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I don't care about the incident one way or the other, but the notion that a judge can deliver harsh/light sentences "to send a message" is ridiculous.
US law explicitly states that the four purposes of sentencing are punishment, deterrence, protection of the public, and rehabilitation.
The number one purpose of punishment is punishment? We really put our top wordcels on that lmao
Anyway, no, the issue isn't with criminal punishment as a deterrence: it's with with judicial discretion regarding deterrence. Despite all perception to the contrary, the law is not the judge's personal megaphone to blare his opinions on the rest of society.
Sorry, I should have said "sentencing".
The judge's discretion is limited by the minimums and maximums prescribed by Congress. For example, the sentence for rioting can be anything from five years to just a fine with no prison.
What's the alternative? Congress isn't interested in prescribing a zillion specific degrees of rioting that all have different, narrower sentencing ranges.
Discretionary sentencing should be with respect to the severity of the case details, not with respect to whether the judge feels like sending us all a message (and yes, the message is to us, not to the person sentenced to de facto their entire life in prison. One can only contend the deterrence message is to the offender if there's an expectation they'll be released and a participating member of society again).
I don't know about this specific case, but my general understanding is that when a judge is said to be "sending a message," it is always understood to be specifically because of the severity of the case details, and the "message" (deterrence) is specifically about making sure the rest of us understand that if we commit some crime that is specifically as severe in the details as this particular case, then we could expect such a severe level of punishment.
Well, in this case it looks like that's exactly what isn't happening: the details don't look particularly bad, but the sentences are severe because the judge is trying to send a political message.
50 years in prison over some petty vandalism is completely ridiculous.
The details look quite bad.
(Caveat: The jury did not necessarily decide the truth of this specific paragraph, as opposed to the overall charges on which it convicted.)
Well, Americans bringing guns to their celebration of *checks notes* shooting the government troops until they fled across an ocean sure seems out of character.
Hope they didn't throw any tea in the harbour.
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