No it's not. Why? because driving drunk is the same as shooting a gun in a dark room full of people. Sure, maybe nothing will happen. Maybe you'll only injure someone. Or, maybe you'll kill 4 people. The reason why the punishment should be so severe is that EVERYONE knows that driving drunk kills people and they do it anyways.



Three strikes is in place because it's assumed that if you've been caught 3 times, you've probably done the same thing multitudes of times without being caught. Should someone go to jail for 50 years for stealing $40 3 times? No. Should someone go to jail for 50 years for being a habitual drain on society and never contributing anything to the advancement of humanity? Yes.

 

And that's why three strikes is retarded. You cannot punish a person for things you assume they did "multitudes of times without getting caught". That is bullshit. I bet there is at least one person out there that did exactly 3 minor crimes and was caught every time and is now serving a ridiculous sentence.



Circumstances matter. A person driving slowly for two blocks after 5 beers is not exactly "shooting a gun in a dark room full of people", whereas speeding on busy roads while drunk probably is. Stealing $40 from a counter is a minor crime. Three strikes (and similar laws) are stupid because they are very rigid and enforce a minimum sentence regardless of the situation, and in many situations the minimum sentence is ridiculous. It's not possible to write laws for every situation, which is why it's the judge's job to make a sensible call on the sentence. These laws tie the judge's hands and don't allow them to do their job.

 

Yes you can. That's why they're called "habitual offenders". No, the degree of the crime doesn't matter. If you have so little regard for civilized society's rules that you're going to continue to violate those rule even though you've been repeatedly warned, you deserve any punishment that society deems fit.



Oh, and a person driving slowly for two blocks after 5 beers can do just as much harm as someone driving 65 mph after 10 beers. In fact, it was just a couple of years ago that a man here in Vegas accidentally ran over his 3 year old son when he accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake. He was over the legal limit.

 

radu (and those like-minded):



Two blocks includes the parking lot and two blocks worth of street with an unknown number of possibly-also-drunk people milling about. It IS shooting a gun in a dark room full of people.



Three strikes laws, by the way, are largely a response to soft-headed "judges" who would always let people go x10000 for minor crimes no matter how many times they showed up in court. Sorta like how speed limit and drunk driving laws were enacted to allow society to punish THOSE people who also did criminally stupid things.



I'm sensing we are getting to the point where everybody calls "agree to disagree." Besides that, i8acobra keeps stealing my thoughts so I'm going to call this a thread after one more note: Three strikes mandatory sentencing over "just" $40 is also not unreasonable to the degree it might seem:

Quote:

Your money is your life, converted into a medium of exchange so that you may more easily acquire things necessary to the maintenance of your life.