No it doesn't. You are speeding on the roadway. The police can pull you over and give you a ticket. They can also decide that you aren't exceeding it by that much and not pull you over or give you a ticket. I I think that's reasonable, you would say "it follows logically that the police being able to decide who gets tickets is a good thing." So if I support that, it means I think they should be able to ticket anyone regardless of speed, right?
I don't think speeding is a serious offense, so no. If it were a serious offense, then it would be a major problem if they could just play god and let people off. Imagine if the police just did not arrest some people who committed murder, because the guy had a nice smile. Not so nice, is it?
Allowing judgement to be a factor in one direction does not automatically mean it should be applied in all directions.
Not necessarily, but your logic applied in both directions.
I suspect our disagreement comes down to culture and our respective court system's fuck ups. You have people being let off for child rape because of some sob story or 'cultural misunderstandings.' We had people getting life for questionable drug charges.
Perhaps. Though I would argue that the problem with your system is the law. If you do not think that questionable drug offenses should require a mandatory life sentence, then the solution to that is not judges overriding the law, but legislators changing the law.
I object to that too but I also tend to align with Blackstone. "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." Again - that's before I read the bill and realized this article is about the minimum sentence for a second first-degree conviction. Without that part of the story it sounded much more likely to result in miscarriages of justice.
I get the sense that your problem is more with innocent people unjustly being convicted. That I find more understandable than "we're going awfully hard on the child molesters here!" And also more respectable.
However, I would argue that this is the wrong way to combat that. If innocents are being convicted, that is a problem in itself, and that such cases result in convictions is what should be solved. It should not be solved by judges handing down sentences of 5 years instead of 30 years. Not that I believe that most lower sentences are "I believe this guy is actually innocent" anyway. But rather: "this guy had an unhappy childhood".
I don't think speeding is a serious offense, so no. If it were a serious offense, then it would be a major problem if they could just play god and let people off. Imagine if the police just did not arrest some people who committed murder, because the guy had a nice smile. Not so nice, is it?
Not necessarily, but your logic applied in both directions.
Perhaps. Though I would argue that the problem with your system is the law. If you do not think that questionable drug offenses should require a mandatory life sentence, then the solution to that is not judges overriding the law, but legislators changing the law.
I get the sense that your problem is more with innocent people unjustly being convicted. That I find more understandable than "we're going awfully hard on the child molesters here!" And also more respectable.
However, I would argue that this is the wrong way to combat that. If innocents are being convicted, that is a problem in itself, and that such cases result in convictions is what should be solved. It should not be solved by judges handing down sentences of 5 years instead of 30 years. Not that I believe that most lower sentences are "I believe this guy is actually innocent" anyway. But rather: "this guy had an unhappy childhood".