> Manchester was sentenced to a staggering 45 years in prison for robbing the two McDonald’s, primarily due to kidnapping charges for each employee.
If judges interpret the law so strictly, why don't we replace them by computers?
If judges interpret the law so strictly, why don't we replace them by computers?
"Whoever unlawfully seizes, confines, inveigles, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, or carries away and holds for ransom or reward or otherwise any person..."
Locking people in a walk-in is pretty clearly "confines".
For North Carolina's purpose: https://www.ncleg.net/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySec...
"Any person who shall unlawfully confine, restrain, or remove from one place to another, any other person 16 years of age or over without the consent of such person, ... shall be guilty of kidnapping if such confinement, restraint or removal is for the purpose of:
(1) Holding such other person for a ransom or as a hostage or using such other person as a shield; or
(2) Facilitating the commission of any felony or facilitating flight of any person following the commission of a felony; or"
So, confinement which facilitates the commision of a felony and fleeing thereafter.
Second: because we don't have human-equivalent AI, and if we did, why would you think that they would do better?
It's not like they're charging them with resisting arrest for every cop he ran from or something.
Any why shouldn't each offense be punished? Each victim deserves justice, not just the first few.
Anyway, don't you think that 45 years of prison for locking up people for about an hour (when the police arrived) is ridiculous compared to e.g. the sentence for murder which is far less. It is literally ridiculous.
And yes, the average sentence for murder is ridiculously short; most if not all murderers should never be released. The only exceptions I can think of require pretty extreme mitigating circumstances, like Gary Plauche. On the other hand, a repeat offender murderer will almost certainly never get out. The justice system is rightly much harsher on people who do whatever they did more than once.
Justice should be about punishments proportionate to the crime, getting dangerous/likely-to-reoffend people out of society for a time, and hopefully eventually rehabilitation.
Justice shouldn't be about the victims. Victims should have no say or sway over a criminal's sentence. Certainly someone who has hurt more people likely deserves a worse sentence (if for no other reason than they're probably more likely to continue to hurt people otherwise), but that's not strictly "justice for the victims".
Of course, that's the (my) ideal... our actual justice systems rarely live up to it.