Suitable Sentences?
Albert (Caesar) Tocco, has just died in a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. The 77-year-old mob boss had served 15 years of his 200 year sentence for racketeering, conspiracy, extortion and tax fraud. That's right, he had been sentenced to 200 years.
Today, sentence was passed in a court in Madrid against Imad Yarkas, an Al Qaeda cell leader who was convicted of conspiring to commit murder in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. Yarkas arranged a meeting in the Tarragona region of Spain in July 2001 at which Sept. 11 suicide pilot Mohamed Atta and plot coordinator Ramzi Binsalshibh met to decide last-minute details of the attack. The prosecutors accused Yarkas of being an accomplice to murder and asked for a sentence of nearly 75,000 years - 25 years for each of the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives in the suicide attacks of 2001. The Spanish court saw fit to convict him of conspiracy instead, and impose a jail term of only 27 years.
Is it only me, or does anyone else see an imbalance in the sentences imposed in these two cases? How is it that the one man could be served with a 200-year term while the other was only given 27 years? Both men were charged with conspiracy. Was the one sentence more severe because the offender's conspiracy had been to dupe the government of dollars and cents? Was the other sentence less severe because the offender had only conspired to rob some people of their lives? Is that what accounts for the difference, the value of human life being set lower than the value of the dollar bill? I am genuinely at a loss to understand this. Can you explain it?
Today, sentence was passed in a court in Madrid against Imad Yarkas, an Al Qaeda cell leader who was convicted of conspiring to commit murder in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. Yarkas arranged a meeting in the Tarragona region of Spain in July 2001 at which Sept. 11 suicide pilot Mohamed Atta and plot coordinator Ramzi Binsalshibh met to decide last-minute details of the attack. The prosecutors accused Yarkas of being an accomplice to murder and asked for a sentence of nearly 75,000 years - 25 years for each of the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives in the suicide attacks of 2001. The Spanish court saw fit to convict him of conspiracy instead, and impose a jail term of only 27 years.
Is it only me, or does anyone else see an imbalance in the sentences imposed in these two cases? How is it that the one man could be served with a 200-year term while the other was only given 27 years? Both men were charged with conspiracy. Was the one sentence more severe because the offender's conspiracy had been to dupe the government of dollars and cents? Was the other sentence less severe because the offender had only conspired to rob some people of their lives? Is that what accounts for the difference, the value of human life being set lower than the value of the dollar bill? I am genuinely at a loss to understand this. Can you explain it?
2 Comments:
Justice served is a fallacy of our times. Yarkas should have been executed.
I am curious as to what Yarkas' defense was however ...
I had hoped for death by dismemberment in this case since that is what he sentenced those he murdered too but alas, he only got 25 years.
The defense lawyer for this freak should be disbarred.
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