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Title: Teen turns down plea deal for 25 years in prison, gets 65 years instead
Source:
MSN
URL Source: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime ... r-AAvx1hZ?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp
Published: Apr 6, 2018
Author: Marty Roney
Post Date: 2018-04-06 05:15:19 by IbJensen
Keywords: None
Views: 19524
Comments: 112
WETUMPKA, Ala. — A teenager tried as an adult under Alabama's accomplice liability law was sentenced to 65 years in prison Thursday after rejecting an earlier plea deal that recommended 25 years. In a two-day trial in March, Lakeith Smith, now 18, of Montgomery was convicted of felony murder, burglary and theft for helping in the 2015 break-ins of two homes in Millbrook, about 10 miles north of Montgomery. He did not kill A'Donte Washington, 16, of Montgomery, who was part of a group of five accused in the thefts. But several in the group, including Washington, fired shots at Millbrook police officers who responded Feb. 23, 2015, to a call of a burglary in progress, according to officer body-camera footage. The officer that Washington ran toward pointing a .38 caliber revolver fired his police-issued sidearm four times, killing Washington. Smith was accused of being criminally responsible for the acts that led to Washington's death, the gist of Alabama's accomplice law. An Elmore County grand jury cleared the officer who fired the fatal shots; the officer's name was not released. On Thursday, Judge Sibley Reynolds of Alabama's 19th Judicial Circuit Court handed down three sentences that Smith will serve back to back: 30 years for murder, 15 years for burglary and 10 years each for two theft convictions. Smith smiled and laughed through the sentencing, said C.J. Robinson, chief assistant district attorney. Smith flashed a broad smile March 14 as he was led out of the courtroom shortly after the verdicts were announced. “I don’t think Mr. Smith will be smiling long when he gets to prison,” Robinson said. “We are very pleased with this sentence. Because the sentences are consecutive, it will be a long time before he comes up for even the possibility for parole, at least 20 to 25 years.” Alabama's accomplice law states that a person is legally liable for the behavior of another who commits a criminal offense if that person aids or abets the first person in committing the offense. It wasn't immediately known how many states have similar statutes. "The officer shot A'donte, not Lakeith Smith," Smith's lawyer, Jennifer Holton, said during the trial. "Lakeith was a 15-year-old child, scared to death. He did not participate in the act that caused the death of A'donte. He never shot anybody." Other surviving defendants charged in the case — Montgomery residents Jadarien Hardy, 22; Jadarien Jackson, 23; and La’Anthony Washington, 22 — entered guilty pleas to charges of felony murder, burglary and theft, court records show. They are awaiting sentencing. Poster Comment: Ha, ha, ha! Oh, for the good old days before Lyndon Bird's Great Society where boys had fathers and mothers. Lyndon's rotting in hell over his idiocy. Lakeith, A'Donte, Jadarien , La’Anthony. With names tacked onto them like these it appears they are then marked for the rest of their useless lives.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 67.
#9. To: IbJensen (#0)
(Edited)
I know why he was laughing. 25 or 95 years what is the difference. I would laugh too. At least he did not give them satisfaction of asserting his "guilt". If they gave 1000 years sentence you would laugh also. Look he has wrong name and wrong color of the skin and no money for a good lawyer, so what he has to lose.
