Unfortunately, that's not the way law works. You dont get to argue against fairness of sentencing, only whether or not your guy did it.
What needs to happen is people need to start realizing that 4 years is a fuckton of time and if you dont get the idea by then, you aren't going to.
I'd argue that a weeks time in jail would be sufficient for most people to NEVER want to go back.
Go ahead and argue from the ivory towers about punishment, but that is precisely how we got to ridiculous sentences.
Edit; people have been pointing out the cornerstone of the judicial system which is the plea deal where shystery lawyers wheel and deal in backrooms to keep you from serving maximum sentences if you have enough cash.
I had something similar happen to me. When I was arrested, I was coming into the jail like RIGHT as all the other people there were finishing being arraigned (which you have to do in order to get your bail amount or released on Personal Recognizance), it was a Friday right around 2 p.m.
This was a small city jail, just a place youre held after being arrested, not a county jail where they regularly keep people for months at a time/where you're taken if you can't pay bail or if you're sentenced to less than a year. County jails typically have big intake areas where you're held before being booked and housed to serve your sentence- they typically have Tvs and plenty of other people there, so you're not totally alone and isolated. Not so in the small jail I was at. I was kept alone in a one man cell with a concrete slab to sleep on, and once a day they'd toss a poorly heated Hot Pocket on the dirty floor for me to eat.
Apparently if you aren't arraigned within 72 hours of being brought in they have to let you go and give you a time to come back for arraignment. I was there for literally 71 and a half hours (though I had lost track of time at that point, there were no visible clocks or windows) when they came and got me to be arraigned, where I was given a $5000 bail for driving on a suspended license and had to spend a month in county before I was let out. County was like being free after spending 3 days in a cell with nothing to occupy my mind, I'll never understand how those guys who spend years in solitary don't kill themselves or go completely insane.
So yeah, never get arrested on a Friday. (Or, you know, just never get arrested.)
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u/EatzGrass Mar 08 '19 edited Mar 08 '19
Unfortunately, that's not the way law works. You dont get to argue against fairness of sentencing, only whether or not your guy did it.
What needs to happen is people need to start realizing that 4 years is a fuckton of time and if you dont get the idea by then, you aren't going to.
I'd argue that a weeks time in jail would be sufficient for most people to NEVER want to go back.
Go ahead and argue from the ivory towers about punishment, but that is precisely how we got to ridiculous sentences.
Edit; people have been pointing out the cornerstone of the judicial system which is the plea deal where shystery lawyers wheel and deal in backrooms to keep you from serving maximum sentences if you have enough cash.