Chowchilla Revisited

The children and the driver on that bus have to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives. The kidnappers should have to live with it too. Two of them were Eagle Scouts, boys who had been taught right from wrong, boys who were taught to protect others. And yet they tormented those children, put them in harm's way! Let them stay in jail, where they belong. They didn't commit the crime on the spur of the moment, they planned for weeks...let them pay for their actions.

A lot of people seem to have a hard time imagining how long 35 years in prison can be.

They have already payed for their actions, making them continue living an aimless life in prison is just cruel and excessive.

Ditto what JCoffelt said. The disregard for the psychological anguish they put the kids & driver through and the obvious potential for this to be a mass murder (whether intentional or accidental), warrant them staying right where they are. Let this be a lesson to others. This type of behavior will NOT be tolerated.

I do not think they will commit anymore crimes. Keeping them in prison serves no purpose.

@JCoffelt -- you don't think, regardless of where they are located, these three men *won't* have to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives?

You kidnap children, you sit in jail for life.

Sounds about right to me.

So far as I can tell, prisons are for reformation, for keeping dangerous individuals off the streets, or for punishment. Personally, I think that they are reformed, there's no reason to assume they'd be dangerous, and 35 years is plenty of punishment. At a certain point locking people away forever doesn't do any good, and does do harm. I think this is one of those points, though I also think our society loves throwing people in jail too much and doesn't do enough to forgive or reform.

So just kill em and save the taxpayers... Where is the line between rehabilitation and punishment? Why are nonviolent drug offenses ten times worse than rape and murder? Why are traffic violations more harsh than financial crimes? And when did prison guards get the right to judge and punish? (Guards can order solitary confinement for months without any approval, thus heavily racheting up the 'punishment' of the original sentence)

So much is wrong here.. if you want punishment, just fricking torture people and cut the 'time' and 'cost' to a minimum....

In my opinion, a person should not get less jail time because his plan to commit pre-meditated cold-blooded murder of *children* failed. They got lucky. For all we know, those kids would have been left to die, even if the killers got the ransom money.

Let them rot.

It doesn't sound to me like the victims think that the criminals should go free. And they are the ones who should have the last word.

35 years in prison is a long time. But so is 16 hours buried alive.

First! Oh, sorry...

I like how the aticle uses murders getting less time in prison as a reason to lwet them out but I think this case is a reason to keep those murderers in prison.

This was premeditated and there is no proof that they would have even let them go if they even got the cash. I like what John A. said, the victims should get the last say. Maybe have the convicted record a plea/apology and see if the victims actually believe them.

Parole before the completion of a prison sentence is ludicrous on its face. Why have any specific sentence if it's going to change in the future and just exactly what is good behavior in prison anyway? In this case they got lucky because nobody was seriously physically hurt or died. Do the crime, get caught and convicted, do the time you were given, end of story.

Rich people always serve less time.

Can't we just once have an example of rich people getting the sentence that a poor person would have?

The reason that we don't let victims decide when criminals have paid their debt to society is because that is not justice. Of course victims will want perpetrators to suffer. The point of a justice system is to decide on matters of justice impartially. Letting victims decide on punishments is hardly different than lynch mobs or vigilantes deciding on matters of justice.

Sounds to me like the system is working just as it is intended.

"Dumb rich kids." It is as if being rich somehow makes them different. What would the sentence have been if they had been poor? And what sort of person plays with people's lives like that anyway? "Oh, I think I will kidnap a bunch of children and hold them for ransom, see if these people pay up." How moronic of an idea is that? I do think they should get life. People are not toys, we do not live in the dark ages, you cannot try to bury alive someone because it is fun.

to Graystone: [Former Corrections Officer here]Prison guards do not dish out punishment nor can they order somebody to solitary. All a prison guard can do is write a prisoner up breaking an established rule, much like doing a police report. If the case is found legit, the prisoner goes to in-house court and has legal representation. If found guilty, the judge is the one who hands out the sentence/punishment. If a prison gets solitary, it's because he/she has repeatedly broken rules in the pokey and/or is a threat to officers and other prisoners. Also, drug users aren't locked up (in prison. Jail, maybe), but drug dealers do get prison time.

