mycatharsis.com

Mitt Romney has been defending himself recently from charges that one of his appointed judges allowed a murderer ‘walk’, a murderer who recently has been accused of killing again.  From what I had heard on the news and talk shows, I had assumed the judge let him walk on some sort of technicality or appeal.  Not the case.  Actually, he had already finished serving his sentence, and the prosecutors were trying to keep him in prison by bringing up new charges.   After reading this piece on solitary confinement that includes an interview with him, I can’t say I really blame prosecutors for trying to do just that.

While in the DDU, Tavares has had many disputes with officers, some of them physical, which have resulted in repeated extensions of his DDU sentence as well as the loss of radio and television. Tavares, 37, has a graying, thinning crewcut and jagged teeth. He talks slowly and deliberately, and behind heavy eyelids, he seems to struggle to contain his anger. Prison officials view him as a troublemaker.

It sounds like everyone knew this guy was trouble.  Nonetheless, any blame to be laid at Romney’s feet should be minimal, at best.  First and foremost, those of us who believe in personal responsibility have to first lay the blame at the feet of the dirtball who did the killing.   Yes Romney appointed the judge that let him go, and it could be argued that her appointment was based as much on a need for ‘diversity’ as anything else.  She did, though, require him to check in with a parole officer three times a week, but he probably got lost in the system when he stopped doing just that.   While I stridently oppose mandatory minimums and feel that sentencing for most crimes, in general, is overly harsh, the fact is that this guy served only 16 years for killing his own mother.  That is what seems most out of whack to me.

The legal system is complex, and every person and case in that system is unique.  Criticism of it is most often leveled at it with the benefit of hindsight, a benefit the system itself does not have when it actually has to make these decisions.  I do have to think, though, that if we stopped locking up nonviolent offenders and stopped worrying about behavioral crimes like drugs, prostitution, etc,  that the corrections system in general would have a lot more time to dedicate to worrying about those we want them to worry about.