Re: Man gets life in prison for spitting [on a cop]

On Friday 04 July 2003 1:25 am, Rob Kaper wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 07:10:59PM -0500, Andreas Pour wrote:
> > Do YOU understand what life in prison means?  Or are you really
> > suggesting that anyone who does not desire life imprisonment for every
> > minor offense "does not care about the law"?
>
> Fact is, transmission of body fluids can be lethal and has been on several
> occasions. Fact is, they didn't make up this law to lock up people.

Fact is, wife-beating can be lethal and has been not just on several 
occasions, but frequently. Yet wife-beating carries only a years sentence.

Are you seriously saying that spitting on the face of a government officialy 
is 200 times worse than beating your wife? (I believe a US life sentence is 
200 years, correct me if I'm wrong).

Furthermore, manslaughter is always lethal, if not deliberate, and yet (IIRC) 
cannot carry a life sentence. I don't think spitting in a police officer's 
face, in this case, was intended to cause any but the most immediate, 
indirect harm. Even had it caused death, which, given the circumstances is 
impossibly unlikely, it should at worst have been considered manslaughter.


Funny thing is, had he spat in the face of a random stranger on a bus, he 
wouldn't have faced jail at all (I expect, I am not a lawyer). But because it 
happened to be a government official, somehow this is considered almost 
infinitely worse.

Dre is right, this kind of elevation of government and government official 
above all other citizens is VERY suggestive of fascism, and very dangerous.

> > There is this concept called proportionality.  Does it make sense for
> > someone who spits on a cop to get the same sentence as someone who
> > murders 10 people in cold blood?  Well perhaps you want to give the
> > latter the death penalty, though I wonder if you would oppose the death
> > penalty for the former . . . I doubt it.
>
> I would, but that's your prerogative.

As an aside, death penalty is arguably less harsh than life sentence, unless 
you happen to be religious. The only thing to make the death penalty worse is 
the impossibility of proving your innocence afterwards. But this is another 
matter altogether.

> > Plus if you really cared about speading disease, then you should get the
> > same penalty for "stealling a kiss", certainly for date rape (that risks
> > pregnancy as well, and causes far greater psychological damage), and what
> > about sneezing in public?  Life in prison for public sneezers!
>
> I wouldn't mind to see life time prison for rape. And last time I checked,
> sneezing wasn't something one can easily reproduce or aim at another
> person, unlike spitting.

Well, would you suggest that anyone who spits on anyone else should face the 
possibility of life imprisonment, whereas punching another person in the face 
carries a far smaller sentence?

> I would not oppose making the law less strict and require an actual lethal
> disease on the offender's part, to make it fall in line with sex crimes.
> (HIV-positive people *can* be charged murder in case they don't tell their
> partner, even with conscentual sex)

This, at least, I would agree with. As long as you propose applying it to all 
citizens and not just 'government employees'.

-- 
Dan.

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