Poster children for M11? Why? Because, otherwise, you're pretty sure a judge with a little judicial discretion would consider the wild, violent crime spree against myriad victims and give these guys a slap on the wrist? I feel like that probably wouldn't happen...

Before I read the story, I thought you were referring to a couple guys wearing McCain buttons in Portland.

Yo, I'm kidding!

I thought Bog was a lawyer, not a reactionary vigilante (... not really).

I never figured out why taking away discretion from judges was a good thing. If you think a particular judge is too "librul" then deal with that problem instead of trying to sentence from the ballot box.

As for the title of Bog's post, since when did assault and robbery qualify for life in prison?

It has not only protected innocent people from violent criminals, and given victims real justice, but has also given people considering committing serious crimes something to think about.

Yeah, those jerks were really thinking...

Why is it so easy to get all medieval over these thugs while giving the war criminals who are running this country into the ground a free pass?

EBT, M11 was passed exactly because the judges were to "librul" in their sentencing. The public did deal with the judges in the best way available to them, mandated sentences. You got to remember there isn't to much the public can do to a judge other then vote them out at election time and the incumbent rarely loses.

OK those punks otta go to jail for a long time just to protect the rest of us. However, let's remember that "jail" is now an industry proffered by the hotel chains and others as a money making 'business', with powerful lobbing interests at most levels of government which promote and defend long mandatory jail terms, so that they can make even more money off us happless taxpayers.
If we spent more money, time, and effort on teachers, schools and job training programs, as well as drug rehab programs in and out of prisons, that could be a first step to a more civilized society.

Of course this guy (if guilty) will not do life or anything close to that. I have to admit my initial reaction was also one of anger and to see any offenders captured for this sentenced to many years of prison if convicted.

I don't think M11 deters criminals at all from doing their deeds, but I still support M11. EBT is right in believing these jerks are not giving the consequences of their actions any consideration. However, M11 does keep violent offenders in longer so they are not committing more violent crimes. That is why violent crime is down in Oregon.

Unfortunately there is no hope for reform in Oregon prisons. I applaud the local cops and DA's for supporting early education and intervention as publicized yesterday in the news. I also continue to support M11 for acts such as these.

SP says,

",,,a judge,,would give,, these guys a slap on the wrist? I feel like that probably wouldn't happen..."

Well there you go. The poster child for M11 oppostion.

As along as they "feel" the judges would be handing out adequate sentences there's no need for M11.

Fortunately there's things called facts, data, and statistics showing tremednous success of M11 preventing all sorts of violent crimes.
It's not opinion or a close call, but an impressive absolute success story.

http://www.crimevictimsunited.org/measure11/index.htm

EBT, maybe you'd stop feeling sorry for these worthless thugs if you were one of their victims. I support zero-tolerance for scum like these four criminals. Lock 'em up for life; they will be a drain on society for life, but at least in prison they can only victimize each other.

Well, the best way to deal with M11 sentencing is not to break the law.

It appears that all of these guys will turn out to be illegal aliens too. If that is the case, it is really not prudent to lock them up for life and have the tax payers of Oregon pay for it all. Heaven forbid if they get sick like one did a couple of years ago and needed a kidney transplant for which we would also be stuck with. The best solution for these guys is one to five, after which the DHS deports them. If they come back (they will get caught sooner or later as they are not rocket scientists), then they will be serving time in a federal pen, which at least the State of Oregon won’t be funding. Yes, I am aware that we pay federal taxes too, but that cost is more indirect than Oregon prison dollars competing with Oregon education dollars.

It appears that all of these guys will turn out to be illegal aliens too.

And you think this because the truck may have Texas license plates? Are folks from other states illegal aliens now?

Thank god it's legal for those who wish to take responsibility for their personal safety and arm themselves to do so. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

The Death of Due Process, By Peter Brimelow, Forbes Magazine, 12.11.00

"THE LEFT IS RIGHT: AMERICA IS AN UNJUST SOCIETY." Startling words to come from Paul Craig Roberts, 61, an architect (as assistant secretary of the Treasury) of the Reagan tax-cut revolution and now a syndicated columnist [Creators Syndicate ... you've seen his columns featured in all 'Great Republican Newspapers of the West' ... no?] and chairman of the Institute for Political Economy. But he's not talking about discrimination or the unequal distribution of wealth. The problem, he says, is this: "Americans are no longer secure in law - the justice system no longer seeks truth and prosecutors are untroubled by wrongful convictions."

Recently, with coauthor Lawrence M. Stratton, a lawyer, Roberts published The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice ....

You get an idea of what is going on when you see a newspaper story about a crime (often a white-collar crime) in which there is a detail like this: "If convicted on all counts, so-and-so would be subject to a sentence of 120 years." It seems that every misdeed becomes, in the statute books, a panoply of offenses like money laundering and racketeering. By throwing a large statute book at a defendant, the prosecutor can blackmail the culprit (or an innocent person) into a plea bargain. In the old days punishments were harsh, but they were not arbitrary. You could be hanged for stealing a sheep, but you would not also be charged with conspiracy to commit sheep stealing, willful evasion of taxes on stolen sheep and diminishing the civil rights of the sheep owner.

