Quit Letting Violent Criminals Walk
RYAN Rogers should be alive today. The 14-year-old was riding his bike in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., earlier this month when he was stabbed to death allegedly by Semmie Lee Williams, a violent ex-felon, in a seemingly random attack.
Williams had previously tried to kill an elderly man in Georgia, throwing him in a ravine. Prosecutors in that case wanted to keep him in jail and noted that extraditing him to another state would be “just exporting a potentially violent situation to another jurisdiction.” That’s exactly what happened. Williams could have gotten 21 years in that case. He was given four years for the crime and then set loose, on probation.
Williams’ own mother had a restraining order against him. This was not a man who should have been allowed back into society.
Jacqueline Avant should be alive today. Avant was murdered during an invasion of her Beverly Hills home a few weeks ago allegedly by career criminal Aariel Maynor. Maynor was caught after he accidentally shot himself in the foot during yet another home burglary.
Maynor had previously been sentenced to five years in prison for robbery and was out
on parole when Avant was slaughtered. He had multiple other robbery charges. But he got no time at all for a domestic-violence incident in 2013. As The Post reported, “He was sentenced to probation for 36 months and was ordered to take domestic violence classes for that case.”
Davide Giri should be alive today. The Columbia University student was stabbed in the stomach in Morningside Park this month allegedly by Vincent Pinkney. Pinkney was convicted of gang assault in 2015, joining three other people in pummeling a man and repeatedly slashing him in the face on Linden Boulevard in Jamaica, Queens, two years earlier, according to a criminal complaint.
The victim needed 20 staples to close a gash on the back of his head and another 25 stitches for a large cut from his right eye to the right ear, according to the complaint.
We talk a lot about criminal-justice reform, and it has come to mean minimizing prison sentences for most people. And it’s true, some reform should indeed lessen prison terms. Some of our sentencing guidelines are far too strict. I’ve written in these pages about a friend doing a mind-boggling 25 years for insurance fraud. He was facing as many as 200 years. Drug offenses also carry far too steep sentences.
But real criminal-justice reform would also mean removing violent people from society and keeping them removed. Violence is something we can’t tolerate on our streets. Committing it should carry a far harsher sentence than selling weed or perpetrating fraud.
The problem is that “criminal-justice reform” has come to have a very narrow definition that mostly focuses on getting people out of prison. The Sentencing Project, for example, happily notes that we’ve seen “shortened excessive prison terms for violent convictions” nationally, in a paper titled “The Next Step: Ending Excessive Punishment for Violent Crimes.”
While some of group’s ideas, like “the full inclusion in society of people with criminal records” might be good, reducing sentencing for violent crime is decidedly bad. All crime is inexcusable, but violent crime is particularly ruinous for society.
In addition to all the obvious problems like injury and death to the victim, according to the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, violent crime has other repercussions: For example, “people who perceive their environment to be less safe from crime may also have higher body mass index scores and higher levels of obesity due to reduced physical activity.”
And being exposed to violence during childhood “can result in greater risk for substance use, risky sexual behavior, and unsafe driving behavior.” It’s a cascading effect.
We have a social contract, and violence destroys that contract. “Use your words,” we are taught in kindergarten. But if little Timmy keeps using his hands he gets separated from the group.
We need balance in our criminal-justice system. Saving our longest sentences for people who hurt or kill other people would send a message that a line exists and our civilization does not tolerate this behavior. We have failed to send that message for far too long.