Life sentence for pot conviction. When will the madness end?

TragicMonkey said:
It's precisely the same thing. Helmley felt the tax laws were stupid. She felt she didn't need to follow them, that her avoidance of taxes harmed nobody, and the laws were unjust. So she disobeyed them.

And she got hammered for it, and rightly so.
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The Leona Helmsley case was another gross injustice perpetrated by a grandstanding prosecutor. She was convicted of underpaying her taxes by less than $2,000,000 during a year when she and her husband actually DID pay more than $53,000,000. Basically she was convicted of claiming some renovations to a vacation home as business deductions. (Some of the evidence may have been falsified, but assume it wasn't.) The proper legal response should have been to disallow the deductions and impose fines and penalties. Maybe triple damages would have been right, or maybe $10 million would have been right. But sentencing a 74-year-old women to 16 years in prison (a judge eventually reduced her sentence) for underpaying her taxes by less than four percent (if you paid $10,000 last year, four percent would be $400) is an obscenity, and it only happened because the court permitted Rudy Giuliani to portray her as a witch, "The Queen of Mean." Note that she was indicted on April 14, 1988 -- the day before Tax Day -- purely as an example. This was gross governmental misconduct, and it could happen to anyone if the feds wanna get you.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q...UqQlIt&sig=AHIEtbQ4ZvxyuXUVFdy17VEFhSopT9s1_g
 
qayak said:
Not a harmless crime. Let's get back on topic.
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It is extremely on topic. It's your opinion that X is a harmless crime and Y is not. So we should let you get away with X but punish those who do Y? Because you say so? That's not an orderly society.

In a democracy, what we do is get together and agree on what the rules are. That's what we did, and we agreed that pot and tax evasion are both wrong and shall be punished. Those in the minority view are still bound to abide by the rules or suffer the consequences. None of us is given the option to pick and choose which laws shall apply to us.
 
It's pretty easy to make a case that dodging taxes is bad and that some degree of bad things should happen to people who dodge taxes.
Having some baggies with plants in them, on the other hand...
 
Taarkin said:
It's pretty easy to make a case that dodging taxes is bad and that some degree of bad things should happen to people who dodge taxes.
Having some baggies with plants in them, on the other hand...
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... is something that legislative majorities in virtually every state and the national Congress have concluded is also bad.
 
marplots said:
I have two strikes. That fact has kept me a very careful person and a solidly law-abiding citizen for a decade. I believed them when they told me what the setup was. I still do.

Wherever the line is drawn, there are going to be sad-sacks on the wrong side of it. That's what pardons are for. I don't know if the guy deserves it or not, but he certainly should have seen it coming.

On another front, my beef is that there is no mechanism to recover my reputation. I miss it.
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....move to a country with less idiotic laws, there are many. I suggest northwest europe or deep down under.
 
Taarkin said:
You can't say that a punishment is lenient unless you know what the correct punishment is.
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Exactly.

Here's an idea - since some people think life is too much and some people think zero is too little, maybe, just maybe, we could actually write down what the correct penalty is, then we'll know what to do when someone breaks that law.

Which is sort of, kind of....well....exactly what happened here.
 
Quad4_72 said:
I believe marijuana should be legalized as well. Unfortunately, it is not legal, so I am going to hold off on selling it from my house until it is legalized because I am aware of the consequences....I have a feeling the guy in the story was aware of the consequences as well.
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His previous experience indicated relatively minor consequences.

LTC8K6 said:
Actually, I don't care what you smoke in your own home, I just wonder at the near total persecution of tobacco users...
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When they're given life sentences for tobacco possession, then I'll have a little more sympathy for the poor persecuted smokers.


marplots said:
On another front, my beef is that there is no mechanism to recover my reputation. I miss it.
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Could you just move to another state?



JamesDillon said:
And what about people who want the duly enacted laws of the state to be properly enforced, regardless of whether they personally agree with every decision made by the legislative majority?
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Not evil. More "Lawful Neutral".
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
Exactly.

Here's an idea - since some people think life is too much and some people think zero is too little, maybe, just maybe, we could actually write down what the correct penalty is, then we'll know what to do when someone breaks that law.

Which is sort of, kind of....well....exactly what happened here.
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All laws are just, by definition. If you disagree you are automatically wrong.
 
