I have no persponal experience with this kind of situation, but I am just wondering what people think - should they put him in a home-bracelet, let him out or leave him in?
Judge says accused Beaver County child molester must stay in jail
By Brian Bowling
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 Last updated: 2:40 pm
A federal judge today refused to release an elderly Beaver County man on bond while he awaits trial on a charge that he traveled to Florida to molest boys while on a cruise ship.
Sherwood Stevenson, 72, of Independence admitted to federal agents that he fondled a 6-year-old boy sitting next to him in a whirlpool sauna during the cruise. In a Jan. 26 interview at his home, Stevenson also admitted to other incidents at a movie theater and a 2006 guilty plea to disorderly conduct after Hopewell police charged him with indecent exposure in a boys' shower room.
This is my "hot button". I have no sympathy or empathy for someone like this. Child molestation is the one crime I feel should have an automatic death penalty. I haven't read a credible study that says that they can be rehabilitated and the number of repeat offenders is extremely high. The offender in the story admits that he knew what he was doing but could not control himself. He and others like him are the cancer of society and like any cancer they need to be removed.
He stays in.
Take care,
Mike
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Emotionally I agree with Mike, but as a tax payer I don't care to fund his prison tab nor lawyer fee. I think the prison tab is less than the legal fee to defend a capital punishment case. Bolonga and water (little salt peter for the bedevilment) and hope he gets a little sausage from Bubba.
I agree with the judge and that animal should be kept in jail for a long time, if not forever.
Had the same thng happened in a Liberal state like California, no doubt, he would be out by now and probably suing the state for arresting him in the first place.
My idea to solve the high cost of housing these career criminals is to make a deal with a third world country to keep these people in jails in their country and the US could pay something like $5 or $10 dollars per day for each prisoner’s food and such. No big HD Televisions, no complete medical care, no high paid lawyers (paid for by taxpayers), no cell phones, no Internet and no ACLU.
If we would ever get to that point, watch the crime rate fall to near zero.
Debra
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With integrity nothing else matters; without it nothing else matters.
I agree with the judge and that animal should be kept in jail for a long time, if not forever.
Had the same thng happened in a Liberal state like California, no doubt, he would be out by now and probably suing the state for arresting him in the first place.
My idea to solve the high cost of housing these career criminals is to make a deal with a third world country to keep these people in jails in their country and the US could pay something like $5 or $10 dollars per day for each prisoner’s food and such. No big HD Televisions, no complete medical care, no high paid lawyers (paid for by taxpayers), no cell phones, no Internet and no ACLU.
If we would ever get to that point, watch the crime rate fall to near zero.
Research tells us that such people cannot be rehabilitated. Attempts to do so (by a variety of different methods) have all resulted in failure. The only solution then is to keep them sequestered from the rest of society.
__________________ Triumph ~ November 2010 Fantasy ~ April 2010 Fantasy ~ December 2009
Of course it is. I was pointing out the idiocy of the moronic thinking that would take a thread about a topic as abhorrent as child molestation and make it political.
Of course it is. I was pointing out the idiocy of the moronic thinking that would take a thread about a topic as abhorrent as child molestation and make it political.
I have no persponal experience with this kind of situation, but I am just wondering what people think - should they put him in a home-bracelet, let him out or leave him in?
1. The first duty of a civil government is to protect its citizens -- and that means ALL of its citizens -- from those who would do them harm.
2. Sexual offenders usually have MANY victims, most of whom are far too embarrassed to come forward. Further, sexual crimes are often very difficult to prosecute because there are seldom witnesses, setting up a situation in which it is the word of the victim against the word of the offender. In such situations, our constitution requires doubt to cut in favor of the offender.
3. The psychological and psychiatric professions, which thought that they could rehabilitate sexual offenders with a few sessions of counselling, finally admitted a few years ago that it is NOT possible to rehabilitate sexual offenders with any certitude.
