A defendant who was captured in courtroom video leaping over a judge’s bench and attacking her, touching off a bloody brawl, is scheduled to appear before her again Monday morning.
In his Jan. 3 appearance before Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus, Deobra Redden, who was facing prison time for a felony battery charge stemming from a baseball bat attack last year, tried to convince the judge that he was turning around his violent past.
Redden asked for leniency while describing himself as “a person who never stops trying to do the right thing no matter how hard it is.”
But when it became clear Holthus was going to sentence him to prison time, and as the court marshal moved to handcuff and take him into custody, Redden yelled expletives and charged forward. People in the courtroom audience, including his foster mother, began to scream.
If I understand you correctl,y people can change, like you said: he’s growing more violent.
So they only can get worse? The only path for a human is into darkness? That’s still change, bud. And you’re silly if once you acknowledge change that it’s only one direction.
Aside from that, the point of jails is to punish and ideally reform people so they become better. So the original premise is flawed from the start, it was never about “locking them away for good”, it was always deterrent and to prevent them from doing it again.
You didn’t say change. You said turn their life around. Don’t change your words now, bud. To which I said, no not everyone can turn their life around. Some people are only capable of getting worse.
And sure that’s the point of the criminal justice system, ideally.
The point of jail/prison itself is to keep offenders segregated from society while that happens, with security levels matching the severity and risk of the offender. For those that cannot be reformed or have committed unforgivable crimes, the point is to permanently segregate them from society to prevent them from further harming it.
To turn someone’s life around is to change for the better. I also quoted you with that phrase.
If you’re going to argue semantics, invest in a thesaurus. Also, if youre going to play the pedantic card, don’t use colloquialisms.
I’d suggest you do some reading on the histories of criminal punishments and how society has evolved around them.
I’d also like to point out how you ignored what I said: you acknowledge he has changed, but is only capable of changing in one direction. Which is a silly thought if you’ve ever met a person who has made mistakes. Maybe you haven’t.
My god you really have no reading comprehension do you? Or you just don’t know how to have a good faith conversation.
YOU started with the colloquialism. That was entirely you. I never used it other than responding to YOUR use of it.
I know what it means, and I am arguing that SOME people are NOT capable of changing for the better. SOME people only change for the worst.
Violent crimes are also not “making a mistake”, ffs. They are a conscious act to decide to severely harm another person. In this dudes case he consciously made the decision to try to end another person’s life by violently beating them with a baseball bat. After having repeated other offenses of violently attacking others and being given chances to reform.
And even then he was given incredible leniency by having the charge dropped from assault with a deadly weapon to attempted assault causing substantial bodily harm.
