Reading Comprehension FAIL
This morning I saw a story that caught my eye on Yahoo! News. The headline read:
Insight: Florida man sees “cruel” face of U.S. justice
So I clicked on the story to read it later. I just finished reading the story and doing a little research on it.
The story is about some low-life named Quartavious Davis from South Florida. Mr. Davis is upset because he was sentenced to almost 162 years in prison for his first offence. However, his outrage and shock is a bit misplaced, as his first conviction actually covers seven armed robberies, during two of which he allegedly fired his weapon. This string of armed robberies was committed with several accomplices (making him a gang-banger, and a lousy one at that) shortly after he turned 18. I guess the $674 a month he was getting from Social Security Disability Insurance wasn’t enough. (Yes, this guy is a poster-child for the anti-welfare crowd.)
Mr. Davis got this massive sentence because (a) all his co-defendants took plea deals and rolled on him and (b) the federal government has a policy known as “stacking” in which the sentences get stacked on top of each other.
So obviously, this is a problem with Florida’s horrible, archaic justice system, right?
Well, no. I’m willing to bet that this crowd (do we count as a crowd?) noticed that I mentioned the federal government. Yes, Mr. Davis somehow managed to get his dumb-assed self prosecuted in a federal court, by a federal prosecutor (funny how that works), before a federal judge, and has been sentenced to rot to death in a federal prison under federal sentencing guidelines.
However, the article in question (from Reuters) makes this into a state issue about Florida. The commenters there and elsewhere barely noticed.
So this is all about the backwards state of Florida and how racist and evil conservatives are for a great many people in the echo-chamber.
Whatever. The people making the complaints about the awfulness of Florida are incapable of reading. Not to mention that the goon reporter from Reuters is intentionally misleading them. (You can read the story yourselves and figure out how.)
But here’s a nice little factoid from the Reuters article:
Since 2003, the Justice Department has had guidelines in place that discourage prosecutors from stacking in cases where it can lead to excessive sentences.
Yet prosecutors have broad discretion within their jurisdictions to follow their own lights, according to criminal-law experts.
So the Bush Justice Department actually discouraged the practice, though (in typical fashion) they didn’t actually do anything to end the practice of governmental over-reach.
So who is behind this sentence? Besides the Congress and Justice Department, the man most responsible appears to be Wifredo A. “Willy” Ferrer, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Who just happens to be an Obama appointee.
So, clearly a Hispanic-American federal prosecutor reporting to a black US AG and appointed by a black President working under federal guidelines is a sign of racist Florida being a backwater of justice.
ADDED: I should add that Quartavious Davis’s parents should probably spend time in prison for their choice of name for their son. This isn’t a new position for me.
Ambiance 
mockturtle said,
July 5, 2012 at 2:00 am
Well, we all know that the liberal media have had it in for the South in general and Florida in particular for a long time. Personally, I’ve always admired Florida for executing criminals, if for nothing else. Only they and Texas actually carry them executions any more! We from Washington State will be forever grateful you offed Ted Bundy. Thank you!!!! :-)
mockturtle said,
July 5, 2012 at 2:01 am
Carry out executions [wow, it’s late!].
Icepick said,
July 5, 2012 at 8:16 am
Ted Bundy was the poster child for the good side of execution, no doubt about it.
mockturtle said,
July 5, 2012 at 11:49 am
And here the state let the Green River Killer take a plea to avoid the death penalty so he is living out his life on the state’s dime. Forty-nine plus victims!!! They just recently identified another and there is some talk of trying him for that and seeking death.
Again, kind of a hijack–sorry. What point were you trying to make with your post, Ice? Was it that the Florida justice system is being impugned by the media? That the sentence [by the federal court] was unfair? It does seem excessive.
Icepick said,
July 5, 2012 at 1:11 pm
MT, my point isn’t very clearly expressed, but I am (a) annoyed that Reuters has written an intentionally muddled article and (b) that the majority of those that have read the article and commented on it (by a very large margin) are incapable of comprehending what they just read.
As for the federal sentence, it is a bit ridiculous. But just a bit. Someone committing a string of armed robberies is likely to end up killing someone sooner rather than later. Locking this dumb-ass up for life doesn’t seem like the worst idea, or even a bad one. That his accomplices are getting off much more lightly (9 to 22 years) is a bigger problem. They’ll be back on the streets in a few short years. The good news for me is that they are likely to stay in South Florida.