Remember that "innocent until proven guilty" thing. All the evidence in the case can point right to them without a shadow of a doubt, but until a judge slams the gavel down, punitive measures are completely out of line except where a clear and present danger to the community can be demonstrated.

Yeah, its sicker than heck that these people beat a girl to death, but unless someone can demonstrate that they're likely to off someone else in the interim, or will most certainly be a flight risk, then the law defines withholding bail completely to be unconstitutional.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

It is my impression that bail is set depending on income, with the intent to make it possible for the accused to raise the amount so they don't take up jail space until they're actually found guilty, but it will hurt them too much to stay away from trial and forfeit the money.

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"God bless thee, my son; I will give thee the greatest jewel I have ...
"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Wow, I've missed a lot here. (Reminds me of my days at the firing range, but that's a different story. Sorry Sgt. Squarjaw, we wish you a speedy recovery).

I hate missing out on a criminal-justice-related debate Oh well, I don't want to re-ignite the thread. I guess I'll just take this space to state how that, even when emotions flare like in this thread, the result is the reason I love BAUT. It's people talking about many different sides of real issues, that so often go ignored (at least in my typical day-to-day conversations). No one is ever going to say something that everyone agrees with (everyone, feel free to agree with that just to prove me wrong ). But I find it refreshing when more than one side of a given topic is represented.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

That's part of it, yes. Obviously, the seriousness of the charges and more or less likely a person is to flee from said charges is a factor. As a judge, I'd imagine you'd have to be carefull however. If you set a rediculously high bail for someone like, say, our favorite hotel heiress just because you know she is rich; then a crafty lawyer might have a shot at arguing his client is not recieving fair and impartial judgement.

IIRC, most non-murder related offenses have maximum limits for bail, but I could be mistaken.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

I most vigorously, strenuously and vehemently disagree.

But that's just wrong.

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"God bless thee, my son; I will give thee the greatest jewel I have ...
"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

I agree with your agreement to disagree!

(Wait, I'm confused...)

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I disagree with your agreement to disagree.

Well, obviously all of you, guys, defined Bail well.

Thanks for enlightening.

I'm not saying let these frankly sick people go their merry way in the world. In fact, they SHOULD answer for their actions. For one thing, right after getting charged, the first thing the AG office ought to do is do brain scans on these people (with PET, MRI, EEG, or whatever). The findings can be used as evidence for either side.

If the abuser is able to know it's wrong, then he should be sentenced to the maximum allowed by law for such heinous treatment of children. If he clearly cannot see that burning those girl's wrists (from p 1 or 2) is wrong, then he should be confined to a mental institution.

Regardless, child abusers clearly have emotional, mental, psychological issues.

WRT filrabat's post;
I don't agree that any kind of brain scan would reveal any evidence of anything, but...
The real purpose of the criminal justice system is (or rather, should be) to remove a harmful element from society. Is the pain of losing your child enough to keep you from ever being a bad parent again? Possibly. But remember, not everyone has the same moral values, or cares enough to change. How do you make that determination? Remember, parent's aren't always prosecuted; it's a decesion by the AG, and ultimately by jury.

Take the bath-tub incident, for example.
If released without any sort of prison term, would this woman be a danger to her remaining children? I don't know. You can't know either; the optimist in me would like to say that no, she would not be. She learned her lesson, albeit tragically. But none of us know her, so how can we be sure? What are the mitigating circumstances? Just because they weren't reported in the media, doesn't mean there's not more to the case. Again, it's the AG that decides whether or not to prosecute, and then a jury that decides if there is reason for a trial. We are not always (rather, most often) not privy to the information used in making those determinations.

Not every parent gets jail time for their child's tragic death. Don't fall into the trap that "the article says it was just a woman who made one mistake". Could she have been? Yes. Are we garunteed all the facts, and the whole, unbiased story? No. Remember, the media writes their articles specifically to illicit the maximum ammount of reader emotions, because that translates dirrectly into the media outlet's profit/popularity.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

Another drowned baby...
Toddler drowns while father wraps Christmas presents

New twist...the family was already being inspected by children's services for being inattentive to thier children.

The parents are not being charged, and there's question on whether children's services could have done more.

Now; the $64,000 question is... What exactly did children's service do?

I'm sure (I hope) the parents were instructed or otherwise alerted to the dangers as of the first call.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

A twist that hasn't been brought up yet, is that receiving punishment for something the person did, can sometimes make the guilt for doing it bearable.
Punishing a negligent parent may actually make their life bearable afterwards.

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"God bless thee, my son; I will give thee the greatest jewel I have ...
"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Interesting theory Henrik, and I'm sure in some/many/few (hard to say) cases you would be right. Problem is, people are different. But we've also decided to be fair, the system should be uniform for all people. Two contradictory components, if you ask me.

So what's a better way to ensure equal treatment for unequal situations? If I knew that I'd be running for office somewhere.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

Reading that news article makes me think , parents, people are really different. No matter how we say what should be and what shouldn't a parent do , these things happen. It's heartbreaking for the toddler but at the same time anger felt to the guilty parent.

I remember a song and it words " I'm only human , born to make mistakes". It sounds silly but it's true . A re-phrase of the song would be instead of "born" it should be " prone". We are all not perfect , and indeed we make mistakes in our lifes , and sometimes , these mistakes are fatal.

And so Chidrens Services , Social Welfares, Lawyers , etc enters the picture. To help , to support , to correct and to punish.

It's all part of the system we live in.

It is all part of the system that we have created.

Reading that article, I really don't see any difference from the other story. Now if the toddler wandered off down the street and fell in a pool, I can see tragic accident, but he put the kid in the bath and walked away to wrap presents. No difference.

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A Nerd can figure out how long it will take the original Enterprise traveling at warp 6.5 to travel from Regulus to Antares.
A Geek will think he can use that to pick up a girl in a bar.
A Dork knows he can't pick up the girl with it, but will hang around for hours anyway, just in case she asks.
She might. You never know.

Quite a few differences actually.

He plopped the child in the tub COMPLETELY alone- the other child was not alone.

He turned on Loud Music- the other parent was listening to the sounds...

No, they are quite very different.

I would slap this guy like he was a <poodle> and kick his <packmule> until his shoulders were level with his knees. Then invite the arresting officer to take custody of him.