4. Sexual offenses committed against minors are particularly pernicious, partly because the victims are extremely vulnerable and partly because such offenses deprive the victims of the innocence of childhood and leave the victims scarred very deeply for life.
It is not possible to restore to victims what such crimes take from them, but the government has a duty to do everything in its power ensure that the offenders don't have access to any more victims.
Realistically, there are two viable options to ensure that such offenders never prey on another victims -- (1) life without parole in the most secure prison that we can build or (2) capital punishment.
My sole concern about capital punishment is that the high emotions that surround trials for sexual offenses committed against minors are apt to lead to a relatively high rate of false convictions when juries fixated on the horrors of the offenses that fail to examine the evidence pointing to the accused with sufficient rigor to establish an indisputable proof. When a man's innocence is proven after his execution, the government cannot bring him back to life. The alarming incidence of wrong verdicts in our criminal justice system clearly points to a need to change the manner in which our courts select jurors to ensure their competence to decide the cases before them. Until those changes happen (and I don't see any movement in that direction), we need to err on the side of caution.
Child molestation is the one crime I feel should have an automatic death penalty.
My hesitation in this is that there needs to be a hierarchy of punishments. Bad as this crime may be, there have been much worse stories. The fear of a greater punishment for a more severe crime might stop the criminal for going that extra step. If there were an automatic death penalty for this very crime, the criminal might think, "Hey, I might as well go even further because the penalty is going to be the same." Yes, start with a harsh punishment less than the death penalty, but reserve the death penalty for those horrific crimes we have all heard about. It might prevent the criminal from stepping across the line and at least return the child alive.
My hesitation in this is that there needs to be a hierarchy of punishments. Bad as this crime may be, there have been much worse stories. The fear of a greater punishment for a more severe crime might stop the criminal for going that extra step. If there were an automatic death penalty for this very crime, the criminal might think, "Hey, I might as well go even further because the penalty is going to be the same." Yes, start with a harsh punishment less than the death penalty, but reserve the death penalty for those horrific crimes we have all heard about. It might prevent the criminal from stepping across the line and at least return the child alive.
Violent criminals lack impulse control. That is, they do not reason the way you speculate in your post.
__________________ Triumph ~ November 2010 Fantasy ~ April 2010 Fantasy ~ December 2009
There should be no such thing as a person with a long history of child molestation or rape in our society. These people should be incarcerated for life and never allowed to prey on innocent people. There are those who always want to offer a second, third, forth... chance but for me just lock-em up and keep them in jail. My thinking is that for every time a person is caught committing any crime there are probably dozens or hundreds of other times when they were either not caught or not prosecuted.
Debra
__________________
With integrity nothing else matters; without it nothing else matters.
There should be no such thing as a person with a long history of child molestation or rape in our society. These people should be incrassated for life and never allowed to prey on innocent people. There are those who always want to offer a second, third, forth... chance but for me just lock-em up and keep them in jail. My thinking is that for every time a person is caught committing any crime there are probably dozens or hundreds of other times when they were either not caught or not prosecuted.
In principle, I agree completely. I just want to be sure that the jury has convicted the right person before we throw away the key.
Unfortunately, our manner of choosing both prosecutors and juries does not give me a high degree of confidence. Altogether too often, prosecutors -- whose legal interest, as attorneys of the state, is justice -- seek to gain a conviction at any cost that they can showcase to voters in the next election. And too often, inept jurors get distracted by the emotional horror of the crime and don't really cobble together the line of proof with adequate rigor.
There should be no such thing as a person with a long history of child molestation or rape in our society. These people should be incarcerated for life and never allowed to prey on innocent people. There are those who always want to offer a second, third, forth... chance but for me just lock-em up and keep them in jail. My thinking is that for every time a person is caught committing any crime there are probably dozens or hundreds of other times when they were either not caught or not prosecuted.
Debra
Can you please explain what you mean by INCRASSATED ?
OK - lets not make this a political thing. No one "loves" child molestors.
Paul, I agree with you.
It would be sick to make this a political issue.
TM
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child molester must stay in jail
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