White House granted clemency to the 'kids-for-cash' judge | Hacker News Reader

White House granted clemency to the 'kids-for-cash' judge

politico.com

This is a pretty odious thing.

I know people will say that it's part of a broad sweeping action that granted clemency for everyone who was granted house arrest during COVID because of medical issues but that ignores the bigger issue.

Michael Conahan should not have been given a meagre 17.5 year sentence for his heinous crimes. He trafficked in humans, specifically children for a pure profit motive. And to do so he violated his trusted position in our society as a judge.

I'm generally opposed to a death penalty but I think these kinds of actions are what warrant one. His conduct was directly destructive to the lives of hundreds of children sending them on life paths that they may never recover from and indirectly destructive to thousands of people like their parents whose lives were disrupted by their children being stolen from them and the legal costs that they were forced to spend to deal with this situation.

But what's worse is that his selfish actions have irrevocably tarnished how people view the legal system that is supposed protect them. His actions didn’t just destroy the lives of the children he targeted or their families; they struck at the very heart of public trust in the judiciary. When a judge exploits their position for personal gain, it creates a ripple effect of doubt that spreads across society and corrodes faith in the system.

Granting clemency to someone like Conahan sends a dangerous message. It implies that even the most heinous abuses of power can eventually be overlooked. It’s a slap in the face to his victims, their families, and to everyone who believes in accountability for those who are entrusted with the public’s trust.

We are long past trust in the system and deep into a return of the belle epoch of anarchism ( 1830-1930). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anarchism

He harmed 4000 kids. That deserves corresponding justice.

Yeah, it's gonna be great once vigilante justice is normalised.

All the people with the biggest amount of justice on their side are gonna win so hard, and there won't be any negative effects at all!

>I'm generally opposed to a death penalty but I think these kinds of actions are what warrant one

Seriously?

I think "don't grant him clemency" covers my feelings adequately.

And I'm happy with the original 17.5 years.

17 years for ruining the lives of 4000 kids, scarring them, is grossly insufficient. Even a life sentence won't do justice. He served about 13 years which is a mockery of justice.

How about adding up the number of years he caused kids to be inappropriately sentences to juvenile detention for kickbacks, and then multiplying by 3x?

Who would that serve? The kids? Their lives are already ruined.

Two decades in jail plus the stigma of that conviction is an awful lot of punishment. The man might still be of use to society, just not around the law.

This punishment fetish is why we have so many people locked up in our jails compared to ANYWHERE else in the world. Can you actually say that this makes our society safer or more productive?

The irony is that your reflex of "lock him up and throw away the key" was EXACTLY how those kids got long sentences.

> This punishment fetish is why we have so many people locked up in our jails compared to ANYWHERE else in the world. Can you actually say that this makes our society safer or more productive?

The problem is that we lock up the wrong people. We mis-prioritize our resources locking up non-white collar criminals when we should be focusing on the people who actually cause the most chaos in society -- people like Michael Conahan.

The reason there's so much violent crime in America is because people like him greedily steal the resources that could be going to fixing the systemic issues and use those resources to bribe and change the system so that it further entrenches their power.

Even if American society should reduce the number of people in prison it must still lock up those who are proven to threaten and destabilize society.

People like Michael Conahan must be removed from society permanently be that life in prison or execution.

Yes. I'm serious.

We call this kind of crime non-violent because he never physically hurt anyone but that's a complete misnomer.

Using a gavel to have people unlawfully locked in prisons isn't nonviolent anymore than a James Bond villain pressing a button to activate the laser that cuts Bond in half is.

Michael Conahan is farcically evil like a Bond villain and he should be excised from society so that he can never threaten anyone else and to serve as a warning to others who would betray society so casually.

This is the kind of person who would gleefully run a concentration camp if he was a German in the 1940s and we don't need people like him in society.

this kind of person would be actively looking for jews and other nonhumans for reward money.

He should rot in prison for life live-streamed to every judge as a reminder how you will end if abusing position of power.

1 child/person was too much. Even if they were sent for a 1 week.

What was the purpose of this clemency grant? I know it is something about people who were granted home arrest during covid, but I don't follow why that group of people was selected as deserving clemency, as opposed to say people who where forced to stay in jail during covid. I'm completely missing something.

> What was the purpose of this clemency grant? I know it is something about people who were granted home arrest during covid, but I don't follow why that group of people was selected as deserving clemency, as opposed to say people who where forced to stay in jail during covid. I'm completely missing something.

I know there was a political fight angle to it: apparently Republicans were planning on passing a law to send all the people who'd be released to home confinement during COVID back to prison. I believe clemency grant was part of an effort to block that.

Now why it was such a priority to keep those convicts out of prison, I have no idea.

Thank you, that is helpful.

I have the sneaking suspicion that they needed plausible deniability for a particular egregious clemency (or a bunch of them) like this one but worse and worked back from there to figure out the criteria.

Well, if president Biden wanted to justify violence against the police and justice departments to thousands of Pennsylvania youth for the rest of their lives, he could not have chosen a better man to grant clemency to.

Kids died because of this man's greed.

Absolutely enlightening how so many people, even those who consider themselves middle of the road or liberal or whatever, will care 100x more about one “bad” person being freed than about any single person suffering under the horrific regime that is the US penal system.

Maybe the system should be reformed. But who wants to reform a system which is: a) very profotable; b) with the funniest sentences in the world - "convicted to 200 years behind bars".

In this particular case, we care about one bad person being freed because of a large number of people unjustly suffering under the US penal system.

Would freeing every prisoner be alright by you?

If not: Where is your personal threshold?

Not parent, but I'll take a swing

1) No 2) Benjamin Franklin had a good take.

> 2) Benjamin Franklin had a good take.

Sounds interesting -- what should I google?

"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape, than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long & generally approv’d, never that I know of controverted." – in a letter from Benjamin Franklin to Benjamin Vaughan, 14 March 1785

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-43-02-03...

You can look up his take on the burden of proof. I think GP was referring to his famous quote on the subject.

I can't understand the why here. Why would Biden do this? What political favor is owed? I have so many questions because I can find no justification to release this man or grant him any kind of clemency.

This is a reflection more on Joe Biden’s morals or lack there of than on anything else.

He did this en masse clemency deal to divert attention from his nepotism, namely the Hunter Biden blanket pardon.

Yep. He's been a scumbag his entire political career, and it's only his association with Obama that seems to have masked that for a time, with a younger generation. He's an amoral shitbag.

In 2020 Joe was the lesser of two-evils for people. I think that is the great takeaway from that election: When you put two candidates who probably shouldn't be there, the electorate is put in a difficult position. It does make me think about multiple Presidential candidates, parties, and why more people do not run for President..

Going off of the maxim "anyone who wants to become president shouldn't be" (or something similar), I wonder if we would be better off with some standard filtering, random selection, and interview by committee like the secretary problem[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

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