What punishment does Karla Homolka deserve?

According to a Canadian newspaper, "Three in four Canadians believe convicted sex killer Karla Homolka continues to pose a potential threat to the general public, just weeks before she is due to be released after having served 12 years in jail." This is just another example of the kinds of sex-crime-related laws we're seeing pop up in the U.S. And while, personally, I don't think there are punishments long and painful enough for rapists, murderers and child molesters... do we think there's a constitutional problem (different from, but not unlike, double-jeopardy) when we extend sentences beyond what judges intended? Especially in cases where that sentence was the result of a plea-bargain?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Passing on Panel Discussions?

In his latest podcast ( Blogarithms IT Conversations News: August 14, 2005 ), Doug Kaye mentioned an interesting anecdotal tidbit: People seem less interested in panel discussions at conferences than they do in single speakers. The panel discussions get lower ratings at ITConversations.com, and... there was some other reason he mentioned it, too. (Okay, so I don't remember. Sorry!) As I was listening to one of their panel discussions this morning, I had a thought: It was really hard to follow. It takes a lot of mental energy to keep up with who's-saying-what. And I don't even particular care about the who's-who; it would be even worse if I really need to know which person was making a particular point. Could that be what people are reacting to when they rate panel discussions lower than single-speaker talks?
Read more

Commercial comments (Blogging from Word!)

Ironically, I’ve got two commercial-related things going on in my mind right now. On the Ericast, I’ve been discussing how commercials are going to get more and more imbedded into content; I think we’re going to drift away from “spot radio” or “spot television”, and even drift away from traditional “product placement”, and move toward a picture-in-picture or screen crawl or other “embedded advertising”.  That way, you’ll be unable to avoid the advertisement… and you’ll want to see it, because skipping it would mean that you’d miss out on the content.  (Imagine, for example, a HGTV demo on sponge-painting that takes up the top 2/3rds of the screen, with the bottom 1/3rd showing things like “BEHR Paint on sale at Home Depot!  20% off!”.) I might hate living in a world filled with television that looks like that… but it probably would be effective. But, speaking of, I’ve found a program that removes commercials from MPG files!  And it really works!  I’ll blog it next, from the site. Why n
Read more
USATODAY.com - Schoolyard bullies get nastier online / Ick. Ick, ick, ick. Glad to know that technology is making parenting oh-so-much simpler, right?
Read more