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Comment by VWWHFSfQ | Hacker News Reader

> Hitting a 17yo with 30 felony charges feels a bit steep to me.

Hitting them with 30 felony charges is perfectly reasonable/correct. Those are what the charges are for the crimes.

But the punishment for those 30 felonies should/will be adjusted down. I think at most this person will lose 5 years of their life.

Not like the 25 year old girl in Seattle that set a bunch of Seattle Police cars on fire during the protests. She's going to do 4 years for each carbombing. 4 * 5 = 20 years. 25 year old girl... and now here life is basically over. And for what?

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The sentences should run concurrently.

4 years for setting a car on fire is not unreasonable, although maybe a little harsh depending on priors. It's a dangerous thing to do.

But setting five cars on fire is not particularly worse than setting one car on fire.

Setting five police cars on fire is an act of domestic terrorism. That's not in any way a normal protest action.. That's what the prosecutor will argue.

I agree the crime is serious. But that she did it more than once doesn't make it proportionally more serious, and certainly should not make the sentence proportionally longer.

Why doesn't it make it proportionally more serious?

Ehm, seriously? 10 machine 40 years? 20 machine 80 years? There's no correlation with the concept of reforming that person after a while

Usa system isn't reformative

The Boston Tea Party was an act of domestic terrorism. It's hard to determine whether an act is right or wrong without a good duration of hindsight.

Yep and maybe she'll be vindicated by future historians. But right now she's going to do 20 years.

Doubtful.

The only reason that we look at the Boston Tea Party as a "good" thing that happened is because that side ended up winning a war. If the British had won that conflict it would be a footnote in history, noting that some hooligans destroyed some property.

> The only reason that we look at the Boston Tea Party as a "good" thing that happened is because that side ended up winning a war.

No, it's because they ended up winning a war and became us. If it has been a group that went on to win war of national liberation against us, we probably wouldn't too kindly on it.

Sure, but the point remains. We remember the Boston Tea Party as a good thing only because the victors of that war celebrate it.

Was it? Which part of it caused terror?

I mean, unless you're trying to be funny.

Sure, but no one would argue, I hope, that British society would have been improved if the British government had changed their laws so that the Tea Party would no longer be a crime.

> Setting five police cars on fire is an act of domestic terrorism

No, it's not.

> That's not in any way a normal protest action.

Well, yeah, that’s why it's prosecutable as a crime at all rather than protected first amendment speech.

Setting five police cars on fire is punk rock, not "domestic terrorism"

Setting cars on fire is not an act of spreading terror. It is an act of defiance

Your Honor, I firebombed those police cars because I'm PUNK ROCK!

do you see how you sound

Again, you are misunderstanding the intention. 9/11 was an act of terrorism. Setting police cars on fire is vandalism, destruction of government property, maybe something for endangering police officers or something. All things condoned by your local friendly "anarchists".

What it isn't is terrorism.

Now go and listen to some Rage Against the Machine. Are they terrorists?

Is lighting crosses on fire terrorism?

Yes, because the whole point of that act is to terrify whoever lives on the property of the cross you're burning

Why are people lighting cop cars on fire? Please don't say it's to make an intelligent and nuanced political statement.

Because they want to destroy the government. Or their frustrated. Or mad. Or feeling mischevious.

None of those things are terrorism

Calling lighting some cars on fire terrorism sounds more frightening than anything else. I feel terrorized just by that.

It feels terrorizing to call lighting cars on fire terrorism.

I remember when terrorism was blowing up a building injuring almost 1000 people and killing countless more, or crashing airplanes into two buildings, killing 3000 and injuring countless more. Burning police cars that ended in not even an injury is a felony, but terrorism? No way.

I really wish people would stop lowering the bar for what's called terrorism. It's a very dangerous slope.

Maiming peaceful protesters with mace and rubber bullets is a dangerous thing to do.

What about murdering 5 people vs 1 person?

Although I would agree in this case and the rationale would be that it probably would take not much more amount of time to adjust behaviour of someone who did 5 vehicles vs 1. But maybe something like 7 years instead.

I'm certainly not arguing all sentences should be concurrent. Most are, and I believe it's appropriate in this case.

Life vs Items is a totally different thing. Not comparable whatsoever

O(log n) or O(sqrt(n)) might be a reasonable compromise between concurrent and consecutive sentences.

Four years of someone's life for damaging an inanimate object? Absolutely absurd. Did people get hurt? No. Fuck that. I often wonder if the "justice" system is a worse thing than criminals some of the time.

I think physical violence is (and should be) treated more harshly.

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