Perhaps. (You give two possible theories.) Not that they are necessarily the case. Unless you are able to get into the head of a deranged, demon-obsessed murderer. Then again -- why would you "laugh too"?? The guy is only 18 years old. If you're an old man your laugh *might* make a lick of sense. Given his original sentence of 25 years in this day of liberal "justice," it likely would have meant a reality of serving perhaps a quarter (5 years) to half (12-13 years) of the actual sentence, still making him a relatively young man when released. Your theoretical notion of his "satisfaction" cost the perp a 95 year sentence. Now he definitely won't be released for parole after a minimum of 20-25 years. If that fails and the sentence is cut in half, that 40-50 years loses the perp the best years of his life. Talk about incredible sense of stupidity. Ignorance. And just maybe he was *proud* of his dirty deed which just means he's evil. If they gave 1000 years sentence you would laugh also. Look he has wrong name and wrong color of the skin and no money for a good lawyer, so what he has to lose. Why do Communists always blame a system of universal laws and justice, and punitive measures and instead dig up excuses for criminal behavior? Why do you (and your ilk) insist that perps' color and lack of Johnny Cochran and F. Lee Bailey defense teams exonerates and immunizes this punk for committing serious crime? Again, your perspective, sense of proportion, and system of justice and morality is warped. (Unless you believe he "took one for the team"?) That you find little difference between a 25 year sentence or 1000 years is anti-logic. And anti-rational. That 25 year sentence was NOT nearly a death sentence by ANY means. But turning it into the 95 year sentence was close to it. Not that you care -- just as long as YOU can still laugh at justice-served from the freedom of your Lazy-Boy (portrait of Stalin behind you). Do you have a portrait of 0bama on the other wall(s)?
AND.....,he will be getting out of prison as a middle-aged or old-man who has never had a job or even a job interview,and whose only skills are cleaning a prison cell. This middel-agged or old man will also be released into a technological world that even we,who have a LOT more life experience and education than he does or will ever have,would find completely baffling. Chances are he will be back in jail again in less than 90 days because that's all he knows and he is helpless as a free man.
I know a guy who was in prison. He is a decent guy and I completely trust him. He learned welding when he was there. So the individual could learn a trade. Also he didn't murder anyone so it is stupid to charge him with murder. His partner wasn't murdered was killed in self defense. Charge the kid with what his crimes actually we're. That is justice.
I also know a guy that went to prison for bank robbery. He walked into one of the two banks in his hometown on a Friday afternoon with no mask or other attempt to hide his identity from the tellers who all knew him personally,pointed an unloaded gun at them,and told them it was a robbery and to give him all the money they had in their tills. They did,and he sat right down in the floor,laid the unloaded pistol on the floor behind him,and waited for the deputy he went to school with to come arrest him. He was a member of a paint crew that worked when they could find the work,and needed a kidney transplant and had no money and no insurance. IIRC,he got a ten year prison sentence for bank robbery,and a new kidney. He also served about half the sentence given him. Not all "criminals" are created equally.
Why is that? Either they can't imagine it -or- they just like stirring the dystopian Military Industrial shyte pot.
California could pass a law tomorrow limiting prison costs to $30,000 per year. They are choosing not to. They should stop complaining.
Ouch, it would hurt your buddies, from prison industry! But why to stop at $30K?, would not be $3K be better? Or just down every convict? Or better yet, kill everyone charged or suspected of any crime and misdemeanor. The paradise to your ilk. Lo, this is the tarantula's den! Would'st thou see the tarantula itself? Here hangeth its web: touch this, so that it may tremble. There cometh the tarantula willingly: Welcome, tarantula! Black on thy back is thy triangle and symbol; and I know also what is in thy soul. Revenge is in thy soul: wherever thou bitest, there ariseth black scab; with revenge, thy poison maketh the soul giddy! Thus do I speak unto you in parable, ye who make the soul giddy, ye preachers of equality! Tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly revengeful ones! But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light: therefore do I laugh in your face my laughter of the height. Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word "justice." Because, for man to be redeemed from revenge—that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms. Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. "Let it be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance"—thus do they talk to one another. "Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like us"—thus do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves. "And 'Will to Equality'—that itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!" Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence crieth thus in you for "equality": your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves thus in virtue-words! Fretted conceit and suppressed envy—perhaps your fathers' conceit and envy: in you break they forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance. What the father hath hid cometh out in the son; and oft have I found in the son the father's revealed secret. Inspired ones they resemble: but it is not the heart that inspireth them—but vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but envy, that maketh them so. Their jealousy leadeth them also into thinkers' paths; and this is the sign of their jealousy—they always go too far: so that their fatigue hath at last to go to sleep on the snow. In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss. But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer the hangman and the sleuth-hound. Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! Verily, in their souls not only honey is lacking. And when they call themselves "the good and just," forget not, that for them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking but—power! My friends, I will not be mixed up and confounded with others. There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and are at the same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas. That they speak in favour of life, though they sit in their den, these poison-spiders, and withdrawn from life—is because they would thereby do injury. To those would they thereby do injury who have power at present: for with those the preaching of death is still most at home. Were it otherwise, then would the tarantulas teach otherwise: and they themselves were formerly the best world-maligners and heretic-burners. With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded. For thus speaketh justice unto me: "Men are not equal." And neither shall they become so! What would be my love to the Superman, if I spake otherwise? On a thousand bridges and piers shall they throng to the future, and always shall there be more war and inequality among them: thus doth my great love make me speak! Inventors of figures and phantoms shall they be in their hostilities; and with those figures and phantoms shall they yet fight with each other the supreme fight! Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again and again surpass itself! Aloft will it build itself with columns and stairs—life itself into remote distances would it gaze, and out towards blissful beauties- therefore doth it require elevation! And because it requireth elevation, therefore doth it require steps, and variance of steps and climbers! To rise striveth life, and in rising to surpass itself. And just behold, my friends! Here where the tarantula's den is, riseth aloft an ancient temple's ruins—just behold it with enlightened eyes! Verily, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone, knew as well as the wisest ones about the secret of life! That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and supremacy: that doth he here teach us in the plainest parable. How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle: how with light and shade they strive against each other, the divinely striving ones.— Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends! Divinely will we strive against one another!— Alas! There hath the tarantula bit me myself, mine old enemy! Divinely steadfast and beautiful, it hath bit me on the finger! "Punishment must there be, and justice"—so thinketh it: "not gratuitously shall he here sing songs in honour of enmity!" Yea, it hath revenged itself! And alas! now will it make my soul also dizzy with revenge! That I may not turn dizzy, however, bind me fast, my friends, to this pillar! Rather will I be a pillar-saint than a whirl of vengeance! Verily, no cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra: and if he be a dancer, he is not at all a tarantula-dancer!— Thus spake Zarathustra.
TL;DR. And it's fucking poetry. I think you're growing a Marxist mangina or something. You can't win any argument with Americans by quoting poetry.
#68. To: Tooconservative (#67)
(Edited)
Nietzsche was a Marxist! A man learns whole life. :)
"Quoth the raven: 'Nevermore!'"
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestSmith smiled and laughed through the sentencing
#11. To: A Pole (#9)
I know why he was laughing. 25 or 95 years what is the difference. I would laugh too. At least he did not give them satisfaction of asserting his "guilt".
#45. To: Liberator (#11)
Your theoretical notion of his "satisfaction" cost the perp a 95 year sentence. Now he definitely won't be released for parole after a minimum of 20-25 years. If that fails and the sentence is cut in half, that 40-50 years loses the perp the best years of his life.
#47. To: sneakypete (#45)
#54. To: A K A Stone (#47)
I know a guy who was in prison.
#59. To: sneakypete (#54)
IIRC,he got a ten year prison sentence for bank robbery,and a new kidney. He also served about half the sentence given him.
"At $75,560, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard"
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la- me-prison-costs-20170604-htmlstory.html
Ever notice how Hollywood, with all its creative "genius" - has never made a movie about an actual Utopian future.
#61. To: VxH (#59)
"At $75,560, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard"
#65. To: misterwhite, sneakypete, Pinguinite, Vicomte13, Tooconservative, Deckard (#61)
California could pass a law tomorrow limiting prison costs to $30,000 per year.
The Tarantulas
#67. To: A Pole (#65)
Thus spake Zarathustra.
Replies to Comment # 67. And it's fucking poetry. I think you're growing a Marxist mangina or something.
#107. To: Tooconservative (#67)
You can't win any argument with Americans by quoting poetry.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 67.
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