Some crimes don't deserve a plea bargain

When I was a police officer I always hated plea bargains given to defendants, especially defendants I had arrested but I understood the reason they were used. The prosecutor gained a conviction without having to go to court plus time and money was saved by not having to have a trial. So most of the people involved in the process were happy. The county or state didn't have to worry about too many trials clogging up the justice process, the prosecutor gained another conviction to add to his campaign rhetoric and the defendant was happy because they were spared a longer sentence. Police officers were about the only ones who WEREN'T happy!

A plea-bargain story that appeared in Wednesday's edition of this newspaper bothered me a lot. It involved a 23-year-old local man that had physically assaulted his girlfriend three different times and in addition to that, had blind-sided an older man at a house party, knocking him out and causing him multiple injuries including a fractured jaw and broken ribs.

So here we have a bad guy. A criminal. A person who has no self-control. A person who does what he wants to do instead of what the rules and the laws tell him to do. This is not the occasional law abiding offender. This isn't a person who deserved a second chance because this guy had had second chances before to no avail. As a sociologist, I know he's very unlikely to change his behavior. He is who he is. He is who he learned to be. He is who he was taught to be, either intentionally or accidentally.

So after the plea bargaining is finished, he gets less than a year in jail. 300 days to be exact, minus the 89 days he's already served, plus he didn't have to pay any court costs. It sounds like a pretty sweet deal for the defendant and a pretty lousy deal for the people. This guy will be back out on the streets in seven months, most likely beating people up again, instead of tucked away in the Nebraska State Prison on a serious felony conviction where he would have had lots of time to think about where his evil ways got him.

When he was arrested the last time, investigating officers had to kick the door in to rescue the girlfriend who was being assaulted while the officers were there. They witnessed him hitting her in the head with a liquor bottle and punching her in the face with his fist. One officer said in his report that the believed the offender would have killed the victim if they hadn't of kicked in the door to save her.

So what we have here is another coward in a long line of cowards in this part of the state. They beat up women and blind-side guys who can't fight back to show their buddies how tough they are. And their buddies are likely to be similar to them.

We're not born with a conscience. We're not born knowing the difference between right and wrong. We're not born with the rules and the laws already in place in our brain. We have to learn these things which means somebody has to teach us and, unfortunately, some people don't have good teachers. This young man was not taught self-control. He didn't learn that he couldn't assault other people. He wasn't taught respect for the law or the laws themselves. And now it's too late. He is who he is and unless he has a burning desire to change his life around and make amends for his misdeeds, he'll continue down the same path he's been on.

That's partly his fault, partly the fault of the people who raised him, and partly our fault for not holding him accountable and giving him what he deserved before now.