1,256 years for robbing banks

[G5000]

The guy who walks into a bank with a gun to rob it is not a wealthy person.

It is someone driven by permutations of poverty, addiction, alcoholism, ignorance, and desperation.

Remove any of those legs, you remove the crime.

I volunteered in prisons for over a decade, with a specific focus on alcohol and drug addiction. Some of the guards thought we were useless do-gooders. But I asked one of them one day how many of the crooks he had arrested were drunk or high when they committed their crimes or when they were arrested.

His purely anecdotal response was, "80 percent", without hesitation. So I asked him how much he thought crime would drop if we could get just one or two of those people cleaned up. And then I saw the light click on. He was most cooperative from that day forward.

And based on my own experiences in several jails and prisons around the country, I would not be surprised if "80 percent" was close to scientifically accurate.

[G5000]

[G5000]

I don't know if a life sentence for robbing all those banks is appropriate in this case. There are always several sides to those kinds of stories. From where I sit, with some of the experience I have, I would say such a sentence is within the realm of possibility for being a reasonable one.

But it is also within the realm of possibility of being an outrageous one.

There just is no way for any of us to tell from here.

I will add that I've met bank robbers in the jails and prisons I volunteered in. None of them had ever been sentenced to anything close to life. And these were some pretty violent guys.

[Bill_in_Bethlehem]

[Bill_in_Bethlehem]

[Bill_in_Bethlehem]

exploited - i would also add the following

maybe it would have only been say 20 years for a robbery, and the judge could have shown leniency and ran 7 different 20 year sentences concurrently

but the article also says they faced a quadrupling of the sentence by mere fact that they were already repeat offenders

and there is some multiplier per person threatened in each robbery which added a factor of 17x apparently

so the "normal" sentence in this case may have in fact been quite reasonable

but because they were repeat offenders, and this "multiplier" rule, it got up into the four digit range

now i am not saying the men should be put to death for the crime

but come on... 7 different bank robberies? while already on parole?

tough to muster sympathy for these guys, maybe we should evaluate the quadrupling rule, and the multiplier rule though

[exploited]

[Ameriman]

[Bill_in_Bethlehem]

[exploited]

Of course it is cruel and unusual. You are basically saying "You will live the rest of your life in prison, and there is literally no chance you will ever get out, because you repeatedly stole money." Sorry, but stealing money just isn't a big enough crime to warrant a life sentence, especially when that money is from banks and especially when nobody gets hurt in the process. Obviously he wasn't in this to be violent, and obviously he doesn't pose a threat to the average citizen. So why is he getting a punishment usually reserved for serial murderers and spree killers? Ridiculous.