{"id":958,"date":"2009-08-24T23:51:22","date_gmt":"2009-08-25T05:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/?p=958"},"modified":"2009-08-25T00:03:35","modified_gmt":"2009-08-25T06:03:35","slug":"like-getting-15-yards-for-encroachment-and-only-5-for-unecessary-roughness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/2009\/08\/24\/like-getting-15-yards-for-encroachment-and-only-5-for-unecessary-roughness\/","title":{"rendered":"like getting 15 yards for encroachment and only 5 for unecessary roughness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-959\" title=\"hochuli\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/files\/2009\/08\/hochuli-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"hochuli\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/>A recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/ap\/article\/ALeqM5hhGEju0X4jWn3LOl69QQ53oECKjAD9A6SOD81\">AP article<\/a> by Rachel Cohen compares the sentences of\u00a0National Football League\u00a0players Plaxico Burress, Donte&#8217; Stallworth and Michael Vick.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Burress, the one-time Super Bowl star, accepted a plea bargain Thursday with a two-year prison sentence for accidentally shooting himself in the thigh at a Manhattan nightclub. The former New York Giants wide receiver pleaded guilty to one count of attempted criminal possession of a weapon&#8230; Stallworth, the Cleveland Browns receiver, served 30 days in jail for running over and killing a man while driving drunk. Vick, the former Atlanta Falcons star quarterback who recently signed with the Philadelphia Eagles, served 18 months in prison for torturing animals and running a dogfighting ring for years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Although\u00a0people\u00a0tend to rank the seriousness of crimes in roughly the same order, I&#8217;d wager that there is a higher-than-usual standard deviation around\u00a0citizens&#8217; preferred sentence lengths for these three offenses. Felony DUI manslaughter\u00a0has been very <em>lightly<\/em> punished in the United States relative to, say, Sweden; folks disagree on whether animal cruelty and gambling conspiracy should be felonies or misdemeanors; and, Mr. Burress\u00a0actually pled out to &#8220;attempted weapons possession in the second degree.&#8221;\u00a0It is hard to say whether such a crime merits two years of hard time, though I generally favor vigorous enforcement of weapons offenses.<\/p>\n<p>One can&#8217;t say for sure whether star athletes tend to get lighter sentences (ala Stallworth) or heavier sentences (ala Burress), but ol&#8217;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/sportsillustrated.cnn.com\/football\/nfl\/news\/2000\/06\/04\/lewis_agreement\/\">Ray Lewis<\/a> seems to be rolling along just fine. The <em>real<\/em> punishment, of course, will be meted out by NFL commissioner <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalfootballpost.com\/Goodells-discipline-challenge.html\">Roger Goodell<\/a>. The Commish\u00a0can just\u00a0toss a handful of grass into the air, check which way the wind is blowing, and determine whether\u00a0Messrs. Burress, Vick, and Stallworth will be\u00a0NFL princes or bounced-from-the-league paupers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recent AP article by Rachel Cohen compares the sentences of\u00a0National Football League\u00a0players Plaxico Burress, Donte&#8217; Stallworth and Michael Vick. Burress, the one-time Super Bowl star, accepted a plea bargain Thursday with a two-year prison sentence for accidentally shooting himself in the thigh at a Manhattan nightclub. The former New York Giants wide receiver pleaded [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":964,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions\/964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}