Tori Stafford Murder Trial

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I'm not talking about mob mentality justice, Joacqin. I'm talking about after a fair trial, a trial where damning evidence was excluded because the cops didn't say "mother may I?" and even then the fellow was convicted, or a trial where videotapes of the crime clearly show the perpetrator and his/her victims, after all that, the punishment should be one that reasonably punishes the criminal for what he/she has done.

Now, Tori Stafford was 6 years old. I'm pretty sure the adult Michael Rafferty didn't murder her in self defense, and I'm damn sure he didn't rape her in in self defense. To me, no other excuse exists for murder (and the rape comment is an example of exaggeration in case folks missed it. What is a fair punishment for him compared to what he took away from her?

Well, he took her life, her peace of mind for the few seconds she had remaining of life, her innocence, and her freedom. She will never breathe again, she will never eat so much as an apple, she will never listen to music, she will never see an entertaining TV show. She will never experience true love or have the opportunity to raise a family. She will never know any personal satisfaction from a job or an education. She'll never have ANY chance to do anything, because she is dead and buried.

So I say we take his life, too. Humanely, not the torturous way he took hers. No sodomy or rape involves, but in a clean sterile room where he gets a drug that puts him to sleep. or in a hail of bullets that ends his life quickly and with a LOT less pain than he inflicted on that little girl.

Or we take his life another way. We lock him up for the rest of his life -- until the day he dies of natural causes. Not for 25 short years and then let him out to breath free air, eat all the kinds of food he wants, listen to music, get married to some foolish girl (or guy, this is Canada!), get a job, and move on as if it didn't happen. No. Life should mean life, period, no parole hearings or opportunities to put on a little show for his personal titillation.

Still too severe? OK, let's take away the time Tori likely had remaining. The average lifespan of a female in canada is around 78 years. We should, I suppose, be grateful that he allowed her a whopping 6 of them. So 78 - 6 = 72, if my gradeschool arithmetic holds true. So he should get 72 years. If he lives past national average, he'll be in his 90s by the time he gets out. I suppose by that time he wouldn't be too much of a risk to anyone, and he would have hopefully learned his lesson that raping and murdering 6 year olds is wrong.

If any of those sentences were imposed on him I would say it approaches true justice. I'm still not super keen on imprisonment, because in Canada that means colour TVs in the cells, pretty good food, exercise in spa level gyms, the opportunity to get a college degree, and conjugal visits with the imbecilic women who believe that raping Tori was "a little mistake". He still gets far more from the State compared to what he did to that child. But at least his freedom is somewhat restricted and his opportunity to minimize his filthiness and torment her family (as Clifford Olson did to his victims' families up untill the day he died) would be slight.

But not in Canada! After 25 years he'll get parole hearings every year, and by that time Tori will be a distant memory. He will have conned prison chaplains and psychiatrists with his "deep sorrow" and "changed man" routine, and everyone will be falling over themselves in a rush to give him a second chance. As I mentioned, given his double time for pre-trial custody, it'll actually be 22 years. Here in Canada it's all about his rights, and his second chances. Chances that Tori never got, and never will.

 

I'm a big supporter of rehabilitation in most cases. Someone who gets into a few fights or sells a little bit of drugs aren't always heinous bastards who deserve the worst we could possibly give them and often can be made to function in society. But in cases like this I side with LKD. This is so sick and so evil that rehabilitation shouldn't even be on the table. Kill him or give him life without parole.

 

But LKD, that's exactly why I brought up the example from my last post. You would have said the exact same thing about the guy that got locked up even though he didn't rape those two young girls - since there was no DNA evidence (obviously), you would have said that there was a 2% chance of him being wrongfully convicted.

And it is likely that had the crime been committed in the US, he could have received the death penalty if he lived in a state that allowed them. So the question becomes are you OK with 1 out of 50 people convicted of murder being executed or imprisoned for life even though they didn't do it? Is it outweighed by the 49 out of 50 who are there deservingly?

It should be pointed out that I'm not advocating against the death penalty as stringently as Drew. As you say, there are cases where there is no doubt. But with most murder convictions, there is some margin for error.

Solitary confinement for an extended period of time is unconstitutional in the US on the basis of "cruel and unusual punishment". It can be done for short periods of time (generally no more than a couple of weeks) as a further form of punishment for doing something wrong in prisons. So they will be "mingling" with other inmates.

