Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: Criminal Law

I would encourage you to contact your state legislators about your valid concern.

Re: Criminal Law

Any result in any criminal case is the result of plea negotiations between the prosecutor and the defense attorney. If the kiiling of any human being results in only a 7 year sentence, that would tell me the prosecutor felt he/she had some problems with the case and could not make a murder charge which holds a possible life sentence or could make the defendant eligible for the death pnalty if special circumstances existed. So the prosecutor agrred to accept a REDUCED CHARGE of some kind which the defendant agreed to so he would not face the possibility of a guilty conviction to a more serious charge. Thank you for your question. You may visit our website at www.wallinlaw.com David Wallin

Re: Criminal Law

You certainly rattled my cage with your question, which is only the tip of the ice berg. I believe that our laws regarding violence against women have gone too far, because politicians pander to women's groups, without regard to whether the law is reasonable or even beneficial to victims of violence.

Case in point: In sexual assault cases, every penetration is counted as a "separate rape", with CONSECUTIVE prison sentences. Every finger insertion, every re-insertion of the penis, and another count for each orifice. I understand what the legislature was TRYING To do here, but here is what they actually accomplished.

Sentences on sexual assaults often range up in the 50-75 year area, with all the consecutive counts. Do they think that felons in prison do not talk to each other? What is the expected effect when one prisoner is serving 75 years for a rape and his cell mate who killed the woman he raped is eligible for parole first on his murder conviction? It is just plain stupid to make it "cheaper" in terms of prison time to kill the victim, but such laws get votes.

Add to this that if a woman who is mentally ill makes a false accusation of rape, the accused has no right to subpoena her psychiatric records before trial. Even if the "victim" confessed to her therapist that she hates men and wants to put them in jail on false charges, it is kept from the defense, thereby making it impossible to secure a psychiatric expert to explain to the jury that the woman may not even know the difference between reality and fantasy.

Don't expect these laws to change soon. We have to wait until some high ranking legislator's son gets caught in this trap.

Re: Criminal Law

Not all killings are equivalent in the eyes of the law. For that matter, neither are all rapes. There is a range of possible sentences for various types of homicide, and there is a range for different types of rape. That these ranges overlap is not a surprise.

Bear in mind that a particular defendant's sentence can be affected by many factors, including his criminal history, whether he used a gun while committing the crime, whether the crime was carried out for the benefit of a gang, etc. It will also be affected by the specifics of the crime -- for example, a rapist who penetrates his victim more than once can be convicted of separate offenses for each act and can thus receive a much longer sentence than he would have for a single act.

The bottom line is that, without knowing more about the two cases you describe, it is impossible to compare the resulting sentences meaningfully.