Why will the men who beat Giants fan Bryan Stow into a coma face shorter sentences for their assault than for illegally possessing guns?
FEB 21 2014, 7:39 AM ET
………Most sound reforms would make the system less punitive. But a surfeit of inadequate sentences in assault cases persuades me that when it comes to some violent crimes, a more punitive approach is needed. Comparing punishments is enough to know that something is not right: What kind of insane criminal-justice system hands down a 25-year sentence for selling pain pills to a friend, 10 years for an illegal gun sitting in an attic, and four to eight years for beating a human into a coma and giving him brain damage because he was rooting for the wrong baseball team?
Now what if the numbers were reversed? If these domestic-violence convicts who beat a paramedic into a coma, destroying life as he knew it forever, were given 25 years each for their latest crime, would that strike any readers as excessive or unjust? To be sure, not every assault warrants a quarter century in prison, but unprovoked assaults that involve repeatedly kicking the victim in the head while he's down?
The criminal-justice system I want would reflect a larger cultural norm, which America may well lack, that initiating violence against others is the worst thing one can do.
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