That said, a lot of prisoners are redeemable and would benefit from counseling, therapy, etc. But that costs money and most people just want to see prisoners suffer instead of get rehabilitated. Sad, no?

wow, this is neat in the sense that for once our justice system seems to be working. but this line right here made me think of something: "If you ask the people of Chowchilla, the answer is life without parole. On one hand, the crime as planned was horrific. On the other hand, no one was seriously hurt in the end. Many people convicted of murder receive lighter sentences. On the other hand, this crime could have ended as a mass murder."

i envision the two hands being weights that will be dropped at the same time on a lever, the heavier weight will toss the lighter(therfore weaker) weight up in the air. one weight is "no one was serously hurt in the end". we'll call that one maybe 50 lbs because its A)true and B) 35 years is a while. now on the other hand "bury a man and 26 children alive in a quarry and hope to make $5 million off it, and in the subsequent lawsuit fail to convince a SINGLE(remember appealling cases) judge or jury that you had ANY intention of letting them out". if that weight isnt over 27,000 times heavier, than your outlook into the world is A)flawed and B)dagerously scary.

these men may have changed, 35 years is a long time to live in such a gloomy place as prison. but the fact remains i dont care how much it costs the taxpayer(ME), i WANT my tax money spent on keeping these types of people in jail. as noted in the thread, there are many flaws in our system of justice and such, but lets all just act Happy when it is working EXACTLY as we want it in this case

what good is a life sentence if it's just going to be changed 30 or 40 years later? Life is life. Stick to your guns. Maybe they were just young and stupid, or maybe they were sociopaths. Don't take that risk.

The comments here are rather representative of the sentiments of the general population and constitutes the reason we do not have a justice system.

Interestingly enough the general idea and naming of "penetentiaries" was penance; remorse for past conduct. And that is the stated goal of the current prison system, otherwise given as rehabilitation.

There are a couple of high-profile cases that I think can be considered when evaluating this one. The first is that of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold who were convicted of the murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks. They abducted him because he appeared vulnerable and not because of anything personal between them. They then killed him and left his body in the woods. After killing Franks, Leopold and Loeb attempted to get ransom money from the parents. In hindsight this behavior was odd because Leopold and Loeb were both from wealthy families and could have just about anything they wanted. Certainly more than the Franks would be able to pay.

A clue to their motives came with the confession of Richard Loeb. He accidentally said something like "I planned it so well, you won't figure it out." to the cops. So what was the reason? Loeb had an IQ rating of 210 and Leopold's was rated at 180. Psychoanalysts called into the case determined that Loeb planned the murder as a test of his intelligence and ability to out-smart police investigators. Leopold on the other hand was more enamored by Loeb and had requested homosexual congess with Loeb. Loeb agreed if Leopold would help him carry out his plan to commit the perfect crime. Ironically, investigators were led to Leopold when a pair of eye-glasses were retrieved from the crime scene, the bridge piece came from a local retailer who recognized them as belonging to Leopold.

What is interesting about this case is the particular kind of neuroses that led to the murder. Both Leopold and Loeb were "model prisoners" inside the United States prison system. Leopold even founded one of the first libraries and schools in a prison. Perhaps Loeb continued to fancy himself smarter than the police, more than likely however, his delusion was shattered when he was caught.

The second case was much more recent and it is that of Stanley "Tookie" Williams. Williams was credited as a co-founder of the Crips, a South Central Las Angeles street gang. He was convicted on several accounts of murder and armed robbery. Williams was sentenced to death and lived the remainder of his life on death-row. What is particularly interesting about Williams is that he was the model of a reformed inmate. He became deeply religious and remorseful for his past offenses. In 1997 during an apology he said that he would "spend the rest of my life working toward solutions." Williams penned several books aimed at youth and the laudable "Protocol for Peace" which I recommend reading. Williams filed for Clemency with Schwarzenegger, then Governor of California. While considering the case a large support group built up around Williams to support his application, but an even larger group rose up to see to it that he was executed. Interestingly, a split occurred in the victim's families, some wanted him executed, but just as many wanted him to spend the rest of his life in prison (the result of getting clemency) writing to troubled youth inerested in gang culture.

If there was ever the possibility of the most heinous criminal being reformed, Stanley "Tookie" Williams certainly seemed to fit our expectations. Still, there is some vengefulness in the general population that ensured Schwarzenegger's decision would be a negative to Williams.

