I don’t know law.
I went to sea as a young man and stayed there for way too many years.
Never saw the inside of a law school and wouldn’t have a clue how to run a courtroom.
Still, something seems a bit out of whack with our legal system these days.
Recently, we were told that assault couldn’t be the basis for a murder charge when death wasn’t intended. Now, as one consequence of that ruling, we’re releasing child killers early here in Washington.
No matter how hard I try (for child killers, I admit it’s not very hard), I can’t get my arms around that one.
Adults beat, burn, torture or otherwise batter kids and said kids die. Their defense is now: “Hey, he was making so much noise I couldn’t hear the game. I got mad, but I never meant to kill him.” Then, they get off after a few years under a legal precedent that might best be described as: “Oops! Didn’t mean to.”
That sure has the ring of justice to it.
More recently, we’ve learned that Martin Pang’s lawyers are arguing that his “exceptional” sentence should be reduced to time served.
Mr. Pang was the individual who, back in 1995, set fire to his family’s warehouse to try to collect some insurance benefits.
Problems arose when the Seattle Fire Department – behaving as fire departments worldwide tend to behave – showed up and four firefighters died trying to put out the fire.
Four dead firemen. Four devastated families. Pardon me, but pigs should fly before Mr. Pang is granted an early release.
Do we even need to go into the sentences we “award” drunk drivers who manage to maim or kill just about everyone but themselves?
I mention all of this because it just plain feels wrong – more so since I have an update on another case I wrote about more than a year ago. It concerned the murder of my nephew’s wife, Cynthia Williams, and another young woman, Lori Brown. Both were real-estate agents who happened to be working in a model home.
After 15 months, the suspect has yet to be tried. In fact, defense lawyers have filed more than a hundred motions to further slow (impede, stop, obstruct, whatever) the already sluggish wheels of justice.
Some background:
The suspect fit the description of a man driving a black SUV away from the scene of the murders. Note: there really weren’t all that many other 6-foot-3-inch, 270-pound, white males (who’d already spent quite a few years behind bars) near the model home.
The suspect’s SUV matched the description of the vehicle seen near the model home at the time of the murders.
Credit cards stolen from the two women were later used at a local ATM. There, cameras recorded images of a black SUV like the one driven by the suspect.
When approached at his home (he was packing to leave) by police, the suspect escaped, fled Georgia, and was later arrested (after a 100-mph chase) in Wisconsin.
News reports state that, when interviewed after his arrest, the suspect said that “he just wanted to come back to Georgia … and plead guilty and get it over with.”
Two funerals and many months later, there’s still no trial. Further, my sister tells me that a trial may still be months or years away.
Children are battered and killed by those who should be caring for them.
Firefighters die in a collapsed basement knowing there was no way out.
Drunks get behind the wheel and proceed to maim and kill.
Cynthia Williams and Lori Brown had no chance to plead their case to anyone before being brutally murdered.
But our legal system says we’re overdoing it. It says that punishments are too harsh; that tougher sentences for drunk drivers who kill aren’t possible just now; that delaying tactics are to ensure the suspect’s rights are respected.
Good grief.
I’m not sure how we got here but here we are. Families are burying loved ones while sentences are being shortened and trials are being delayed until near about the Second Coming – if then.
This all may fit the definition of “legal.” It may even be part of a “system.”
As for being just, though, run that one up some other flagpole, because I’m not in the saluting mood.
Oh, one other thing: The shell casings found at the murder scene matched the (stolen) gun the suspect had in his car in Wisconsin.
Good to know our system’s still worrying about all these folks, though.
I’ll certainly sleep better tonight for that.
Larry Simoneaux lives in Edmonds. Comments can be sent to larrysim@att.net.
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