Digging The Hole Deeper
Not content with simply hoping bigoted comments like “Be an indian, get a free pass to run someone down and drag him on the pavement under your car until he’s dead” fade into obscurity ThePolitic.com author Aaron Unruh digs his hole deeper, and changes his statement to
So let’s amend the original post to: Be an indian, get a free pass to torture someone to death.
The further you dig the harder it’s gonna be to get out dude.
Aaron is certainly wrong about “free pass”. The most that can be claimed is, “Be an aboriginal; receive it as mitigation in sentencing”. That would be a race-based, hence racist, policy.
And let’s not forget “young”, which the Court of Appeal found had also been ignored in the original sentence. Damned ageism as well as racism.
I like the simplicity of the Conservative universe. Cookie cutter justice. Good stuff.
The Indian Wars Never Ended
http://www.moderndaywarrior.org/
Have they
Considering the abhorrent nature of the crime, I’d have a hard time saying that youth and aboriginal background are appropriate mitigating factors.
Unless, of course, someone wants to argue that aboriginals are predisposed to murder…
Anyone? I didn’t think so. It’s pretty repellent to see racial factors considered in dispensing justice, especially since the racial factors were used not too long ago to increase, rather than decrease punishment, often to horrific results.
While taking into account a defendant’s aboriginal heritage in determining sentencing provides a benefit to the defendant though leniency, it does not have and has not had any impact on reducing aboriginal crime. Possibly examining the real problem here would be beneficial?
RJ,
I think the point here is that Aaron ignored the part where the judge said that the age of the convicted was also a factor. He did so purposely, in order to highlight the “indian” part. Why? In my opinion its because he’s a racist jerk. Why not, as balb implies, go off on a rant about the special treatment young people recieve? I’ll bet Aaron isn’t that old.
He also purpose re-defined “free pass” (and continues to re-define) in order to make it seem that the convicted in this case somehow “got away” with a murder. Or a torture, as he now implies.
I am at a loss to understand how a reduction of 9 years to 7 year is a “free pass”. Even 7 years is a hell of a long time in Federal Penitentiary. And its not “club fed” as most of these mouth-breathing morons who have never set foot in one would have you believe - its a brutal, dehumanizing, violent existence and prisons are not places you would want to be. Not for a few months or few years. And not 7.
And considering this person got 7 years in prison for the brutal crime he committed, I’d hardly call that a “free pass” either.
So Aaron is purposely targeting all “indians” and lying by calling the minor change in the sentence a “free pass”. It was intended to forment hatred for natives, for what reason I do not know.
Now, it we want to discus the merits of this case, or of the factors in sentencing guidelines and what those factors should be, then that is a separate discussion. We may need to start by reading the trial transcript and the Appeal Court decision to find the real basis of the decision - a decision that may have been influenced by many factors, not just that this guys was “an indian”. Why, it could be that the real reason could be the kids age. Or some other factor not mentioned in the news story he linked to.
But Aaron doesn’t care about context or subtleties or nuance, he wants to find an excuse to spew his racism. And he has.
>I like the simplicity of the Conservative universe. Cookie cutter justice. Good stuff.
Universality, justice-is-blind, equality before the law, cookie cutter…all synonyms for the same laudable “good stuff”.
Considering the abhorrent nature of the crime….? Please read what I wrote, my comments have nothing to do with the abhorrent nature of the crime (and I do believe it is an abhorrent crime btw) , my comments do have to do with the way an obviously bigoted blogger at ThePolitic voluntarily chose to portray what happened.
Aaron had any number of different ways at his disposal to show his anger at these events, his completely voluntary choice was to let his racism run free, and then he made another completely voluntary choice in giving his bigotry further vent in his update.
There is a lot of justification for being mightily pissed when events like this take place but if we are going to make racism and bigotry OK when we’re angry we just might as well take off all the restraints - don’t ya think?
I figger Aaron played the race card pretty quick an’ I figger SL’s right about the reason why; but the card was on the table already. I ain’t read all the timeline but I imagine the reduced sentence came after somebody asked to have age and ancestry taken into consideration. That would likely have been the convicted person or his attorney.
Here’s some questions I got. Should his aboriginal ancestry be a factor? If he’s over 18, should his age be a factor? Should the fact that he was intoxicated at the time of the killing be a factor? Should the fact that the killing occured during the commission of a second crime be a factor?
Mike sez 7 years in a fed pen ain’t a picnic an’ I believe him. Gettin’ dragged to death by a car is less of a picnic, I reckon.
I’m all fer fair justice an’ I ain’t fer throwin’ the book at anybuddy on accounta what colour they happened t’ turn out. I’m also a big “live-an’-let-live” sorta lefty-libertarian. I ain’t peggin’ myself as perticklerly authoritarian but now you got me all wracked with self-doubt.