On that final note; I've spent some time studying the interviews given by Charles Manson and the man has a surprising amount of insight into the vengeful-hateful nature of the average human being who resides outside of prison and who would readily latch onto the labels "Patriot" or "Do-gooder". He claims there is a drastic decrease in the appearance of dishonesty inside of prison, where a single lie can get you killed. Outside of prison, falsehoods predominate, people are far removed from the reality of their own self-hood, which in prison they are forced to recognize. So perhaps, we should all spend a year or two in prison to get to know ourselves.

BTW, the defense attorney representing Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb was the world-renowned American Civil Liberties Lawyer Clarence Darrow. Darrow was most famous for representing John Scopes in the Scopes Monkey Trials and is portrayed as Henry Drummond in the 1960 film Inherit the Wind by the actor Spencer Tracy. The film is a dramatization of the Scops Monkey Trials.

The reason I bring up his name is that he came to defend Leopold and Loeb because of his metaphysical beliefs and how they pertain to crime. These can be learned from his 1922 book Crime: Its Cause and Treatment. Which I think gives a clear insight into why the justice system doesn't serve to reduce or prevent crime.

The book can be viewed on project gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12027)

Also, details of the case of Leopold and Loeb and statements given by Darrow in their defence can be viewed at the excellent website http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/loeb/5c.html

"What is a mitigating circumstance? Is it youth? If so, why? Simply because the child has not the judgment of life that a grown person has...

"Here are two boys who are minors. The law would forbid them making contracts, forbid them marrying without the consent of their parents, would not permit them to vote. Why? Because they haven't the judgment which only comes with years, because they are not fully responsible...

"I cannot understand the glib, lighthearted carelessness of lawyers who talk of hanging two boys as if they were talking of a holiday or visiting the races..."

Darrow then looked at Judge Caverly and his voice hushed in respect, "I don't believe there is a judge in Cook County that would not take into consideration the mental status of any man before they sentence him to death."

"They call it a cold-blooded murder because they want to take human lives....This is the most cold-blooded murder, says the State, that ever occurred....I have never yet tried a case where the state's attorney did not say that it was the most cold-blooded, inexcusable, premeditated case that ever occurred. If is was murder, there never was such a murder...Lawyers are apt to say that."

"This is a senseless, useless, purposeless, motiveless act of two boys....There was not a particle of hate, there was not a grain of malice, there was no opportunity to be cruel except as death is cruel -- and death is cruel."

"They had a weird, almost impossible relationship. Leopold, with his obsession of the superman, had repeatedly said that Loeb was his idea of the superman. He had the attitude toward him that one has to his most devoted friend, or that a man has to a lover. Without the combination of these two, nothing of this sort probably would have happened....all the testimony of the alienists....shows that this terrible act was the act of immature and diseased brains, the act of children.

"Nobody can explain it any other way.

"No one can imagine it any other way.

"It is not possible that it could have happened in any other way."

Come to think of it also, I had a modern criminology book on my desktop at home that specifically addresses the influence of public perception on criminal justice system. Most of which proves to be negative to the over-all reduction of crime and recidivism rates.

This book also lead me to research on the influence metaphorical-framing on public perception of crime which is very interesting.

And I can direct readers to Johnathan Cohen and Joshua Greene, Criminologists, Psychologists and advocates of a consequentialist approach to criminal justice.

I'll follow up when I get the title of the other documents.

What incentive would a kidnapper have to release 27 witnesses? Satisfaction for their conscience?

So here is the documents I promised

Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in
Reasoning
Paul H. Thibodeau, Lera Boroditsky*
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/crime-metaphors.pdf

I couldn't find the book I promised, I had closed it I guess. But there is another here that address the issue more directly:

Doing Justice Better: The Politics Of Restorative Justice by David J. Cornwell

And finally, the paper For The Law Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything by Jonathan Cohen and Joshua Greene
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/GreeneCohenPhilTrans-04.pdf

"Free will as we ordinarily
understand it is an illusion generated by our cognitive
architecture. Retributivist notions of criminal responsibility
ultimately depend on this illusion, and, if we are
lucky, they will give way to consequentialist ones, thus
radically transforming our approach to criminal justice."

The absence of free-will as a belief is common among neuroscientists, however there are a few exceptions, such as Michael Gazzaniga. Some of these men, lawyers and other justice official organized by the Dana Foundation attempted to rebut the consequenalist view.

For more proponents from science of the view that free-will is false and or our justice systems flawed see:

Brain, Mind and Consciousness (conference)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4831204601412295941

Beyond Belief
http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-science-religion-reason-and-survival

Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0
http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlightenment-2-0

Here is a teaser; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdRZk4NRgYs