Karen McCarron is 39 years old. She’ll have to serve 100% of her sentence according to news reports. And the sentence is 36 years. The would mean she will get out of jail when she’s 75, assuming she lives that long.
Here’s what I want to know. How do they come up with these sentences? She could have gotten as much as 110 years; the prosecutor asked for 50. The judge gave her 36.
Why 36? It’s so arbitrary. And what’s she going to do when she gets out at 75? She’ll have no family, no home, no pension, no job, and probably not very good health. She’ll end up being a ward of the state anyway. Why not just keep her in prison for life?
I’ll never understand the justice system.
While I can’t explain why she got that particular sentence, I will note that it is highly unlikely she will survive all 36 years in prison and live to be 75. Studies have shown that inmates have a much, much lower life expectancy than the average person. Prison life is hard, no matter who you are. Things like inadequate health care (particularly preventative care), poor living conditions, minimum nutritional standards for meals, little exercise, and no reason to keep your mind active cut down on the actual years an inmate will live in prison. In addition, McCarron is not your average “street smart” inmate who will know how to survive in prison.
I will also note that people who are convicted of killing children typically do not fare well in prison – they are second lowest on the prison totem pole – second only to those who molest and then kill children.
How many dangerous criminals far younger than 75 will be put back on the street over the next 36 years, while a cell is occupied by this woman, and the taxpayers of this state pay for her room and board. I’m not saying just let her go free, but I don’t think she poses much threat to society. Think about it, who would you want to meet in a dark alley, Karen McCarron, or the average parolee?
Mouse: While I’d like to agree with you, it’s not either of us who should be afraid of McCarron (unless you’re a LOT younger than I think you are…).
Oh no, did I just leave a “think of the children” comment?! Know any recent parolees I can pay to kill me for this grievous offense? :-/
ben, do you really believe McCarron would kill any more kids, even if she was released tomorrow? I just don’t see her as any threat to anybody. I am NOT saying she should be released tomorrow, but here is an educated person who really poses no threat to anybody, who committed one heinous act. It just seems like there should be a way to handle her other than locking her up in a cell to rot for what amounts to the rest of her life, at taxpayers’ expense, while dangerous criminals go free because our prisons are overcrowded.
To me that’s punishing society as much as her. I also don’t believe that sentencing her to 36 years will deter anyone else who takes a notion to do what she did. On the contrary, the publicity may actually (heaven forbid) encourage it by putting the idea in the mind of unstable people. She may have been legally sane, but normal people don’t do what she did. Severly unstable people like her, in my opinion, rarely take consequences into account.
Do you think punishment, then, is irrelevant to our judicial process?
That would certainly be motivating to those educated people who just want to knock off one person… their boss, their spouse, their child…
“I have no interest in hurting anyone else…”
kcdad, you’re such a trip. I suppose you think we should stone her?
Coming from a lawyer family and having grown up with the system all of my life, I can tell you that the judge had his reasoning as for the arbitrary number, but that is his right as a judge to explain how or why the sentence is what it is. Maybe he was just shooting for the 75 years old marker.
I’m not going to lie to you, Mouse, but if you read the interviews with McCarron like I did, and once again keep in mind I grew up with crime scene murder photos on the coffee table at night, I got major chills. I’d rather take my chances with the parolee late at night than this woman. As for the “she won’t hurt another child or another person and doesn’t seem harmful” defense, all I can say is she probably didn’t seem that harmful either on the night of May 13, 2006.
Stone her? Hmmmm… only if it were a public stoning.
Seriously, we must decide whether or not our criminal justice system is supposed to enforce laws by identifying behaviors that are anti-social or, instead, excuse the behavior of individuals because they are “good people” that just made a mistake. It is exactly the problem with not indicting the Bradley kid that shoved his “friend” into incoming traffic. It exactly the problem with unequal justice with white collar drug users and the blue collar ones. (Embezzling millions or shoplifting, for example)It is exactly the problem with urban youth offenders and suburban youth offenders. It is exactly the reason why are prisons are full of African American males in disproportionate numbers.
Kodad: the testimony at the Grand Jury provided by the other kids there was that the Bradley kid was not “pushed into the street”, but rather that he was wrestloing with his friend and that he stumbled into the street off the curb. BIG DIFFERENCE, at least to the Grand Jury and prosecutors. Secondly, the reason African American males are in prison in disproportionate numbers is that African American males committ crimes in disproportionate numbers. So suck it up baby and have a cup of coffee with Pam Adams.
If you aren’t, you certainly should think about becoming a lawyer with your gift of semantics.
The grand jury relied on the testimony of a bunch of drunk college kids instead of the physical evidence of a teen aged corpse. I wonder how they would have responded to the testimony of a bunch of drunk African American kids from below the hill?
Who is Pam Adams and what is your problem with her?
Just for you enlightenment… committing a crime, being arrested, indicted, convicted and imprisoned are five different statistics. For example, this young man who is responsible for his friends death committed a crime, and he may have been arrested, but he wasn’t indicted and he will not be convicted… and he definitely will not serve any time in prison. Is he Caucasian?
She should have gotten another 36 years for being so obnoxious.
kodad: Grand Jury would have reacted the same to a bunch of black kids testifying before them in a sober mood. Yes, the kids were white; Pam Adams is a black racist reporter for the Journal Star, you will hear from her on this matter. Thanks for the query. I am not a lawyer, thank you!
The Mouse raised a good question. The answer is that incareceration serves two purposes, to protect society from the offender and to punish criminal behavior. Usually, incarcerating the offender serves both purposes. Once in a while, McCarron being the most recent example, there is no great danger to others if the criminal were not imprisoned, but the need for punishment demands lengthy prison time. The observation that prisons are overcrowded is correct, but the answer is not to let the McCarrons out. Rather, the answer is that too many others are in prison for crimes that really are not dangerous to society. The US has the largest prison population in the world. We have too many non-violent offenders in prison. Save prison for the violent offenders and de-criminalize many of those non-violent crimes. That’s the answer.
WACKO WROTE: “Pam Adams is a black racist reporter for the Journal Star,”
I gotta wonder about your issues with skin color.
If you believe that a grand jury responds to black urban teenagers the same as white college teenagers (notice how I slipped that social class designator in there?) then you really are naive. I don’t believe you are naive. So what does that leave? You MUST be white.
Kodad: for whatever that means, I am white, but I have no issues with skin color. I just call it like it is, if more people did that this whould be a better world.
dd, you say our prisons are full of non-violent offenders, I’m not sure that’s true. I’m also unconvinced that drug dealers are, in fact, less harmful to society than all “violent” offenders, given the current over-expansive definitions of violence and “terrorists”. Nevertheless, our judges have been hamstrung as far as sentences. Probation is a joke, about the only real sentence they can hand down is jail time. The few judges who dare to try “creative” sentencing have been bludgeoned back into place by “civil rights lawyers”, crybabies, and narrow-minded jerks. We desperately need effective alternatives to prison.
Where is Joe Arapio when you need him? This man knows how to run a prison and his recidivism rate is extremely low.
She is a doctor and she killed her own child. She deserves the time she got and more.