it was observed that some circumstances of the abduction corresponded to details in "The Day the Children Vanished", a story written by Hugh Pentecost that had been published in the 1969 fiction anthology Alfred Hitchcock's Daring Detectives.So, I follow to "Hugh Pentecost":
Judson Pentecost Philips (10 August 1903 – March 7, 1989) was an American writer who wrote more than 100 mystery and detective novels under the pseudonyms Hugh Pentecost and Philip Owen, as well as under his own name. As Judson Philips, he also wrote numerous pulp sports novels in the 1930s.And I'm thinking. Where the hell have I heard that name before...
That is a hilarious overestimate of the humanity in the American criminal justice system. We imprison people for victimless, harmless crimes like possession of an ounce of marijuana with intent to distribute and give people 5 years.Or 20 years for cocaine.
Maybe. But it's a decision for the victims to make, the children and their parents, and nobody else. No one on earth has the right to proxy-forgive for others.The purpose of the justice system isn't revenge, it's justice. We don't let victims decide the punishment for a reason. The decision should be made by the parole board, considering the interests of victims, the preps, and society at large.
A key issue at sentencing was whether they had kidnapped with bodily harm — a circumstance warranting life in prison with no parole. Prosecutor David Minier convinced Superior Court Judge Leo Deegan that the nosebleeds, stomach upset and fainting suffered by three of the girls constituted injury. But an appeals court ruled in 1980 that there was no bodily harm, and the kidnappers were eligible for parole.Another way to put it is they were railroaded into life without parole sentences. Later, courts corrected that error to life with parole.
> I agree what they did was heinous and thoughtless, but life imprisonment? How is such a sentence in any way justified?It's entirely justifiable to deny parole to any of the perps who may be sociopaths that might ever do something so depraved again. The point of doing so is not vengeance, but keeping known monsters away from the general public. That is what our justice system is ostensibly for. I find the apparent lack of understanding of this fact exhibited by several of the commenters thus far pretty disappointing, to be honest, but at least that's just ignorance. What's more troublesome is that virulent strain of "I don't see what the big deal is!" that also crops up in threads about bullying, sexism, etc. I may just have to accept that mental stuntedness is more common than I'd like to believe.
> I'd be curious to know if anyone has ever studied them to find out exactly what damage was done to them and if they have ongoing psychological problems as a result.I'm glad you asked.
It's entirely justifiable to deny parole to any of the perps who may be sociopaths that might ever do something so depraved again. The point of doing so is not vengeance, but keeping known monsters away from the general public.This kind of thing is why I hate the whole 'sociopath' b.s. People just use it to describe anyone they really don't like, make up all kinds of b.s. About anyone who's a 'sociopath' is irredeemable and bla bla bla. And of course the definition gets expanded to all kinds of people who do not commit crimes (like Wall Street executives and so on) in which case sociopaths are not actually guaranteed to commit horrible crimes, there's no justification for holding them on that hypothetical possibility.
There are, as Justice Racanelli points out, sound pragmatic reasons why the Legislature has chosen not to permit the life without parole sentence where no independent significant physical harm occurs. . . Manifestly the principal purpose was to provide an incentive for the kidnapper to refrain from inflicting such injury on the victim — a purpose which appears to have been vindicated in the circumstances of this case.I would certainly parole these people. Excessive sentencing provides criminals with little incentive to mitigate or moderate their behavior, a viewpoint proverbially expressed as 'might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.'
This kind of thing is why I hate the whole 'sociopath' b.s. People just use it to describe anyone they really don't like, make up all kinds of b.s. About anyone who's a 'sociopath' is irredeemable and bla bla bla.Yes, people often use the term that way. No, people don't just use it that way. I assure you I meant it in the clinical sense. Keep in mind, sloppy communication happens on the receiving end, too. People commonly overlay their own meanings onto what is said.
It's an issue of proportionality. 35 years is simply an insane punishment (actually 45 when you consider the two other perps aren't eligible for parole another 10 years).Again, the most important thing is not to punish the guilty, but to protect the innocent. If none of us here are in a position to know whether any of these individuals may be genuinely sociopathic or not, I submit to you that our opinions about the matter are not relevant in any meaningful sense at all, no matter how strongly we may feel about them.
Hell, it probably started helicopter parenting.There were actually a whole slew of high-profile child abduction cases in the '70s and early '80s: Etan Patz, Adam Walsh, Johnny Gosch. I assume there weren't any more child abductions and murders in that era than in any other era, but my sense is that they did receive more publicity and lead to new ideas about parenting. I think you could argue that Chowchilla also played a role in that. I'm not sure, though: the moral of the Patz, Walsh and Gosch cases was sort of "kids should be supervised by adults at all times," and the kids in Chowchilla were supervised by an adult. So maybe the cultural effects were somewhat different.
* Lead prosecutor David Minier, now a retired Madera County judge, sent a letter in supportSo nearly everyone involved in prosecuting them eventually became extremely invested in promoting their parole, including the judge who originally sentenced them to life without parole. Typically, we see activist groups pressing for parole, overturning of sentencing, or retrial, and even in the cases where it seems really obvious that the prisoner is probably not guilty (new evidence/DNA findings/confession from someone else), the state generally, and those connected with the arrest, prosecution and sentencing, specifically, usually remain extremely reluctant, even in the face of wide public support for the prisoner. Even when the prisoner is on death row, and it seems very, very likely that he is innocent.
* "Another judge advocating their release was William Newsom, then a justice on the state Court of Appeal, who wrote the parole board in 1988. He had been the author of the appellate decision upholding their conviction."
* [from 1996] "the late Leo Deegan, the judge who sentenced them to life behind bars, recommended 10 years ago that they be paroled. Dale Fore, a retired Madera County sheriff's sergeant who helped with the investigation and who more recently worked for Woods' lawyer, thinks they have served enough time. Ed Volpe, the Alameda County sheriff's lieutenant who coordinated the probe, believes they "absolutely" should be paroled. "I really don't believe in my heart that they are a threat to society," he said. 'If they were let out tomorrow, you wouldn't hear from those kids again.'"
* "Retired Madera County Sheriff Edward Bates, no coddler of criminals, wrote the parole board several times when one or another of the kidnappers came up for a hearing, saying he was "pleased with the sentences imposed." It's a standard letter, one the parole board expects, and usually gets, from law enforcement.
But in 1988, a discussion with the kidnappers' attorneys raised new questions in Bates' mind. In his next letter, he added a couple of crucially different paragraphs.
'I am disturbed about the ultimate 'fairness' of the sentencing procedure in the (Chowchilla) case,' he wrote the parole board. 'We often find some serious crime violators with a history of violence and even torture being allowed parole after a relatively short period of serving their prison term. Yet we find the defendants in (this) case still incarcerated.'"
California’s parole board Tuesday upheld an earlier decision that deemed one of three men responsible for kidnapping 26 Chowchilla schoolchildren and their school bus driver in 1976 suitable for parole.posted by hat at 12:59 AM on April 6, 2011
But Richard Schoenfeld, now 56, would not be scheduled for release until 2021, and his parole would have to clear several more hurdles, including a review by the governor, said Luis Patino, a spokesman for the parole board.
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I had no idea that such a horrifying thing had ever happened.
posted by Decimask at 7:14 PM on April 3, 2011 [11 favorites]