This guy who killed the gas station guy “lived” but he didn’t “let live.” To the extreme. For a live-and-let-live society to function, its members must have respect for the community and must accept responsibility for their actions. I ain’t sure I’m seein’ that in this case.
JimBobby
JB,
I agree with a lot of what you said, and I am in no way saying that being dragged to death is any less of a picnic than 7 years in jail.
Of course, as a former corrections worker myself, the real irony is that a punk like Unruh calling 7 years in jail a “free pass” - that smarmy prick wouldn’t last 7 days in the joint, let alone 7 years.
I think that is what pisses me off the most about this.
Or it could be that race-based justice is an affront to the very concept of justice.
You may not like him, or his words, but can you defend the notion of race-based justice? You may quibble about his use of the term “free pass” but you should really be getting pissed off that someone is accorded special treatment under the law because of the colour of his skin. It was only sixty years ago that a white man could kill a black man, or an asian man without having to unduly fear the noose around his neck.
Is the the ground which want to defend?
No, racist speech is never defensible, but if you want to castigate someone as a racist, make sure that you do not somehow end up defending an even worse evil. A racist’s words are just words. An institutionalised racism is far worse because it corrupts and injures us all.
Do not be so afraid of words that you sometimes end up approving a greater evil. You and SL seem to be more interested in declaring someone a racist rather than determining whether or not he has a point.
I can’t believe the level of hate you spew - seriously buddy, you need professional help.
Don’t bother ever commenting on ThePolitic.com again, you’re not welcome.
“Universality, justice-is-blind, equality before the law, cookie cutter…all synonyms for the same laudable “good stuffâ€.”
The entire point of our sentencing procedure is to apply human insight and wisdom to the circumstances of each specific case after a finding of “guilty”, and determine from a wide range of possible sentences which one best serves an equally wide range of needs - protection of society, the potential for rehabilitation, punishment, and many others. That IS the way our system works. You’re at liberty to argue that all sentences should be fixed, automatic and mandatory, with no judicial latitude. Is that what you think?
“Don’t bother ever commenting on ThePolitic.com again, you’re not welcome.”
Oh, PLEASE. Aaron’s post was a hateful little squirt of talk-radio style inflammatory bile, phrased to provoke. Don’t get self-righteous when someone actually get provoked.
You’ve got a tendency for drama yourself, balbulican. Do you think your outbursts are actually helping your cause?
You call that provoked? I call it acting like an asshole.
Do you? Err…thanks for that illuminating contribution.
For those of you who think that the Appeals Court judge (and why are they never named, by th’ way?) was correct in taking Pratt’s “tender age” into account in the re-jigging of his sentence, think again. He pleaded guilty as an adult and the original judge properly sentenced him as an adult.
And hands up anyone who thinks he’s actually gonna spend the whole seven years in prison? He’s up for parole later this year!
Maybe you have to actually live here to know about everything that’s going on with this case?
Maybe. Do you know “everything” that’s going on with thic case?
“Do you know “everything†that’s going on with thic case?”
Mmmm…”everything” was a bad choice of wording on my part. Let me put it a different way…
I’m local to this story. And while I did not know Grant personally, Maple Ridge is a small town, and I’m a frequent flyer within its boundaries. I walk its streets, I eat in its restaurants, I play in its venues, and I talk to the people. Ever since Grant was dragged to death (and everyone knew who did it), this has been a sore topic of conversation.
When Pratt agreed to plead guilty as an adult, rather than go through a trial as a juvenile, Crown also agreed to lower the charge to involuntary manslaughter, rather than murder. Grant’s family was not consulted (but victims and their families are never consulted because, under Canadian law, victims do not exist as an element of the crime — but that’s another rant), but they understood that by pleading guilty, Pratt was saving the taxpayers a lot of time and money, so they swallowed hard, smiled bravely, and nodded a lot when he only got nine years.
Then they found out that he was getting 28 months off for “time served.” Then they’re told that he will only be in prison for about one-third of his sentence before being eligible for parole. Now they know he’s going to be out of prison in a couple of years.
Then this…asshole….Appeals Court judge comes along and knocks off two years because a) he’s a “young offender,” and b) he’s an Indian/aboriginal/first nations!
Point a) had been dealt with during the plea bargain stage. Appeals court twerp ignored it. Point b) simply fucks with people’s already hot prejudices.
The fact is, the judge reduced the sentence for no other reason than a racial one. And if that isn’t racist, what is? But he did it because that’s what the law tells him he can/must do.
Free pass? Yes, dammit — free pass! Pratt got a free pass because the Appeals Court judge couldn’t bloody leave bad enough alone, he had to make it worse!
