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Quote by: brien How can you say that one crime above will result in a longer prison sentence? This simply may not be true. In some states juries decide penalties. In others, judges decide penalties, all according to the law. Then there is the three strikes law, another brilliant legislative wonder. Judges are FORCED to sentence criminals to mandatory sentences even though the crime may be petty in nature but the criminal is a recidivist.
So you are saying the law says you get less time for robbery because in your defense you say you did it for your family? What if your family is "The Family"? You know "Our Thing" this Cosa Nostra. 
Nope... Robbery is robbery and to appeal to a jury or a judge because a guy's family needs my money through robbery, is not very good law. It is a two tiered system which we seem to have already, one for the rich and one for the poor. So now we should have one system for the desperate and one for the goon. I yi yi.. Where does it stop? |
The American legal system is not computer programming. "If Murder then goto 25-life" is a gross oversimplification.
You've somewhat defeated your own argument by pointing that juries award sentences in certain cases. How do you think they come to those sorts of decisions?
They look at the details of the case. If the case is robbery and the penalty is 5 to 10 years, how do you think a jury makes that decision? Was their a starving baby involved? Five years. A drug habit that needed another hit? Ten years.
Point being that these sorts of details
matter. They have an impact on the legal system. And they should. We should look at exactly what happened, why it happened, what the motivations were, etc.
Hate crimes are a result of individuals choosing their targets based on nothing more than the victim's minority status. That's a far worse crime than targeting them because your kid is starving.
And please give the post-modernist drivel a rest. We can make comparisons. We do know what's worse than what. We do have laws for different motives that bring about the same result (see post 3 regarding murder/ manslaughter / self-defense).