Astonishing Injustice in Florida
Even for Florida this is nuts.
30 years for a woman having consensual sex with a 16 year old. Note she wasn’t the teacher here. Thanks to Glen Sacks for bringing this to my attention.
Folks this is completely insane for more reasons than I can count.
1stly 16 is a common world wide and US age of consent. Hell if she had been 24 (according to Wikipedia, if thats accurate there would have been no offense at all!
Also people who forcibly rape children usually get less time than this. I am not sure what the judge was thinking, if he was thinking all, but this is disproportionate and wicked to say the least.
What would have been appropriate is well no legal action at all. 16 is a perfectly acceptable age of consent (though not lower) as global and US figures show. I would be OK with charging her with a non sex offender misdemeanor if for some reason the state thought 18 was a better age but this level of felony, functionally a life sentence for a 40 year old is insane.
Also if she had been his teacher I would have been OK with charging her with abuse of position or whatever each state as as statue a felony, so long as or 5 years or less maximum.
Frankly injustices like this need to be prevented from occurring in the first place anyway. Its too tedious a battle to change the law in every state, especially since the red states will resist anything progressive humanitarian and decent action tooth and claw.
Instead whats needed are federal sentence caps, not guidelines to limit judges from showing mercy but flat caps.
No sentence shall be more than X years, stuff may not be run consecutively that sort of thing- not less than, more than. This makes the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual mean something. And don’t forget force the States to release anyone over the limit too.
When it comes to protecting people, even petty offenders (if you consider this woman to be one at all) or serious offenders the Feds need to be a lot more proactive and defend our people and our constitution from assaults.
Let us not mince words excessive sentences like this are cruel and they sure as hell are unusual. They are just wrong.
Until we get universal justice I just hope she beats the sentence on appeal.
God Bless her and her family.