I don’t know Aaron, so I don’t know if you-all have a history of bad feeling with him. I can tell you, though, that he’s not off the mark on this one. He hit it bang on.
Or is it bigotry to notice when bigotry is rampant?
As I said, I don’t know the perp, I did not read the testimony, and most important, I don’t know what arguments and information were reviewed by the appeals court judge.
Your comments appear to echo local anger, and don’t really shed any light on that last point. You’re angry yourself, which is understandable. But your anger may be affecting your judgement in this case.
Let me return to the point I raised with lrC. The sentencing process is supposed to balance a number of considerations; the need to protect society against possible reoffence, the need to rehabilitate, the need to punish, deterrence, and so on. The finding of a verdict should adhere strictly to the law, and essentially whether or not a charge was proven to a specific standard. But sentencing SHOULD allow for a variety of factors, to meet the wide range of societal needs that a justice system has to meet.
The brother of a rape victim may believe that the rapist should be publicly castrated and then shot. The son of a pensioner who has just been defrauded by a con artist may believe that the fraudster deserves to be locked up for life. The friends of a murder victim will be unhappy with any sentence short of life without possibility of parole. But the “punishment” and “deterrence” aspects of a sentence are not the only considerations.
I can’t argue for the validity of the reduction because I don’t know the perpetrator, the evidence, or why the appeals court judge felt his Aboriginal ancestry was a factor. (It’s not automatic, by the way - it MAY be a factor that’s judged relevant, or it may not).
Maybe I’m the one who’s not being clear, here. Try again…
The Appeals Court judge reduced Pratt’s sentence because of two factors, and two factors only — 1. Pratt’s age, which had already been taken into account in the original plea bargain, and which should not have been a factor at all since he agreed to plead guilty as an adult; and, 2. Pratt’s race. You may not see race as an issue in sentencing, and the original judge did not, but the Appeals Court judge did. He said so.
This was clearly a case of race-based preferential treatment.
Local anger? Not until the reduction in Pratt’s sentence, there wasn’t.
You’re being clear, Chim. I just think you’re missing the point.
The appeal was heard by three judges (not “an appeal courts judge”) who agreed unanimously.
As a point of law, they said this about his age:
““While an adult sentence is reserved…for the most serious crimes, the adult sentence imposed will not necessarily be lock-step with the sentence that would be imposed upon an adult in circumstances that are identical except for the offender’s age.â€
The decision also said he is considered “a good candidate for rehabilitation and re-integration into the community.”
As regards your suggestion that there was no local anger until the reduction in sentence: here is a quote from coverage immediately after the original nine year sentence was handed down:
“Grant de Patie’s parents say the sentence isn’t long enough to satisfy them. “I would probably not be happy with any decision that the judge handed down,” said his mother, Corinne De Patie.”
I thought the point was about the racism. I was actually trying to encapsulate the age thing and put it aside for a different post.
Grant’s family is never going to be happy with the sentence (and who can blame them?). After all, they’ll never see him again, and his killer is about to go free. They had gotten to the point of acceptance, though.
What I said about local anger goes to the entire community, both for people who were his friends and for people who had never met him. The reduction in Pratt’s sentence galvanized an entire town (actually, a whole lot more than an entire town) to reaction against the Canadian legal system (it’s NOT a justice system).
The legal system, and this sentence reduction, was race-based. Because Pratt is Indian, he qualifies for a lighter sentence than he would if he were white. The judge who wrote the opinion (and the one to whom I am referrring) made that point very clear.
Okay. Let me come at it from another direction.
Do you believe a person’s upbringing and childhood…
a) do, or
b) do not
…have an impact on their potential for rehabilition?
When did we switch from taking about racism to talking about upbringing and childhood?
And what do upbringing and childhood have to do with the potential for rehabilitation? If they don’t have anything to do with the propensity for criminal activity in the first place, where’s the connection in the second place?
“When did we switch from taking about racism to talking about upbringing and childhood?”
Well, you attribute the decision of the Court of Appeals to consider the perp’s ancestry in sentencing to racism: I attribute it to their desire to assess his likelihood to reoffend, the probably impact of punishment, etc.
“And what do upbringing and childhood have to do with the potential for rehabilitation? If they don’t have anything to do with the propensity for criminal activity in the first place, where’s the connection in the second place?”
They have quite a bit to do with both, don’t you think?
Actually, no, I don’t think so.
Plenty of criminals came from privileged backgrounds. And plenty of people with vile childhoods turned out to be just fine. I see no corelation between upbringing and criminality.
I was under the impression that this was a point SL was trying to make strictly to do with racism…and Aaron’s “racism” as a blogger. I linked his comments directly back to the judge, is all. And from the judge, it goes back to the law, which specifically directs the judge to consider that the criminal is Indian when handing down a sentence, and to give him a lighter sentence because of his race.