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Taarkin said:
All laws are just, by definition. If you disagree you are automatically wrong.
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All laws are binding, by definition. You're free to argue that a binding law is unjust and encourage the community to amend or repeal it. What you're not free to do is simply ignore it.
 
Bob001 said:
The Leona Helmsley case was another gross injustice perpetrated by a grandstanding prosecutor. She was convicted of underpaying her taxes by less than $2,000,000 during a year when she and her husband actually DID pay more than $53,000,000. Basically she was convicted of claiming some renovations to a vacation home as business deductions. (Some of the evidence may have been falsified, but assume it wasn't.) The proper legal response should have been to disallow the deductions and impose fines and penalties. Maybe triple damages would have been right, or maybe $10 million would have been right. But sentencing a 74-year-old women to 16 years in prison (a judge eventually reduced her sentence) for underpaying her taxes by less than four percent (if you paid $10,000 last year, four percent would be $400) is an obscenity, and it only happened because the court permitted Rudy Giuliani to portray her as a witch, "The Queen of Mean." Note that she was indicted on April 14, 1988 -- the day before Tax Day -- purely as an example. This was gross governmental misconduct, and it could happen to anyone if the feds wanna get you.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:oE66EuQ-c5MJ:nsulaw.nova.edu/faculty/documents/P%2520-%25201-%2520Prob.%252029%2520-%2520Helmsley.doc+leona+helmsley+paid+taxes&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiY8aynm3rh0H-oCJJtSSv68eRHv2Tv7nGetAIaJ1bn77BvnnprS3DK_nJPu-Vnmm1iR_rZoOmnicr2GfcdaIZhXty-LdXFiIcgOxxQ5VoHZL7rpK_Ue7RCoutrILdcHGUqQlIt&sig=AHIEtbQ4ZvxyuXUVFdy17VEFhSopT9s1_g
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No.

It doesn't work like that. No one is sent to prison for underpaying $2000. What they are sent to prison for is refusing a lawful order to pay the $2,000,000.

In other words, the cops didn't kick down her door and tell her that she paid $53,000,000, but actually owed $55,000,000, so put your hand behind your back, you're going to prison. There would have been numerous chances over a period of years to have paid the $2,000,000 and numerous chances to appeal, long before you ever get to prison.
 
Resume said:
Well, in this case he disagreed and was wrong four times.
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That's the part that people are forgetting. He had 4 chances to not go to prison for life.

I've probably had 20 speeding tickets in my life. If they passed a law tomorrow that said anyone who gets 24 goes to prison for life, not only can you be certain I would never get to 24, you can be certain I would never get to 21.
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
The Freemen think that income taxes are illegal and they should be allowed to own any weapon they choose. What if everyone decided not to pay taxes because the tax code is "blatantly unconstitutional"? Then what would happen?

Remember: The Supreme Court (ultimately) decides what is "blatantly unconstitutional", not you.
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Look, you have to pick your battles. I personally object to the tax burden society has placed upon me but the IRS has way more guns than I do so I pay my taxes.

Along the same vein I certainly wouldn't go into the marijuana distribution business because I don't want to go to jail. If they made it a death sentence or massive jail time to smoke pot, I would stop. I would still protest but I would stop. Everyone has to draw their own line.
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
I think laws against theft are stupid. So when I break into your house and steal everything you have, surely you won't call the police, right?
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Nope, I would blow your head off. I don't rely on the police for my personal security, I rely on Smith & Wesson specifically because I don't think the police *could* actually help me in this kind of situation.

Anyway, the point you are basically making here is that all laws are the same. Sorry, but they aren't. Everything has to be looked at in it's own context, things aren't black and white.

If the law says that I can enslave a black person are you right or wrong to stop me doing so, against the law? Things simply aren't black and white. Comparing theft of personal property to smoking pot simply makes you look like a simpleton.
 
JamesDillon said:
All laws are binding, by definition. You're free to argue that a binding law is unjust and encourage the community to amend or repeal it. What you're not free to do is simply ignore it.
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Stop me.

Seriously, we absolutely are free to ignore whatever we want. Maybe the consequences will catch up with us, maybe not, but ignoring it is certainly an option.

You law and order types always make me laugh. You follow every law to the letter do you JamesDillon? I call BS on that and on your mentality. If it was up to your type we'd still have slavery and indentured servitude.
 
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