Life sentence requested for gang member
The prosecutor in a case being tried in St-Jérôme is asking for a life sentence for Hensley Jean, a Montreal North man convicted of attempted murder in a bungled assassination. The prosecutor’s pretty forthright in pointing out that such a sentence would serve as a warning to the guys shooting up houses and cars and people around town.
Another trial I haven’t been blogging is of Frederick Silva, who also failed to kill his man, Salvatore Scoppa, in 2017. Silva’s also up for several other murders, committed while he was on the run from police for the botched hit on Scoppa, who was killed in 2019 in a hotel in Laval, but not by Silva.
Ephraim 10:29 on 2021-09-15 Permalink
The prosecutor is an idiot…. there is no correlation between punishment and crime, only apprehension and crime. The only thing that a long sentence does, it use up resources that could be better used elsewhere, like education so they can get better jobs.
Kate 11:55 on 2021-09-15 Permalink
Not sure what you mean, Ephraim. All I thought of was that if I were a lawyer and saw this in the paper about my client, I’d be inclined to see whether there was any leverage in making an appeal based on knowing the client was being unfairly made an example of.
Ephraim 14:06 on 2021-09-15 Permalink
@Kate – Making an example with a heavy sentence does NOTHING. What really stops crime is catching people. The more you catch, the less people are willing to do the crime. Take for example illegal car parking at parking meters. Cites have changed to pay by plate. They have a car that drives by every few minutes and scans the plates. So sitting in a spot, unpaid for even a few minutes can get you a ticket. The first time they drive by, they assume you haven’t paid for your parking. The second time… you haven’t paid. And they send you a ticket… and now, no one sits in a parking spot unpaid, because the chances of getting caught are extremely high.
Instead of spending the money on keeping this man in jail as an example, we could use that same money to provide him with stability and an education and have a better outcome for him and society. Instead of spending the money on jail on the mistaken idea that his sentence will actually persuade anyone else not to do this.
Kate 10:26 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
Ephraim, surely a lot of crooks have zero interest in being educated and set on the straight and narrow. The smarter ones must feel that the rest of us are stooges, slogging through our days making a living when there are obvious shortcuts. The stupider ones – probably a large majority – are simply people who’ve figured out how to use brute force to get what they want.
There are good reasons these traits remain in the human race because the same sociopathic traits that make one man a criminal also, with fine adjustments, make another a successful business guy or politician; the brute force stuff, channeled one way, makes one person a topnotch athlete, and makes another person into muscle for the mob. We punish one and reward the other, but it’s pretty arbitrary.
Sure, an education plan might rescue the handful of people who fell into crime because of desperation or bad associates, and need a hand up out of it. And that’s good. But you can’t expect it to work on all of them.
Ephraim 20:55 on 2021-09-16 Permalink
@Kate – But the long prison sentence does nothing other than put someone in prison, which we pay for. Punishment and crime aren’t correlated, it’s apprehension. We could put them into apartments in St-Louis-de-ha-ha with monthly cheques and it would be cheaper.