This erosion of Americans' historic protections has already caused some public scandal. The spectacle of innocents losing homes, boats and other property because tenants, customers and even passersby were using drugs ....

Roberts himself got interested when he began writing columns about the Wenatchee, Wash. child sex-abuse case, one of several curious Salem-witch-trial episodes in which numbers of adults have been convicted on the word of children seized and coaxed by investigators into testifying to imagined events.

What we have at work is an unholy alliance between business-hating liberals and crime-hating social conservatives.

Washington lawyer Clark Clifford, then in his 80s, was indicted by the federal government in New York ... his credit card was rejected when he tried to pay the chauffeur who drove him to the airport on his way back to Washington, D.C. The case against Clifford was dropped when his partner was acquitted. [Editor's perogative: My favorite Clifford quote re: WashDC federal 'government' -- "There are no secrets in this town. The best you can hope for is a two-hour head start."] ... Exxon Corp. faced cleanup costs and civil tort damages after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but it was also indicted for intentionally killing migratory birds without a hunting license and dumping refuse without a permit. This "novel theory" allowed the Bush Administration Justice Department to bring criminal charges, which carry massively higher penalties. "Despite the absurdity of the charges," notes Roberts, "Exxon lacked the confidence in our crumbling justice system to go to trial." It settled for a $125 million fine.

The conservative establishment has greeted Robert's apostasy with a stricken silence. His book has not yet been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal or National Review magazine, despite his long connection with both. Still, conservatives in the field do concede that Roberts has a point, while disputing other aspects of his analysis. "This is something that must eventually surface as an issue with conservatives," says Walter Olson, editor of Overlawyered.com, a legal-reform Web site. "He's right that criminal law, in certain narrow areas, has been made a vehicle for extortion," says Edwin R. Jagels ....

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Wikipedia: Paul Craig Roberts ... an economist and a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as the "Father of Reaganomics". He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service. He is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology and he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He was a post-graduate at the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists in the United States.

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$2M Settlement Is a Cop Wakeup Call, by Juan Gonzalez, August 21, 2008 by the New York Daily News.

Around 8 a.m. on the morning of April 7, 2003, Sarah Kunstler, daughter of legendary civil rights lawyer Bill Kunstler, joined a small protest in Manhattan against the fledgling Iraq war. "I was in law school at Columbia at the time," Sarah Kunstler recalled Tuesday. "I had my knapsack and books with me, and I thought the demonstration was early enough so I'd be able to get to class on time." She thought wrong.

Kunstler hadn't counted on the ironfisted crowd-control tactics the NYPD had begun to adopt, tactics the department would later employ in even more shocking mass arrests at the Republican convention in 2004. [This would be a NYPD 'tactical' paradigm promoted, (as prepared there and then), through the Manhattan offices of federal District Attorneys such as John Kroger, who stands now on our Nov. ballots to be elected D.A. to engineer Oregon's 'law enforcement' paradigm, would it not? Or has he openly repudiated NYPD lawlessness, for some familiarity of it informing (his) new-found contempt?]

... walking in a picket line outside the offices of The Carlyle Group, a major war contractor. "After about half an hour we were surrounded by cops in riot gear," she said. "I'd never seen that kind of response ...." Police immediately cordoned off the street and allowed no one to enter or leave. Then, without any announcement, they started arresting all the protesters on trumped-up charges.

Unfortunately for the city, the NYPD videotape of the scene that day left no doubt that most of those arrested were law-abiding, and that police never gave anyone an order or chance to disperse.

... all of which came to light as part of a 2004 federal civil rights suit that the Bloomberg administration finally agreed to settle Tuesday for $2million. Susan Halatyn, of the city's Law Department, said the city agreed to the $2 million settlement "rather than incur additional costs with a lengthy trial." [Or agreed out-of-court because NY cops are provably unlawful?]

The lesson is simple: In the United States of America, you don't arrest people simply because they assemble to protest government policy. You can do that in China or Pakistan or some other authoritarian state ...,

It should serve as a wakeup call to police departments across the country, especially those in Denver and St. Paul that are preparing to confront new anti-war protests at the Democratic and Republican conventions. "I hear the police in Denver and St. Paul have the NYPD advising them," (Kunstler) said. "I hope they learn ...."

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Learn what? That lawless thug 'law enforcement' making public riot and violent injury of persons, then can extort (the police employers) City Taxpayers to pay MILLIONS dollar 'bailout of cops' and restitutions for police crimes? ... and not instead take penalties against police out of the police pension funds?

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... Vdare.COM/roberts/070123_swat.htm ...

'Drug War' Has Militarized Your Local Police, By Paul Craig Roberts, January 23, 2007

Memo-to-self prerogative: Learn to spell 'prerogative.'