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The high cost of complaining

By Jonathan Simon

Some say that government is remaking itself in manner of the private sector when it comes to being highly responsive to the citizen being "served". If so, the model clearly does not fit well in the criminal courts, at least not for the accused. In California this week a judge sentenced man to over a millenium in prison (1,330 years to be precise) for 11 felony counts of lewd acts with a child (he had molested several girls between 1999 and 2005). While his sentence was made longer through the use of multiple victim enhancements that are part of the armory of recidivist laws prosecutors have available, perhaps his most costly "crime" was his behavior in court.

According to radio station KTLA, as reprinted in the LATimes:

Today a judge sentenced Williams to a record-breaking, 1,330-year prison term after the defendant verbally attacked the credibility of his former attorney, the prosecutor and the judge.
Williams, whose emotional displays ranged from pounding on the table to crying, spent more than 15 minutes criticizing the way his trial was handled.

Full post as published by Berkeley Jurisprude on July 01, 2008 (boomark / email).