutely no sense.  Feel sorry for the kids without their mom because she did something to get herself locked up?  More like feel sorry for kids with a mom like that.  She obviously doesn't give a rat's ass about her kids or she wouldn't be risking her freedom - freedom she needs so she can be with those kids.  She doesn't care about raising her children to be upstanding members of society.  She only cares about what she can get without having to pay for it.

And before anyone suggests that maybe she was shoplifting to provide for her children, her car looked pretty nice and she seemed to be able to pay for an attorney to represent her because when she finally turned herself in, she had an attorney with her.  Not a public defender, who would've been assigned after her arrest.  If she couldn't afford clothes, how is she affording an attorney? 

Oh, and her rap sheet was already littered with other crimes.  Not an upstanding, mother of the year type.  With a role model like that, those four kids will be joining her behind bars eventually.  I know the foster care system has problems, but at least there, they might have a chance. 

Of course, I'm the horrible one for suggesting that perhaps her children would be better served away from her. 

Sometimes I wonder who the hell is running our criminal justice system when the defense for a woman like this is to trot her kids out and say she needs to be with them so let her free.

Jus' Sayin'.

Suspended Sentence? WTF?

Our local paper puts out a court report once a month that tells basically who was arrested for what and what the sentence was.  It came out in yesterday's paper.

The headline read '9 Incarcerated for Felonies.' 

But when I flipped through, there were way more than 9 cases listed.  Deciding this bore further investigation, I read deeper.  Drug charges... suspended sentence.  Theft (burglary, shoplifting, car theft)... suspended sentence.  DWI... suspended sentence.  Child molestation... suspended sentence.  Non-payment of child support... suspended sentence.  Battery... suspended sentence.  (BTW, across the board of crimes, several of these people were listed as repeat or persistent offenders.)

Of the nine cases that actually saw someone's ass behind bars, only two of them were new.  The other seven were for people who had violated their previous suspended sentences, probation, or what have you.  Basically, they got caught committing the crime again, and in such a way, a slap on the wrist wouldn't do it.

Naturally, I was all like WTF???  And Hubs was like "Who the hell is our judge?"  (Brief googling netted me no names.  Apparently, it's a secret.)

Now, I'd like to say this was an isolated and unusual month, but it isn't.  This is about par for the court report around here.  People commit crimes, they get a slap on the wrist and probation, and then they continue to commit crimes because there is no consequence to their behavior. 

And we have a conservative sheriff here who has to be tearing his hair out because whoever the judge is keeps letting these motherfuckers back out onto the streets.

It's no wonder that I was told numerous times when we first moved here to be careful driving the roads because meth-heads are everywhere.  Of course, they're everywhere - no one is stopping them from being everywhere.  

I'm pretty sure it isn't just in this county.  It's here and it's there.  In the county, in the city, everywhere.  No consequences.  You committed a crime?  Oh, well sorry to have bothered you.  Here's a lollipop.  Run along.  Oh, if you don't mind, please don't do it again or we shall have to smack your little paddies once more. 

What in the sam hill is wrong with our judicial system?  Blerg!

Perhaps, if there were actual punishments for crimes, the punishments would deter people from committing the crimes. Cuz obviously this whole suspended sentence thing ain't workin'.

Jus' sayin'. 

For What It's Worth

I was reading a news story this morning about the suspect in a triple homicide jumping off the 4th floor of the court building to his death.  They're thinking it might be suicide.  I'm thinking it's probably a cause for the victims' families to celebrate.  And a load off the taxpayers who would have to foot the bill for the trial and incarceration of this asshole*.

I was watching Homicide Hunter a while back.  The dude obviously did it, but at the end, he got off.  (One of the rare occasions when one of Joe's cases did end in a guilty verdict.) Don't remember how.  Probably something to do with liberal Colorado.  All I know was I was pissed off.  Until... as a footnote at the end of the show, they told how the suspect had moved to New York City after the trial and months later someone pushed him out a 10th story window to his death.  Woohoo. Splat.  And that made me happy.

I'm not bloodthirtsy, per se.  I just believe in justice. 

And another thing...  What is it with these assholes who are suicidal, so they kill their entire families before they kill themselves??  Seriously.  If you want to die, do so and decrease the asshole population.  Don't take out other people.  I even heard about one heinous asshole who shot his dog before he killed himself.  Dude, what did the dog do to deserve that shit?  Sick freaks.

