12-01-2009, 07:45 PM
cbelt3 wrote:
The greatest tragedy in this whole thing is that this bastard SHOULD have been sitting in jail inMassachusettsArkansas. But the erstwhile candidate for president and governor commuted his 20 years to life sentence because he was "changed". Talk about your travesty of justice.
Made a little correction there for you.
You're right, though. I've heard conflicting information about the first Arkansas sentence, but it was somewhere in the range of 100 years (gave or take a few), because the original sentencing judge had stipulated the sentences for the crimes for which he was convicted were to run consecutively instead of concurrently. The saddest part is that there might not have been as many screw ups within the legal system as meets the eye. Washington law prohibited this guy from being held without bail on the most recent charges here. He probably would have been taken back into custody following another hearing about admissibility of the Arkansas convictions in sentencing him in Washington under the habitual offenders law. I'm not saying all the times he slipped out of someone's grasp were errors, but the occasion that appears to be the most recent - and blatant - mistake by the justice system really was not. Whether the law should be modified is another discussion.