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Student Satirist Gets 3 Months; the Judge, Likely More
ponraul writes "When Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., 58, sentenced Hillary Transue, 17, on a harassment charge stemming from a MySpace parody of her high school's assistant principal, Hillary expected to be let off with a stern lecture; instead, the Wilkes-Barre, PA area teen got three months in a commercially operated juvenile detention center. In a reversal of fortune, Ciavarella and his colleague, Judge Conahan, 56, find themselves trying to plea-bargain an 87-month sentence in Federal correctional facilities relating to a kick-back scheme that netted the pair $2.6 Million and PA Child Care 5000 inmates." True poetic justice would be for these corrupt, callous judges to serve their sentences in the same kind of environment to which they were happy to dispatch juvenile defendants.
What sort of recourse does the girl have? Are there protections preventing her from suing for having three months of her life wasted?
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
Then check this out: http://www.againstpuryear.org/
I will preface this by saying I don't know what charge they "convicted" the teenager of.
1) Isn't satire completely protected under the first amendment, ESPECIALLY if it is explicitly stated that it is satire? The page she created had a disclaimer on it.
2) The assistant principal is a public figure, and thus, under Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, can't even sue for emotional distress, let alone have someone convicted of a criminal offense.
The sentence needs to be immediately overturned, the record expunged, and the family should have the right to sue at least the judge, if not the state.
Don't buy it. You can't really "satire" your high school principle; they're unlikely to meet the "public figure" criteria that would protect the person who is making fun of them from legal repercussions if anything strayed over the line.
That being said, the sentence in this case was wildly inappropriate. The page could never have been mistaken for real libel due to the inclusion of text explicitly stating that the page is a joke. On top of that, jail time? For a juvenile?
Amusingly, it's high profile, geek-enraging cases like this that probably got him caught. If he'd kept sending kids to juvy for misdemeanors, it wouldn't have been covered so widely, and we wouldn't have given a damn.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The problem isn't that it was a commercially operated prison. The problem is that the payment structure was set up in such a way as to benefit the operator for an increased number of incarcerations
How could you set up a commercially operated prison such that the operator would not benefit from an increased number of incarcerations?
"You can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them." [Condoleezza Rice]
Wow are you behind the times. Corrections has always been looking for a way to shave a penny here and there. Inmates are routinely charged for incidentals like soap/toothpaste/toothbrush/etc. Commissary goods usually by law have to be sold at the prevailing rate that they are sold outside the walls. Luxury items like tv's...hmmmm when was the last time you saw a clear case TV? Radio? Of course they cost more. Where a privately run prison makes it money is 1)lower staff pay,2)no bennies for staff,3)streamlined operations,and 4)large numbers of inmates. Private prisons are not where a contractor walks in, kicks all the state workers out and takes over a prison. They build them from the ground up using their cash. Some to the tune of 10's of millions of dollars. Then they proceed to penny pinch everything from staff to food to which inmates they will accept from which states. They like states that pay them high $$ and shun those that dont.
"Remember, politicians and diapers should be changed often and for the same reason."
No, but it would act as an actual deterrent to future judges that might get similar ideas. The problem with capital punishment is that it is applied incorrectly to act as a deterrent. If someone thinks that the world would be better off without someone in it, one might think that it would be worth one's own life to rid the world of such a person. I doubt that many people would think that it would be worth risking their own lives to receive a kickback. Public officials need to be held to a higher standard. While I don't normally believe that the death penalty is effective, perhaps it should be used for public officials who abuse their authority.
you know that makes me think, why dont we do old fashion banishment anymore? just kick them out of the country "We'll send you to any country of your choice with just the clothes on your back, and you can never set foot here again on penalty of death(or whatever)"
What's the point of that?
Well, it'd serve as a pretty stern warning to any future malfeasance.
There are a few crimes that directly attack the structure of our democratic system. For regular citizens, it's treason. This behvavior is tantamount to treason for a sitting judge. Ciavarella directly undermined and knowingly contradicted the justice system for his own personal gain. Under these circumstances, I don't think execution is that outrageous a suggestion.
While I agree Libertarianism can be taken too far, that doesn't mean free market principles are inherently so terribly misguided.
Take a look on youtube at guys like Peter Schiff - who nailed the current economic collapse years in advance based on free market principles. The fact is Bush et. al. weren't even remotely interested in running a true free market, and in trying to quiet the economic grumblings following the dot-com-bubble-bursting set the stage for an even bigger crisis.
The failure of a shitty implementation of an idea by a government only paying lip-service to the idea and known for not letting go of power is hardly an indictment of the idea itself.
The other side of the coin is that a free market does need to prevent fraud, but again the government seems only weakly interested in such things. People had been trying to blow open the Madoff scam for years, but for some reason the SEC didn't want to pay attention
Sure they lose their career, but they lose very little freedom. And lets face it, they were pulling in millions of dollars. 3 years in prison isn't much deterrent when the payout reaches millions of dollars.
What if they stashed the money away (It doesn't sound like they are paying it back). I'd LOVE to be fired and still be sitting on 500k-1million dollars.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
>>>So is the loss of career and freedom. Do you feel that's only getting off lightly? It's life-ruining, a terrible thing to inflict.
Not really. The Illinois Governor was impeached, but he's still sitting fat & happy thanks to the wealth accumulated. These judges will get off just as lightly. The only proper punishment for a politician who abused the trust of his employer (the People) is what happened to the French King circa 1790 and the Italian Dictator circa 1945. Death.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It's my understanding from some friends in the Scranton area that the judges are now open to civil lawsuits. So they have 5000 potential plaintiffs who can sue them for damages.
They also lose their state pensions, and I believe Pennsylvania has a law on the books preventing them from earning any profit from a book deal.
I hope they end up without a penny.
An idea I had:
The government pays the prison a fixed fee per prisoner, based on the crime committed. The prison is free to do with the prisoner as they wish, including releasing them whenever they want. However, if the prisoner commits another crime within some specified period, the prison has to pay a large penalty fee.
(all fees would be negotiated, or perhaps the prisons would specify them in their tender for the contract and the government would choose)
The idea is that prisons have a financial incentive to turn prisoners into useful members of society as quickly as they can.
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.