A lot of it has to do with the additional court costs (no one is executed until he has exhausted all of his appeals), which result in inmates sitting on death row for 20 years in many cases. So you've already paid the upkeep costs of the prisoners for all that time. And, as I said, I believe a life sentence without the possibility of parole is tantamount to a death sentence anyway.

But you don't have to take my word for it - most analyses agree that the cost of executing an inmate is about $1 million - $10 million MORE verses keeping him alive in prison for the rest of his life.

Check out this

or this

Liberal NBC thinks the death penalty costs more

And good God! Even ultra-conservative FOX News agrees!

There are a lot of people who were actually guilty who go out and commit another criminal offense. I'm not against putting bad people in prison. My point was about those wrongfully convicted of a crime. Although one could argue that you turned what would otherwise be an upstanding person into a criminal by wrongfully imprisoning him for a decade. So much for rehabilitation.

 

I find it difficult to believe that a 100% innocent person could be convicted of a capital crime in a western democracy. What I've seen is that career criminals with multiple valid convictions eventually get into something and end up being sentenced to death for a crime they didn't commit. These cases should be studied and all efforts should be made to ensure it doesn't happen, but when it does happen to a career criminal, I don't have much sympathy.

 

I find it difficult to believe that it could NOT happen. Just given the numbers of people who were on death row, and were exonerated prior to their sentence being carried out, we've almost certainly executed innocent people.

Also, if you can be wrongly convicted of child rape, I don't think it's a stretch to think it could happen in a murder case as well.

 

Okay, so then we should just round up all career criminals right away and execute them. Or damn it, why wait until they are career ones. Why not just shoot everyone from the wrong background as soon as they commit their first crime as they likelihood of them committing more crime is so high.

 

I assume this is your subtle way of calling me a racist. That is an inaccurate representation of what I said. I'm advocating a fair trial with lots of checks and balances for every crime. If a career criminal gets the short end of the stick every once in a while, that's a risk we have to take. If we stop doing anything because we might make a mistake, then we will be effectively paralyzed. All we can do is strive to minimize mistakes. But that doesn't mean we simply stop punishing criminals or stop striving to administer adequate punishment for their crimes.

 

What do you consider adequate punishment? You said a few posts back that you would keep prisoners in solitary confinement with the bare minimum to sustain life. Studies have shown that prolonged isolation has a tendency to drive people insane. I hardly think this is adequate punishment for people who've committed fraud, tax evasion, sold marijuana, etc. Extreme and unjust punishment doesn't seem much better than crime to me.

 

Actually, I'm actually in favour of decriminalizing MJ in order to make room in the prisons for the true filth.

You are right insofar as we are talking minor, non-violent crimes. For them, the Club Fed prison model is adequate in that it restricts their movements for a short time and then they are released back into society.

I'm talking the serial killers, the brutal murderers, the child rapists, the terrorists who blow up occupied buildings, the cops who use their authority to torment and extort from the innocent.

And the solitary confinement element is for their own safety. I'd rather go a little crazy than be gang raped.

 

Fair enough. I would generally support that notion but I think low-level violent offenses shouldn't be met with that sort of punishment and be somewhere in the middle.

 

If you're in prison (as opposed to jail or probation) for a violent offense, it's probably not going to be low level.

 

Can there be such a thing as 'low-level' violent offence?

 

LKD,

I do not believe that you are a racist, and I do not believe that was joacqin's contention either. I think he was being critical of what he sees as your heavy-handed approach to criminal justice.

But I think those two sentences summarize the problem. Where do you draw the line for what constitutes a "career criminal" and what is "adequate punishment"? Both those terms are subjective, are very open to interpretation. How many crimes do you have to commit to be a "career criminal"? Two? Three? Five? Ten? I don't see a guy who got arrested three times for selling pot to be nearly as great of a threat as someone who got arrested three times for assault. Yet they're both felonies, so are they both career criminals?

There are many, many different prisons. From low security all the way up to maximum security. The guy busted for selling pot and the white collar criminals go to the former, and the child rapists and murderers go into the latter.

 

Well, I have already mentioned my opinion that pot sellers and users shouldn't be being incarcerated merely for those crimes.

But the fact is that the stuff is illegal. And not just in the U.S., either. If a pot user is convicted several times, what it indicates to me is that he is a piece of garbage who feels that he doesn't need to obey the law of the land. I understand that many people (myself included, to a degree) think the law should be changed, but you cannot have a functioning society wherein people just blithely pick and choose which laws to follow. So, they have demonstrated their contempt for society and the rule of law, and repeated that demonstration several times.

