• merc@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    Is it just me or does 30 years to life seem longer than you would expect? I’m not trying to argue what he deserves or what the correct amount of time is for rape. I’m just saying that if I had to guess what kind of sentence someone would get for 2 counts of rape, I’d have guessed something like 15 years at most. It seems especially unusual given that he’s rich, white, and presumably a first-time offender.

    If the sentence is unusually long, would that mean an appeal is more likely to be successful?

    • Icaria@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Sentencing has never made much sense. Depends upon jurisdiction, how many charges prosecutors can tack on, how many you end up going to trial over, how many you get convicted over, and who is responsible for sentencing (in some places the jury sentence, in some the trial judge, in others sentencing is a separate proceeding with a separate judge).

      One of the big factors here is that Masterson and his lawyers still deny everything. He didn’t cut a deal, hasn’t shown remorse since he hasn’t admitted to any wrong-doing, and the judge chose to sentence consecutively. First trial was a mistrial, second trial got 2/3 convictions, and apparently they intend to appeal. So depending upon appeal, he is currently facing somewhere between being acquitted on appeal to facing life in prison. In a lot of cases like this, some sort of deal is cut on lesser charges or lesser sentencing in exchange for admitting guilt and not dragging this on through appeal, hence typically shorter sentences. Masterson/his lawyers are instead rolling d20s and the current outcome is a 1.

    • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Compared to the rapist Brock Turner it sure seems like a lot. Brock Turner the rapist got a very light sentence.

    • Laticauda@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      It varies a hell of a lot by state. Some states will give 40+ years for one rape, some will give under 10 years for multiple rapes. Add in the biases of individual judges, the person being charged, their status, jury biases, etc, and it ends up kinda all over the place.

      • bobman@unilem.org
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        10 months ago

        Kind of makes sense to just have all of our justice dictated by robots, at that point.

        At least then there’d be some consistency.

    • JoBo@feddit.uk
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      10 months ago

      Don’t you mean that almost all other sentences for rape seem far too short?

      There were several aggravating factors here. A long sentence is surprising given that he is a wealthy, white man. But it’s absolutely justified (in the current carceral context, of which I strongly disapprove).

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        No, in fact I specifically said:

        I’m not trying to argue what he deserves or what the correct amount of time is for rape.

        • JoBo@feddit.uk
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          10 months ago

          I didn’t say you were. I’m suggesting the sentence only seems long to you because you grew up in a world full of Brock Turners. If you’re not arguing about what the correct sentence should be, that is the only possible interpretation of what you said. Your perspective has been warped by your experience of this world that we live in.

        • PutangInaMo@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          I used to have a friend that did 8 years for murder. Dude hit the 3 strike rule though he’s out for life no parole.

    • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      Yea, I’m glad he is getting what he deserves but 30 to life seems insane. You can get up to 20 years for murder here (life sentence is possible but only for the rare serial/mass murderer), and getting that 20 years requires you to do some really bad shit. Manslaughter for another example is up to 3 years.

      • Novman@feddit.it
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        10 months ago

        Excuse me, but it seems to me that with two murder maybe his sentence would be less.

    • 31337@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      Yeah, seems high. I’ve known someone that got 10 years for attempted murder (shot someone). I’m not in favor of long sentences like these in general. If a person is not going to rehabilitated in 10 years, then I don’t think adding another 20 years is going to help. Same thing if you look at it from a deterrent perspective (if 10 years isn’t a deterrent, then any sentence probably wouldn’t be). If a person could never be rehabilitated and they would pose a danger to others if released, then a life sentence would probably be the best.

  • Coreidan@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Wooops I guess he’s not rich enough to pay off judges and prosecutors. Sucks to suck.

    • can@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      Scientology couldn’t even save him?

      I bet if it was Tom Cruise they would have done more.

        • IDontHavePantsOn@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          They didn’t, but with the amount of publicity it got they probably didn’t find it worth the investment since he likely wouldn’t be able to work anymore.

          Scientologists poisoned the dog of one of the victims for speaking up. After that dog died the victim got a new dog which was then poisoned. They did what they could to shut her up.

        • Nastybutler@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          They fought this pretty hard. The victims had to suffer even more just to pursue this thanks to those cultist fucks

      • exploding_whale@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        Tom makes enough money to take his thetan levels seriously. Doesn’t look like Danny boy’ll be that bankable of a star going forward.

    • Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      10 months ago

      We’re clearly seeing some break from the trend of rich and famous people seeing no consequences for being awful.

      • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        …creebspy and rapey Kelly, rapestien… it’s been a bit more than a minute now. Sad that it took a whole movement to get the ball rolling though

        • havokdj@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Nothing came out of the rammstein case. It was concluded that the statements given were false by the Berlin public prosecutors office.

          To be fair, I think that is one of those cases where someone says something about something happening, and a whole bunch of people hop on a bandwagon saying the same thing to try and get something out of it. I mean some of the shit they were saying was straight up satirical, the “Suck Box”? Give me a break now.

          Lynn even made it a point that Lindemann did not rape her, and then a bunch of women came out and said that he did but never testified against him in one of the safest countries on the planet to do so. The only thing I think is suspicious on rammsteins’ behalf is that they distanced themselves from Makeeva, but perhaps she was spreading rumors about her role with the band? Who knows.

          • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Well for one: I said rapestein. Not rammstein.

            And ….

            the safest countries on the planet to do so

            Lol how do you out yourself as a misogynistic fuckface mansplaining shit they don’t actually understand without just saying it? Say this bullshit right here.

            • havokdj@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              It’s pretty obvious who you were talking about buddy, don’t play stupid fucking games with me, we aren’t children.

              And wow, you’re going to assume that I’m all of those things because I mentioned that Germany takes rape VERY seriously and if allegations are true (they have very invasive investigative procedures), then they should have persued it because justice will absolutely be served? You are an actual piece of shit.

              I refuse to further this conversation. You should take time to think about what you said to another human being. You are so fucking rabid that you called me those things when I even presented potential evidence AGAINST them, just that the evidence for them heavily outweighs everything else. You have absolutely no idea what my views are and you automatically assumed I’m one of the worst kinds of people imagineable.

              There’s definitely not another actual human being on the other side of that screen, other people definitely don’t matter and don’t have feelings just because you can’t see them.

              Shame on you.

        • ImFresh3x@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          It’s not that rich people are treated incorrectly, it’s that average people are treated too harshly. Rich people get what everyone should get: A way to defend themselves.

  • dangblingus@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Man, I love That 70s Show, but so much fuckery and creepy shit happened during production. The irony being that this guy could have had any woman he wanted without assaulting them. He was the “cool funny” one on the show. Fucking gross piece of shit.

    • June@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      Idk about any woman he wanted. There are plenty of people who were never attracted to him, and he may be dysfunctional in a way that draws him to those people.

      No one can ever have anyone they want. There will always be someone that says no, and if you don’t have the maturity to accept that and let go of your sense of entitlement you might wind up turning into a predator like Masterson.

        • June@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          Yea, I know. But they used the figure of speech in a fairly absolute way that I disagree with.

          Being hot and wanted doesn’t make a person any less likely to be a predator.

          • thereisalamp@reddthat.com
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            10 months ago

            The juxtaposition of “anyone he wants without raping them” against “sentenced to 30 years for rape” has a pretty clear contextual implication that you intentionally ignored.

            • June@lemm.ee
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              10 months ago

              Feel free to point out where that was referenced in the comment I was replying to.

              I didn’t ignore it, it wasn’t relevant.

              • thereisalamp@reddthat.com
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                10 months ago

                It’s literally the title of the post my dude.

                That was said in response to the context of Danny Masterson being sentenced to jail for rape.

                It is relevant, and you are choosing to die on the hill of pedantry on a point no one but you is actually asserting. You choose to take a figure of speech, that was a juxtaposition of the title of the article and apply an absolute. It doesn’t read that easy to anyone who isn’t making a choice to omit the context.

    • elevenfingerfrk@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      Rape is about power. Rapists aren’t interested in anyone who wants to give it to them consensually. They want to feel that they are really hurting someone, really destroying their humanity. If it doesn’t demean and permanently fuck up their victim then they want no part in it.

      • Ozymati@lemmy.nz
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        10 months ago

        I think there’s also a category of rapists who just flat out don’t see their victims as people so they try to take whatever they want if they can get away with it.

        It’s still about power since they can only do that to people without power (temporarily due to impairment or permanently due to society).

        But it’s not the rapist getting off on having power, it’s the rapist doing whatever they want because someone else has no power to stop them and the rapist has no empathy.

        Narcissism, vs sadism.

  • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    Just for curiosity’s sake, what did he do to deserve 25 1/2 years before he can be eligible for parole that convicted rapist Brock Allen Turner didn’t do when he raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster? They were both convicted in California. Why did Turner, who has been going by Allen Turner and was last seen in the Dayton, OH area, do differently such that his custodial sentence was for 6 months, roughly 2% of the custodial time that Masterson will serve?

    Let me be clear that my issue here isn’t that Masterson was penalized too much. He took two women’s lives and he should spend the rest of his in prison for it. It’s just that I see two rapists, one was righteously destroyed by the justice system and the other whose court proceedings essentially made it seem like no one wanted to punish him at all but they very reluctantly felt like they had to.

    • yokonzo@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      If we look at it from a pragmatic point of view, the answer is time I believe, the Brock turner case was quite a few years ago, when the laws and public opinion were still in quite a mysogynistic place, the Danny Masterson case was settled today and I believe opened after the metoo movements, where public opinion was shifting more favourably towards the victims. Its wild to see this amount of progress this quickly but I think were starting to see a change for the better overall, same as to how we saw better changes to views of homophobia in the early 2000’s from the 90’s, where it was “fashionable” to call everything gay in a derogatory way. Also if I recall, brocks dad was involved heavily in the trial if that counts for anything

      • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        I think it was the fear that got put into other judges by the recall of the judge that oversaw the Turner debacle. He was removed from the bench by outraged voters, as is right and good.

    • Seudo@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I have no idea about this case, but there’s a big difference between restorative (which is tentatively being trialed in many places) and a more traditional retributive justice system.

      The first seeks the victims input and attempts to compensate the community effected. Retributive justice uses a more nebusous sense of what’s right/deserved and what’s wrong/unjust.

      Pros and cons to both approaches. It’s still debatable which one is better at rehabilitation. But our current system doesn’t seem to place a high priority on that anyways.

      • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        This isn’t a case where a different theory of justice was being experimented with. In this case, the rich white man going to the prestigious, expensive ivy league school was given 6 months for raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster because, among other reasons, a stiffer sentence would have negatively impacted his career as a competitive swimmer. The judge who sentenced Turner to only 6 months for raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster had also presided over a case where an underage girl was gang-raped, also while unconscious. He allowed to be entered into evidence photos of her at a party a year after she was raped as evidence that she did not suffer from PTSD after being gang raped by a baseball team. It’s hard to imagine anything other than that this judge was a proponent of rape and did his best to protect rapists from any sort of punishment at all, but when absolutely forced to render some sort of sentence he punished rapists as little as possible.

  • Blue and Orange@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    I believe the song “incurably innocent” by At The Drive-In is about this piece of shit. He sexually assaulted Cedric’s wife.

    Bastard is better behind bars.

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    10 months ago

    I feel like the church 9f scientology should be held accountable here as well as they tried to hush the women.

  • Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Has Ashton said anything new yet? The guy built a reputation for defending victims of abuse, but when they’re his buddy Danny’s victims he suddenly has no comment and continued to hang out with him until he was jailed. Every person that was arrested with the help of Ashton Kutcher was automatically called guilty by him without trial, but when his friend rapes people he’s all “I just can’t know”. I lost all my respect for him for refusing to ditch an obvious rapist

    • NewNewAccount@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I mean, does it really matter? I don’t follow the situation, but his lack of opinion on this matter can be a blight on his reputation but it doesn’t change what he did for other victims.

      Besides, who cares about a celebrity’s opinion anyway?

      • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I would say here, it matters.

        Because of his work with Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children. This doesn’t just hurt his reputation, but very specifically because of the nature of the foundation, could hurt it too. Hopefully it doesn’t, but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t something

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    I feel sorry for his castmates. I’m sure they were counting on decades of reruns and residual checks.

    • stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I mean it sucks that it’s a missed money opportunity, (who wouldn’t love to coast on prior work they’ve done?) but a lot of the actors and actresses turned out just fine monetarily speaking idk. They’ll be alright.

      I really only feel sorry for the people he raped and the people who have to handle these types of cases day in and day out.

    • bobman@unilem.org
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      10 months ago

      I’m sure they’ll manage to get by.

      If they can’t, they can just get a normal job like the rest of us.

      We can’t all live off of the ‘work’ we did decades ago, lol.

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        First, my commnet was a bit sarcastic. Obviously, his victims have it much worse than his castmates.

        Second, your proposal makes sense to me. On the other hand, I can see why the stations wouldn’t want the show on the air.