Then we were watching Murder Calls the other day.  A serial killer in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area was murdering women and then calling in to the police.  He'd call and ask to be caught.  He'd say he wanted to die.  All in this whiny voice.  They called him The Weepy Voiced Killer.  (Lame, right?)  Anyway, he would always hang up without giving any indication where he was or how to find him.  Asshole.  They did eventually get the squirrelly little fucker, but not before he killed several women.  No clue why.  Something about them wearing red.  No clue.  He got 40 years - again, I assume because of liberal Minnesota or some such crap.  He died in prison in 1998, but if cancer hadn't gotten him, he would've been a free man in six years.  Think he would've been reformed?  Umm, right.  He would've been old, but old people aren't incapable of murder.

What do you think?


*Provided he actually did it, of course.  If not, there's a murderer still running around out there.

Wicked Wednesday - The End of the Con

Around the area, there's been a news story I've been following.  At first, the news broke that a woman and her crippled daughter were missing from their Springfield, MO home.  The woman was a 48 year old single mother who cared for her handicapped, 19 year old daughter.  The poor child had muscular dystrophy and leukemia, which left her unable to walk or to take care of herself.

Over the weekend, we heard that DeeDee Blancharde and her daughter, Gypsy, disappeared from their Habitat for Humanity home.  (The one they were given after they lost everything after Hurricane Katrina down in LA.)  Everyone was looking for information as to their whereabouts.  A picture was included of DeeDee and her poor, sickly-looking daughter, holding a puppy together.  Both had big smiles like they hadn't a care in the world.

Next came the horrible, sad news that DeeDee's body had been found.  She was a victim of a horrific stabbing.  Poor, wheelchair-bound Gypsy remained missing.  The search was on.

Next, they said they'd located Gypsy in a suburb of Milwaukee, WI.  She was taken into custody with 'a person of interest'.  The person of interest was a man Gypsy had supposedly met online.  His location was the one from which nasty messages were left on the FB page of the victim after her death.  How many times have we seen the innocent taken advantage of by internet predators?  So sad.

His stepfather claims there's no way the guy could've done it.  He wouldn't hurt a fly.

Except when they got him in custody, he confessed to stabbing the mother multiple times and slitting her throat - saying the whole thing was Gypsy's idea.  Gypsy confessed to at least being in the house at the time of her mother's murder and doing nothing to stop it, or call for help, or anything.  Not surprising since she was all crippled and unable to do for herself. 

Then, in a stunning turn of events, the sheriff of Greene County, MO held a press conference.  (You can read about it all here.) Gypsy isn't 19 - she's 23.  She isn't sick or crippled or wheelchair bound. She's a healthy adult.  Chances are they weren't even from Louisiana. Before Gypsy hightailed it for the great North, she grabbed thousands of dollars in cash from DeeDee's safe. The mother and daughter duo have been scamming people for years.

Maybe Gypsy got tired of playing the part.  Maybe Gypsy wanted a bigger cut.  I guess we'll find out more as the story continues to unfold.  All I know is that DeeDee ran her last con job.  She just never got the chance to realize she'd trained her daughter too well in the world of criminal enterprise.  Here's hoping that Gypsy can't run a con on the criminal justice system and she gets the justice she deserves.

Update from last night after I typed this post: "Things are not always as they appear."

Wicked Wednesday - The Green River Killer

Today's Wicked is a particularly nasty SOB, who managed to elude police for almost twenty years after his first known murder.  Gary Ridgway - better known as The Green River Killer - was convicted of 49 murders, but confessed to over 70 and is suspected of more than 90 murders.  The first in his long line of killings dates back to 1982.

But that's not where his evil started.  When he was 16, he lured a 6 year old boy into the woods and stabbed him.  The boy lived to tell the tale of Ridgway laughing afterwards and talking about how he had always wondered what it felt like to kill someone.

From what I could research, Gary left little boys alone and chose the remainder of his victims from a wide pool of woman and girls employed in the oldest profession.  Despite his religious fervor and apparent distaste for these women, he spent a great deal of money spending time with them before and during the years he killed them.

Thanks to the advances in technology, authorities were finally able to connect DNA evidence to Gary Ridgway.  He was arrested in 2001.  After a plea deal for information leading to the whereabouts of some of his victims' bodies, he is spending his life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The deaths attributed to Gary Ridgway span the years of 1982 to 1998.  But there still remains suspicion that his last murder may have actually been in 2001.  Whether or not that is true is something we may never know. 

The unfortunate thing is that Ridgway was actually investigated as The Green River Killer back in 1983, but there didn't seem to be insufficient evidence to actually arrest the dude.  The sick thing he passed a lie detector test - which is probably why they're still not admissable in court.  After all, if a sicko like Ridgway can pass one, who know how many other criminals would escape justice?

