TL/DR:
Jailbreaking the Wii lead an American guy to prison, while it would have been legal in Europe, according to the EUCJ.
Jailbreaking the Wii lead an American guy to prison, while it would have been legal in Europe, according to the EUCJ.
Just about any felony is associated with a maximum sentence that is roughly 10 times higher in the US than in Europe. The US justice system is all about retribution, this is so ingrained in the US psyche that ssemingly normal people who think they are humane and have good moral compass will make "don't drop the soap jokes" and basically accept prison rape as normal way of dealing with felons, provided they dislike the crime enough. Even US judges occasionally state in public that they hope that the defendant will die in prison.
People in Europe tend to be more civil in such matters.
Edit: "That is what plea bargaining is. It is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system." Scott & Stuntz, Plea Bargaining as Contract, 101 Yale L. J. 1909, 1912 (1992). " Quoted in Missouri v Frye before the Supreme Court(https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=169296831339244...)
Perhaps, when so many people are doing something illegal that your criminal justice system can't take the strain it is time to consider what is illegal? Plea bargains on the other hand seem to be working around justice.
A small introduction: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-uni...
Make the penalties for everything unreasonably harsh you escalate what criminals are willing to do to avoid their people going to jail. They're more likely to carry weapons and murder witnesses and the whole works. Which allows the police to justify more SWAT teams and military hardware and surveillance gear that all come from private for-profit corporations.
Arms dealers love an arms race.
I don't know of any other country that has elections for judges!
Surely doctors should be experts in medicene, and judges should be experts on law. If you're elected you are an expert in being elected.
Judicial elections in general also bring in unwelcome outside influences to the process (monetary campaign backing, campaigning along party lines despite the fact judges are supposed to be politically independent) and the best judges may not be the best politicians/campaigners.
Taxpayers foot the bill either way.
Find yourself locked up in Macomb Co, MI? You will receive a bill for $60/day for your incarceration as you are released.
Florida State Prison? Be prepared for a "cost of incarceration lien" to be levied by the state at the rate of $50/day for often multi-year sentences.
Such fees are authorized (though not always enforced) in 43 states.
So the analogy is not at all broken.
1. http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/18/news/economy/prison-fees-inm...
2. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34705968
3. https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/paying-your-time-how-...
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Really?
Cruel and unusual?
I would be careful to generalize here. It's often not the people that are reluctant to demand retribution, but criminal justice systems that are insulated against populism. For example, there's currently a pretty sickening case of serial gang rape being reported on in Germany and there's plenty of popular outrage [1], including some people wishing for the death penalty and for body parts getting hacked off (and the suspects appear to be ethnic Germans, so it's not anti-migrant hysteria). But in the end, the criminal justice system is unlikely to be affected by that outrage, largely because of Germany's career judiciary (both prosecutors and judges).
[1] The outrage is understandable; the crimes make me feel ill, too. But the desire for retribution is still way outside what the penal code or the constitution would permit.
A EU court ruled that it is not illegal to provide a mod chip for the Wii because of “how often [the] devices are in fact used in order to allow unauthorised copies … and how often that equipment is used for purposes which do not infringe copyright[.]“ (from the article).
The US court meanwhile ignored the question whether they could have legitimate purpose at all and just saw it as “a device to circumvent copyright“.
What is interesting here is not that two countries have different laws, it is that an “international“ law is interpreted completely different for an almost identical case by two countries and thus punished completely differently.
There're a series of excellent EdX courses on International Law by the Université Catholique de Louvain if you're interested.
https://www.edx.org/micromasters/louvainx-international-law
Don't use endonyms like Den Haag or Torino for The Hague or Turin for developed countries. Use the traditional exonyms.
The court mostly deals with disputes between states — which is not the case here as a USian was imprisoned by the US following US interpretation of treaty rules — and the US would have to allow its jurisdiction for this case which I wouldn't see happen normally, and even less so under the current jingoistic administration.
Same as in the US, but ultimately the EJC is Europe's Supreme Court, if it decides to take a case and rule, its rulings supersede local decisions.
If someone in the UK was arrested for having a gun would we write about a “British man serving time for something that’s legal in the US”?