So in your view, any given class, race or cultural group would turn out precisely the same number of criminals in every given class, per capita?
My point was specifically that Aaron Unruh made a voluntary choice to portray an issue he posted about in a very bigoted way, that, IMO, makes him a bigot.
That remains my opinion regardless of the various pieces of spin, explanation, attempted redefinition of terms, and his, and others, attempts at redefining that point that I made, that have been attached to the discussion in justifying the choice he made.
Balb: I didn’t say that, either. The plain fact is, I don’t give a damn about anyone’s race, ethnicity, religion, childhood, or percentage of the population. If someone commits a crime, he’s a criminal. That is precisely as far as my analysis goes.
I hate social engineering that makes excuses for criminals based on charts and graphs. It gets us nowhere. Criminals commit crimes because they can. We let them out of prison because we’ve been conditioned to feel sorry for them, or to feel guilty about “persecuting” them because some idiot bureaucratic drone has all this neat audio-visual material that he put together in some make-work project done to justify his government salary.
SL: Ah, thanks for clearing that up. I read and re-read his post, though, and I didn’t think he was being all that bigotted. He was expressing his opinion about legalized bigotry in criminal law. You apparently disagree with his choice of words, but from my POV, he’s not wrong.
Or we let them out of prison after seven years instead of five because, in the best opinion of some folks, that best addresses the multiple needs of the multiple stakeholders.
Culture impacts on the way people learn, or change, or respond to various forms of discipline or punishment. Our system tries to take that into account. That’s all.
>You’re at liberty to argue that all sentences should be fixed, automatic and mandatory, with no judicial latitude. Is that what you think?
What I think is that race is not a factor for mitigation during sentencing if we are to be equal before the law. Can you handle that single exception without assuming a bunch of others have to be lumped in with it?
Do you think that all sentences should be fixed, automatic and mandatory?
Balb, he’s not getting out after five years. He’s getting out in a few months. He is virtually in prison only for a cup of coffee. Just how is that supposed to be addressing the “needs” of “stakeholders” — whover/whatever they are (if “society” is one of them, then as a member of that society, I say I am not being served)?
I would prefer that sentencing be tailored to fit each crime and criminal, within the bounds of automatic and fixed guidelines. Murder/manslaughter should carry an automatic minimum, and have time added for aggravating factors such as robbery, theft, impairment, choice of weapon (in this case, a motor vehicle), and previous record of criminal activity, including crimes committed while still a juvenile.
Race should not be a mitigating factor for lowering the minimum time.
“Culture impacts on the way people learn, or change, or respond to various forms of discipline or punishment.”
Well, that’s what the government-sponsored social engineers want you to think. That doesn’t necessarily make it so. I’m a little — no, a lot — surprised that you would fall for that pablum.
And in Canada, our “culture” has taught everyone that if you kill, you spend a little time behind bars where you can upgrade your education and job skills, then come out of prison and pretty much depend on the government’s bending over backward to get you a job…and paying your keep until you get one. But if you somehow manage to bring “race” into the equation as a disadvantage to your proper upbringing, and a mitigating factor in sentencing, you might not spend enough time behind bars to complete that education. Then the next time you commit a crime — and you probably will, because you have learned nothing except that the more excuses you make, the more lenient your sentence becomes — you can add “lack of proper education” as a mitigating factor.
““Culture impacts on the way people learn, or change, or respond to various forms of discipline or punishment.â€
Well, that’s what the government-sponsored social engineers want you to think. ”
Well, no, Chim. That’s actually what I’ve learned after thirty years of working as a writer, a broadcaster and a trainer in a large number of cross cultural contexts, in Canada and abroad.
Maybe that’s what’s made me utilitarian. I don’t think of myself as a bleeding heart (who does?): but I do know that if I want to change someone’s behaviour (which is what training is, and also the end goal of a lot of the writing I do), I have to start with an understanding of the learner/reader. That’s the difference between a university prof and a trainer. The prof speaketh, and the learner learneth. A trainer, on the other hand - a good one, anyway - has a few dozen ways of transferring any given basket of skills and knowledge, and KNOWS that a number of factors impact on the most effective method transfer. And culture is a huge factor, impacting on motivation, learning style, response to authority, etc.
So the bottom line for me is, what works?
>Do you think that all sentences should be fixed, automatic and mandatory?
Do you think that trees should grow sideways?
I know; it’s an irrelevant question. So is yours. I wrote what I meant. Read it carefully again if you’re not sure what it means.
It’s a bit hard to argue convincingly that the question of whether sentences should be automatic and fixed is “irrelevant” to a discussion of mitigating factors in sentencing, but that was a brave attempt, and I certainly understand why you’ve chosen not answer.