In this case, DNA put the right man away - probably almost 20 years too late, but he'll never kill another woman.  Personally, I'd be happier if he was extra-crispy, but I understand the plea bargain in this case.  The families of those missing women deserved to know where their loved ones went. 

What do you think about lie detector tests?  Do you think you could pass one?  Personally, I think I'd fail them all - even telling the perfect truth - because I totally spazz in confrontational situations. 

Wicked Wednesday - Wrongful Imprisonment

I was watching one of my true-crime shows yesterday (forget which one), when the subject of the episode turned out to be a couple of men who actually didn't do the crime for which they'd been imprisoned for 13 years.

Now this was a rerun from 2002, so this happened a while back, but it went something like this:

A pretty, young blonde was raped and murdered inside a pizza establishment.  The police searched for her attacker and hit on the idea that maybe it was these two guys.  So they brought the guys in for questioning.  They said they didn't do it.  The one guy's girlfriend gave him a solid alibi.  The other guy?  Well, they grilled him for two days and at the end of the two days, he confessed.  And he named his friend as his accomplice.  They were both convicted and sent to prison.

Flash forward to 2000 when a convicted freak confessed to killing a young, blonde woman inside a pizza establishment years before. 

The Innocence Project got involved.  They had an independent lab re-test all the evidence, and discovered that the DNA didn't match the two men convicted, but it sure did match the convicted freak.  So these two men - one of whom confessed to the police years ago - we set free.

Except the friend - the one who didn't confess?  He'd been attacked while he was in prison and now he's brain damaged to the point where he will need constant care for the rest of his life.

As for the guy who confessed, he'll have to live with that for the rest of his life, but it's still a better deal that his buddy.  Why did he confess?  Well, the police officers involved threatened him with death row if he didn't confess.  They threatened to make sure he got a cell with a man who would rape him if he didn't confess.  And they promised the guy he could get a lighter sentence if he just told them what they wanted to hear.  After two days of constant grilling, he gave in and confessed.

The guy who actually did it was on parole for some other crime.  When he was released for that, he vowed that he would kill the first woman he could.  It turned out to be that poor blonde girl.  In the interview, he seemed pretty pleased with himself.  Oh, and when they caught him, he was already serving time for something else.

The detective who cooked up the idea that he could badger a young man into confessing, and the officers who helped?  They declined to be interviewed, but I hope they paid for what they did.  I know the police have a difficult job getting at the truth, but I think in some cases they forget that the truth is what they're actually after and instead go for a conviction at any cost.

What do you think?  Would you ever confess to a crime you didn't commit?  What would make you forget your innocence and go to jail instead? 

True Crime Friday - Cold Justice

Cold Justice is a show that's making headlines and doing some good in the world of unsolved murders.  It follows two investigators - Kelly Siegler and Yolanda MClary - as they go around the country trying to help local police departments solve murders that have long gone cold. 

I love these gals.  They're unflinching in their pursuit of justice.  They're unafraid of the criminals they encounter.  And they're sympathetic to the victims' families.  Kelly used to be a prosecutor.  In fact, I've seen her once on another true crime show where she played an integral part in investigating the crime.  Yolanda was a police investigator.  Together they make one hell of a kick ass team. 

But they aren't alone in their efforts. They bring in various top investigators to assist.  One in particular, Johnny Bonds, stands out.  That man seems to know just the right things to say to get information out of people.  Hell, if he questioned me, I'd probably tell him my whole life story without blinking.  (Lucky for me, he'd be totally bored by my non-criminal past.)

One site referred to the show as a mix of Rizzoli and Isles with CSI and Cold Case, but true.  I can agree with that. 

Sure, I don't always agree with some of their determinations.  If you were here, you would hear me telling the gals how to do their jobs.  But I'm an armchair quarterback when it comes to this stuff.  They're the real thing. 

And tonight is the beginning of new shows!  So, check your local listings.  Here it's on TNT at 8pm (9 eastern).  I can't wait.

Plus, I follow their Facebook page - which is neat because they post updates to the crimes they've been investigating.  The sad thing is that oftentimes, people will post about unsolved murders in their own towns - even in their own lives - and unfortunately, they're only two people doing the best the can.  I think there should be more people out there like Kelly and Yolanda - digging deeper to see what the truth really is.

Are there any unsolved murders that you know about?  Would you contact the Cold Justice team to have them investigate? 

Do you armchair quarterback shows like this, too, or is that just me?