Can anyone get away with murder?

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I don't se why that would annoy anyone really. I think that's pretty much it. I would say many and probably most liberals would agree as well. I would offer one caveat -- the type of crime more likely to be committed by the desperate and poor is more likely to result in long sentences than the type of crime committed by people who are rich. Rich kids are less likely to rob a convenience store than the poor but they are not less likely, imo, to buy marijuana. Both are crimes in the US. The punishments are however raidcally, and appropriately, different. Point is, I think the aptitude for crime has an important environmental factor as well as other components.

What might offend some is the assertion that there is a genetic factor -- some people are genetically predisposed to commit crime. There was a study years ago of prisoners and it turns out that they have an elevated level of some chemical in their brain -- higher than the average citizen. I'll see if I can dig it up.

EDIT to reply to Yago:

Highly misleading and irrelevant. Though the actions were certainly criminal they were perpetrated by a small handful of men which doesn't make a statistical difference to the overall comparison of crime by the rich vs the poor. So, say there are a 1000 crimes. 900 are by the poor and 100 by the rich. Just because 10 of the crime the rich were guilty of were highly publicized is irrelevant in discussing who is more likely to engage in crime.

 

Yago has my point -- especially with the last question. That son of a senator (sounds like an insult, doesn't it?) is going to have about 5 lawyers, 3 meetings with different therapists (paid for with Dad's pocket money) and even if he does see jail, it'll be a REALLY cushy place.

Some kid from the "wrong side of the tracks" is going to get one court appointed lawyer who has 368 other cases, maybe one meeting with a similarly overworked therapist, and is much more likely to end up doing hard time. Sad but I think the general statistics bear this sort of thing out.

That said, I hate all criminals -- I say we punish all the ones we possibly can as severely as possible. I do not believe in the efficacy of therapy as a method of rehabilitation -- in fact, I'm starting to believe less and less in rehabilitation altogether.

 

I had that study in Biology, back in school. My Biology teacher brought it up as we had genetics in general. Iirc, the thing was, finding in jail more males with xyyyy, instead of xy chromosoms. The flaw in the study is, iirc, that you should test all males, not only those in prison. And xx chomosms make females so much nicer. The case is, there's a huge difference between the crime rates of women all over Europe. A north-south difference. The emancipated women in the north are more likely to commit crimes than the women in sicilia. My personal explanation has already influenced the way I wrote my phrase. Sicilian women have a problem to be allowed out of the house. How can they commit a crime ?

Oh, don't nail me on biology details. I sucked in biology. And chemics. And all natural science.

To the fraud-cases:

Statistically speaking, yes. But it brings up, that there are different types of crimes with different types of penalties and with different types of "morally judgement" and different likeness to be caught and different penalties. Stealing money out of a pocket is differently treated as some accountance fraud. But the difference is just the possibilities, not the criminal intent (even if one is more the "gentleman" way of handling things).

[ June 17, 2003, 21:48: Message edited by: Yago ]

 

I'd like to clarify one thing I said earlier since I had an opportunity to ask a long time criminal defense attorney about it today.

If you as a defense attorney find out your client is guilty, hypothetically, you are not required to withdraw. Further, this is not going to be grounds whereby a judge will let you withdraw either barring other unusual circumstances.

What I wasn't correct about is that I said if you know your client is going to lie and he insists on taking the stand I thought at this point you might be required to withdraw. Turns out, in a few jurisdictions it still works this way. In other jurisdictions things have changed. Starting in the 60's you would put the client on the stand and ask the following question: "Client X, is there something you'd like to tell the jury." This served dual purposes, you weren't actively participating and it also was immediate notice to the judge and prosecutor to pay attention. Let me assure you, lying on the stand is rarely worth the gamble and usually the prosecutor would then tear the client to shreds and case shut.

In the 70's that started to change so you would go to the judge and say, 'look judge, he wants me to ask some questions that I can't ask.' The judge would then say, 'give me those questions and I'll ask him.' Again, this allowed the attorney off the hook by not forcing him to suborn perjury and still allowed the client to have his say. Again, the prosecutor would know what's up and destroy him case shut. Lying on the stand isn't too smart.

Later in the 80's they, much to the regret of this attorney, started to force the attorney to become more involved again. So, now the attorney would ask some slightly more specific questions but he would not actively engage in anything he thought was untruthful. So, you'd ask, 'Tell me what happened on the night of such and such' as opposed to 'is there something you'd like to tell the jury.' You become slightly more involved in this system. It isn't uncommon for the judge to be informed ahead of time though and the prosecutor almost always still knows what's up and nails the defendant. Lying on the stand isn't smart.

Most jurisdictions have some variation apparently of the above three methods. Just correcting myself.