Clearly, this is false as Brock Turner has never exhibited any evidence that he realizes what he did was wrong. Someone who does not know that raping someone is wrong certainly presents a danger of raping again.
Brock Turner has exhibited no remorse for his actions. That makes him incredibly dangerous. This isn't just a bad decision, it is a decision that is placing all the women Brock Turner will ever come into contact with in danger.
I think this holds if you take the view that the people who engage in these crimes are imbued with inherent criminality, but sexual assault is notoriously a crime which is committed by all sorts of people. As a starting point I don't buy that the fact of having committed sexual assault is more consistent with some sort of pathological problem which will make the accused strike again, than with the person having made a terrible mistake. The lack of remorse modifies that conclusion somewhat, but I don't think remorse is a particularly useful metric on which to base protective sentencing measures. If it were, then he'd just have to be a good actor in court to reduce his sentence - there's no way of actually measuring remorse, so giving someone a longer sentence because you think they didn't look sorry enough would have to be the way to go.
It's also particularly a problem in the case of someone who pleads not guilty. If someone pleads not guilty, they should not be expected to show remorse - to do so would be inconsistent with their plea, and the expectation that they would act accordingly would therefore contravene a basic tenet of criminal justice. To then effectively penalise the individual for the lack of displayed contrition would be penalising a plea of not guilty.
So if displays of remorse are largely off the table in sentencing (I accept the above wouldn't apply if someone accepted that they had committed the crime, but nonetheless displayed no remorse, or if someone accepted that they had committed all the elements of the offence, but nonetheless refused to acknowledge its criminality), how are we determining the risk of recidivism? Maybe expert psychological evidence. I haven't heard that the prosecution sought to establish that he had any sort of mental predisposition towards sexual violence, which would therefore preclude the judge from reaching that conclusion.
I don't think (or maybe I just don't want to believe) a majority of people look at it the way these two seem to see it. If you try to picture what that "20 minutes of action" looks like, put a face on the people involved, and visualize it it's repulsive, in multiple ways (most importantly, there's a tendency to avoid continuing the thought outright).
I suspect that on a societal scale, like a child trying to kill someone (IE serious, damaging/successful efforts, sometimes stated outright) it's sufficiently repulsive to envision that most people won't really picture what happens when considering it. Unless you force yourself it stays abstract and then people cast doubt about severity/punishment even when there isn't much/any doubt what occurred.
There can be a problem even if it's only exhibited in a minority of people - I absolutely agree that the approach of a couple of individuals doesn't reflect on everyone in society. Just as a propensity towards violence exhibited by 10% of the population would be a huge societal problem, the continuing presence of unsympathetic views towards sexual assault victims from a minority of the population indicates a problem that hasn't been fully dealt with.
But that still doesn't make someone do it. You say B is dubious, but it must be at least some level of deterrent, with more punishing sentences being more so. If we have a better method of deterrence to replace/augment it, we should use the better method. Are there any though?
There is likely some level of deterrent simply by virtue of something being a crime, but it would strain credulity to suggest that individuals on the verge of committing a sexual assault would be swayed by the marginal differences between degrees of sentencing. The justice system can condemn particular behaviour, which would hopefully have some sort of general deterrent effect, but the effect of the sentence in relation to this one guy is only going to have a very minor effect on that general deterrent, which still sends the message of criminal behaviour in any case.
I don't know if the justice system can necessarily come up with a better deterrent, but then that's not it's primary role, or is only its role on the macro level. A far better deterrent is social censure, which is a byproduct of increasing awareness of sexual assault (it might therefore be arguable that a newsworthy sexual assault case of any sort, which leads to universal condemnation, actually increases the deterrent effect).
And no, you don't break the law to remove someone because you don't like him. Not voting someone who will hook up his frat buddies after serious crimes, however, is the likely outcome.
But like I said, it won't matter anyway. The judge will get his rear end handed to him by a challenger in the next election. And he'll never get elected in any other county due to his horrible decision to only give the rapist 3 months.
Well hey, if we're talking about an elected judge, the rule of law's out the window in any case, so you may as well kick him out on the basis of a petition.
Nobody's defending the judge here, but removing a judge from a "petition" (the vast majority of the people signing it aren't even in that county) would indeed be unconstitutional.
Just to clarify, I was assuming the question was not whether the petition could actually legally operate within the constitutional order to effectively remove the judge, but whether people not liking a particular decision, or thinking it was not tough enough, was a proper basis upon which to remove the judge through whatever legal mechanism exists for that removal. That assumes legal constitutionality, but my point was that it would be anti-constitutional, in the sense that it would not be in keeping with the principles of constitutionalism, whereby judges are supposed to be acting independently outside the strictures of majoritarian control.
It would appear that the mentality brought about by elected judges plays into this assumed entitlement to remove judges because you don't like their decision, which is completely mental from my perspective.
No, it's not a punishment, it's a safety measure.
Could you explain how a sex offender registry actually operates as a safety measure? Who does it keep safe, and how does it keep them safe?
One would imagine they were discouraged from contacting the judge about his 'creepy' behaviour because to do so would be a serious interference with justice, probably requiring a retrial. You can't just contact a judge to tell them all the things you don't like about the accused.
To your list, I would add d) to give the impression that justice is applied equally regardless of social status. If the average punishment is 8 to 9 years and a very privileged member of the society gets much less than that, distrust in the judicial system and social tensions arise.
It is hard to fully prevent while leaving some discretionary power to the judges, but in this case I would say the law is at fault: If the judge can lawfully apply such a lenient sentence for a crime that is usually punished much, the law has to be changed in order to narrow the range of lawful punishments.
That's a fair goal as well, though I don't think the objective of maintaining the impression of the judicial system's integrity is properly serviced by depriving more people of their liberty for longer. Judges need to act fearlessly in an individual case, operating according to law as opposed to how popular their judgments will be. Overall, the judicial branch needs to consider its reputation, but that shouldn't really operate within a specific case to increase someone's sentence as if they're a martyr for the judicial integrity cause. I'm not a fan of limiting judicial sentencing discretion as a reaction to outliers.
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Would you prefer to die so nobody can insult you?
