Okay, I Know It Gets Lonely in Montana, But …
Once you start fantasizing about spanking people, it’s time to turn in your Lawmaker Badge.
Jerry, of course.
Montana State Rep. Jerry O’Neil (R) is sponsoring a bill to allow defendants to “bargain with the court” to receive “corporal punishment in lieu of incarceration.” The bill would apply to not just misdemeanor crimes, but also felonies — though the bill requires that the “exact nature of the corporal punishment to be imposed” be “commensurate with the severity, nature, and degree of the harm caused by the offender.”
Look, I frankly don’t care what Montana does because after reading this I have dissuaded myself of any desire to go to Montana, but you gotta promise me something. If this bill passes, Jerry doesn’t get to watch.
Now, that would be justice.
Spank me, Judge, cuz I’ve been a bad boy.
1I think Jerry is a secret Muslim. He’s trying to sneak in Islamic Sharia Law. 50 lashes for an offense. Next it will be cutting off fingers and hands for stealing.
Just saying…
2Juanita, Montana is beautiful, as are Arizona and some of the other places where state government is full of people like this. We can’t just cede the nicest parts of our country to the crazies. Though I know we’ve got our hands full here, what with the Lege in session.
3I’m appalled and all…many thoughts flew about “we are not on an 1890’s Clipper sailing the sea where flogging (which could be fatal) was a typical corporeal punishment.
Then I started answering my own “why?” and realized, one of the advantages is to reduce the overcrowding of prisons or the huge drain on tax dollars that incarceration offers. It also might prevent the small timer from spending time at the best trade school in this country to learn how to be a more serious criminal.
I am still appalled, but I can at least see some merits–but then I’m also a believer in death penalty rather than lifetime incarceration.
4Here I thought the right wanted to go back to the 1950’s. I guess they really want to go waaaaayyyy back. I kinda like the idea of bringing back the stocks in the public square.
5Why not return to those glorious days of the Roman Republic, when the greatest crime of all was public corruption. Execution, banishment of family and confiscation of all wealth were just a few of the well-known punishments. How far we have come!
6@Star – I am not entirely against the death penalty either (in a few rare cases – Hitler and Stalin come to mind), but the last stats I read on the subject showed it is cheaper to life ’em than pay for the automatic appeals process. Sad and strange, but true….
7Jerry’s just a big Devo fan, dontcha know.
8This Jerry guy has gone so far back that what he is talking about is called Celtic law. It was the existing alternative at the time to Roman law which believed in the most draconian measures including throwing people off the Tarpian Rocks or sometimes even into a pit to slowly go mad as they starved to death. The Celts were into producing their own food wherever they were which meant they were exceptionally labor dependent. If someone killed one of their tribe, they were willing to accept a replacement from the tribe that did the killing and just keep putting one foot in front of the other. But frankly I don’t think Old Jerry ever heard of this. Such info is available only by willing to dig deep and long on research which is very often not available anyway. But then such is the circus in this Jerry’s head!
9Montana! Where men are men, women are scarce and sheep are nervous. (Saw that on a bumper snicker.)
10Whip, beat me, make me write bad checks.
Then arrest me for check kiting.
Repeat.
11I wonder if he accepts stoning as corporeal punishment. If so, I’d advise all women to get the heck out of Wyoming. That seems to be a punishment of choice as regards women – being Biblical-based, as some of those folks believe.
If you say a naughty word or talk out of turn, do you get your knuckles knocked with a ruler? If you cmmit adultery as a man, can we glue your testicles and penis together to your thighs with Super Gluee (that way the offending parts do not go wandering about after all, that is part of the nature of the crime.). Gosh, sadists should start applying now for the teams administering Mr. O’Neil’s concept.
12@Aghast Independent: who paid for that study? If you are going by the “$2.3 million per execution” cost from C. Hoppe, “Executions Cost Texas Millions,” The Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992, those numbers have been shown to be either comparing unsimilar things, or to leaving some costs for life-without-parole cases out to make the point (e.g., medical care for the elderly). One source I found for comparison was Lethal Injection: Capital Punishment in Texas During the Modern Era By Jonathan Roger Sorensen, Rocky LeAnn Pilgrim (2006). Some of the pertinent pages can be found online here: http://books.google.com/books?id=IQJtCjhdGeUC&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&ots=Mtji7SSu0v&dq=cost+%22death+penalty%22+Dallas+morning+news%22&output=html
Another interesting site is http://homicidesurvivors.com/2010/03/21/death-penalty-cost-studies-saving-costs-over-lwop.aspx which says life without parole is more expensive than the death penalty.
The first question to always ask when the numbers are “strange” is who paid for the study, because statistics and wording can give you a study that says oranges are purple, if you have a group whose funding (or personal belief) is dependent on oranges being purple. Whenever possible, find the source documents for the numbers, not someone else’s interpretation. That gives you accurate information to make your own decision. I make no claim that either of these I’ve supplied is correct; just that they give a differing viewpoint.
13My choice as the 1st recipient would be Max Bacus.
14Susan F, your strategy is right (find sources that seem reliable), but my big concern–in Texas, at least__is that we seem to find that an inordinate number of the “guilty” might not have been so after all. Death or life or whatever…it’s a terrible issue…
15I’m going to have to bleach my brain to get that guy’s creepy face out of it. He looks just like the kind who’d get a kick out of watching someone get 30 lashes. Especially if the one giving out the lashes was wearing thigh high boots and a leather corset.
16I hope this guy didn’t procreate. If he did, I feel so sorry for his progeny.
17Last fall, ol Jerry requested to be paid in gold coin. Oh yes he did.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/13/jerry-oneil-montana-gold-coins_n_2123961.html
Don’t really need to tell ya: Ron Paul supporter. Yes, a Ronulan.
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