Therefore, if it should so happen that they end up accused of a capital crime, and the evidence is such that in the course of a fair trial a jury of their peers is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that they are guilty, I'm not too saddened if these people, who clearly hold contempt for all that is good and decent, end up executed.

My basic thesis here is that if a person is living a decent, law abiding life, going to work, paying taxes, having some fun once in a while but basically being a responsible citizen, then the odds of that person being in a position that they will be wrongfully convicted of a capital crime are extremely low -- practically non-existent.

But if a person spends their life committing petty thefts, getting stoned with the proceeds of that crime, and generally being a nuisance and a drain on our society, that person is more likely to get involved in a situation wherein he is over his head and involved somehow in a terrible crime.

All of this is, however, a straw man situation. Rafferty is as slimy as they come, and the only reason I don't advocate death for McClintic is that at least she had the decency to come forward and admit what she did. Neither are innocent here, so the discussion of an innocent person being executed is moot. Doubly moot, in fact, since Canada won't do it. But I am allowed to dream of a better world, a world where the criminals are appropriately punished and people care more about the victims and their families than they do about the criminals who rape and murder. I know the bleeding hearts say they care about the victims, but I've never seen much evidence of it in their actions.

 

Thanks for the clarification LKD. A please to do not think that just because I do not advocating executing the offenders in the Stafford case to mean I think they shouldn't be punished. I do agree that getting out in 25 years is too light. They will still both have years - likely decades - of life to live after getting out of prison.

In the US, raping and murdering someone is going to put you away for life, no question asked. The murder alone is worth a minimum of 25 years, even if it's just regular old murder. But murder during the commission of another felony - like rape - is an automatic life sentence even if the state doesn't have a death penalty. And life is life in the US.

 

Yeah - getting into a scuffle, beating your husband over the head with a dish towel, etc. If no one really gets hurt but the cops still come, you're most likely to face disorderly conduct charges or something like that and not be sent to prison, lol.

 

Take a look at this article (yes, I know it's from the newspaper I read every day, and yes, it advocates law and order, and no, I'm not ashamed of where I get my news, so any criticism about my choice of where I get my news can be shoved up the critic's hind end.)

Fact is, this guy killed -- no, scratch that, murdered a police officer while committing a serious felony, and he will likely walk free having served less than 5 years. Perhaps this will let people know why I am so frustrated with Canada's legal system.

 

When I said low level violent offenses I meant crimes that weren't on the scale of the atrocities LKD mentioned. For example, I know someone that spent a few years in jail for beating up two guys that attempted to rape his girlfriend. A crime like that is not on the scale of unprovoked assault with a baseball bat or murder or something.

 

It may not be on the same scale but it's in the same neighborhood. I don't know the details of your case but it must have been severe enough to merit a prison sentence. That likely means a rather significant beating with serious injuries. Did he stomp on their heads, cause massive internal injuries with boots to the gut, etc.? Or was he someone who had already been down that road?

At any rate, I feel a lot more comfortable with someone like that sitting inside with the hardcore guys than a tax attorney who fudged some numbers. You wouldn't get a conviction/sentence like that as a first-time offender who deservedly popped somebody one in the eye.

 

I do not have any preconceived notions about the Edmonton Sun. So here's my take: The thing I find preposterous is the 2 for 1 system they have in Canada. Every day you serve in prison prior to your sentencing counts as 2? What's up with that?

In the US, any time served prior to your sentence counts, but it counts for the actual duration. (Most famous recent example is Casey Anthony. She was imprisoned during the whole thing, and when she was finally found guilty, it was just for 3 counts of lying to a police officer. She got sentenced for a year on each count, and since she was only one week shy of 3 years, she only spent a week in jail following sentencing.)

That gripe isn't with the legal system - it's with the jury. Because you shouldn't scratch killed with murdered, as the jury didn't find him guilty of murder. Neither of us were in court, but apparently the prosecution didn't do a particularly good job of presenting its case, if the jury only found him guilty of manslaughter. While necessarily speculative, I imagine the jury concluded that there was no intent by the guy to kill the officer, based on the two paragraph summary that was presented.

Given his actions though, the sentence is light. Even if his sentence doesn't get reduced, he won't serve more than a total of 8 years.

That's my feeling too. Unless you really beat the living crap out of someone, continued the beat down after the threat had been neutralized, or used some type of weapon that it was deemed excessive force, I can't imagine a jury would convict a guy for preventing a rape. Much less a judge sending him to jail for a couple of years. I don't think I need to point out that in the US you're given a pretty wide berth when defending yourself or a loved one from an attack.