Source: miamiherald.com 2/27/23
There’s no argument: Jared Stephens committed a crime, and he deserved some form of punishment. We’re not suggesting that child pornography isn’t an evil act. Possessing it is a crime for good reason. But the fight now in Florida courts to reduce the 150-year prison term Stephens received is about more than laws and sentences. It’s about how how our judicial system treats defendants with serious mental illness. The question is whether the 32-year-old man diagnosed with schizophrenia — who talked in court about shutting off electricity in Russia with his mind — should spend the rest of his life in prison. Stephens is a former Arizona State University wrestler who became homeless after suffering from untreated schizophrenia for years. In 2016, he walked into a Sweetwater Best Buy and snatched a laptop and other merchandise. When employees confronted him, he pulled out his own laptop, declaring, ”Look, I have child pornography!” He began publicly showing his computer screen, lying down between two sets of sliding doors and perusing the illegal images as customers walked by.
No standards in sentencing. This is what you get. Judges and DA’s can pretty much use people as examples to further their own professional careers. There is fundamentally a break in the system. Justice reform can’t move fast enough due to the private (and quiet) profiteering that goes on in the criminal system. This is not justice folks.
Its ABSURD!!! 🤯 He may be mentally ill, but the courts are absolutely f**king insane!!
150 years for images???? 😳 😲
That doesn’t make ANY rational sense! This American sex hysteria has gone MUCH TOO FAR!!
Besides, what exactly is the purpose of this sentence?? Is it deterrence? Prevention from him doing it again? What exactly justifies locking someone up for 150 years short of mass murder??? 😡
“Child pornography is one of the great concerns of our society right now,” Griffith said. “You have to take public safety into consideration.”
Another typical prosecutor douchebag sound byte to get his name in media so he could be the next douchebag governor of Florida.
I’m glad at least that the Miami Herald has taken a critical stance at this case and point out the excessive sentencing of 150 years for a CP crime of a mentally ill person as bat-sh!t crazy that it truly is. Welcome to Florida.
This article made my blood boil so much that I had to comment from halfway around the world. If this kid had walked into an outdoor cafe area where I’m sitting at right now in Windhoek Namibia, and he went around showing cp images on his computer, the patrons would have been disgusted while the staff would have asked him to leave. The whole thing would have ended right there, because Namibia has no enforceable cybercrime laws against obscene images on a computer. Now granted, ESCAP and NCMEC have been pressuring the country to criminalize those offenses, but Namibia has pushed back against the victim rights industry under the guise of not caving to western pressure since their independence in 1990. I kind of take a Taoist approach, although it may seem harsh. I’m glad Namibia doesn’t criminalize these kinds of offenses in order to ‘balance out’ the insane 150 year sh*t that comes out places like Florida. Like Lao Tzu said, we need balance in the universe.
I have to wonder which facility this gent will end up in to serve the sentence. Will he get the help/care he needs or will he be a sacrificial lamb as an acceptable loss should he not get the help he needs where someone else takes an exception to his presence?
The judge here has no brain to be a sitting judge. This is the second time in two days I have read about a judge in FLA who decides to go their own way despite what the empirical evidence says about the person in the legal cross hairs at the time.
I am going to say that Gov Ron is giving the population much to consider in questioning him should he decide he wants higher office at any time in the future. The policies and actions he is using today obviously wouldn’t be good for the country at the rate he is trying to use them. The judge here using the maximum sentence under the law on an individual who clearly is not going to be healthy in the way a common citizen would be is prime fodder for asking the Gov what he would try to do on a national level.
I pray for peace within this individual who is going to continue suffering and for those who did evil bidding by sentencing him to more than what is necessary.
[…] If anyone like this judge does 1/100th of this to my family then they will suffer a magnitude worse, direct consequences. It will be more moral than they are. Garbage like Judge Veronica Diaz are immoral and they should judge themselves before anyone else.
Its obviously clear the judge retaliated against him and punished him for exercising his constitutional right to a trial of his peers.