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In reply to the discussion: Father of Boy Who Fatally Shot Brother Sentenced (brace yourself) [View all]Xithras
(16,191 posts)America has become an overly punitive society. We get off on seeing the "bad guy" suffer.
The guy will spend the next decade on probation, being randomly searched, prohibited from holding most decent jobs, banned from owning anything more lethal than a butter knife, and having his home subject to inspection by law enforcement at any time, without warning or a warrant. He can't even hop in his car and drive to the next county without calling to ask permission first. He has already spent a month in prison, and will spend another month being forced to perform manual labor for the state. Oh, and he has to live with the fact that his kid is now dead because of his own stupidity.
No amount of punishment is going to bring the kid back, and there was no malice involved that needs to be "incarcerated out of him". The only thing sentencing accomplishes, at this point, is to deter him from ever doing anything similar and to set an example for others. This sentence does that. Sentencing him to a decade in prison isn't going to accomplish anything that this sentence doesn't.