Cyntoia Brown granted clemency

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

I agree that I'm not confident she's blameless in the situation.

I also think, given the context of the crime she was convicted of, life in prison was an absurd sentence and fifteen years is much more reasonable. I find it hard to argue with granting her clemency, especially given that she was a minor.

Yep. That's why it's a good thing she was given clemency, hence my response above. She was in a horrible situation and a minor. The punishment did not fit the circumstances at all. Clemency doesn't mean she was suddenly found not guilty, just that her time served was an appropriate amount for the crime and circumstances.

I agree that life without parole is excessive punishment in this circumstance.  But I would not dismiss the family of the victim if they suggested that the amount of time served to date was too lenient. 

I found the complaints about "victim shaming" around here particularly offensive.  If the victim were your brother, or your father, you would not view Cyntoia Brown as the victim.  And she's not.  If she's a victim, it's not in this murder case. 

[Sestak]

Given she was 16 when it happened (and in a rather desparate situation, most likely), the 15 years seems enough - regardless of whether or not you consider the murder victim a child molester or not.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Given she was 16 when it happened (and in a rather desparate situation, most likely), the 15 years seems enough - regardless of whether or not you consider the murder victim a child molester or not.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

In my opinion, life sentences just plain shouldn't be an option for juveniles or minors, especially in this particular case.  If you were a teenager who was coerced into prostitution, you would do desperate things too, including possibly robbing your john when your only other source of income was your abusive pimp.  I won't try to justify the murder itself, other than to say that Brown was obviously young and scared at the time and probably didn't know what else to do in that situation.  She's not a threat to society, she's someone who was caught under a very unfortunate set of circumstances.

I believe the time she already served was more than appropriate and she's definitely someone who's earned herself a second chance at life.  Haslam made the right call here.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Wonderful news, although the amount she served is already horribly inhumane. In a civilized country, she would have done maybe 2-3 years in a juvenile correction center.

lol @ conservatives defending a statutory rapist pimp. Then again, what else would you expect from the party of Roy Moore and Brett Kavanaugh?

[fhtagn]

lol @ conservatives defending a statutory rapist pimp.

Literally no one here defended her pimp.

[pbrower2a]

I agree that I'm not confident she's blameless in the situation.

I also think, given the context of the crime she was convicted of, life in prison was an absurd sentence and fifteen years is much more reasonable. I find it hard to argue with granting her clemency, especially given that she was a minor.

yeah she was most likely guilty here for shooting and stealing but life in prison here doesn't fit the crime due to the circumstances

Anyway black civil right organizations have to choose better martyrs such as Rosa Parks vs Claudette Colvine .Botham Jean in Dallas should have been a bigger part of our country rather than some grocery robber like Mike Brown.

"Better martyrs"? She killed a child molester. That's a public service, and she's been in jail for 14 years for doing it. I can't think of a better martyr to rally around.

she told him she was 18. I don't disagree her circumstances were tough and the man was obviously guilty of statutory rape but he didn't deserve to die. 

Which is what a pimp tells an underage prostitute to do. We will never know what the victim of the shooting was up to; johns are often violent and abusive. Of course I would prefer that she had killed the pimp, the real monster in this scenario.

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If it is an armed robbery -- every armed robbery is a potential murder. Michigan has it right in giving the same sentence for armed robbery as for attempted murder: 25 to life. Occasionally an offender has an interesting back story (Mumia Jamal), and most violent offenders have a tragic upbringing. People must rebel against abusive parents by stopping the cycle and not by turning the abuse onto innocent people. 

We need remember that self-defense is often consummately violent. We are on no higher moral plane than bears protecting themselves, let alone mother bears protecting their young. But life- and-death situations bring out the worst in human nature because they bring out the most animalistic tendencies in us all. We reasonably try to avoid those situations, and even in warfare we have rules of engagement.

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I do not know the story, but I can say this of police brutality: anyone who threatens a police officer can reasonably expect a brutal response. Police self-defense is police brutality, and often the consummate brutality -- death by gunfire. The question is not police brutality; it is whether the police brutality has justification. Cops wearing body armor make it far less likely that someone who pulls a gun on a cop will survive. The cop gets the advantage of reaction time, and the crook who shoots the cop ineffectively in the chest or the one who starts aiming for the cop's head will be killed .

If you wonder why there are fewer capital murder cases, it is because one of the most likely scenarios that gets someone the death penalty has been the murder of a police officer. Pull a gun on a cop, and the legal system may never refer one to Death Row. Twenty years on Death Row with a cop dead or the cop surviving and a would-be killer dead? I'll take the latter anytime. 

[GMantis]

In my opinion, life sentences just plain shouldn't be an option for juveniles or minors, especially in this particular case.  If you were a teenager who was coerced into prostitution, you would do desperate things too, including possibly robbing your john when your only other source of income was your abusive pimp.  I won't try to justify the murder itself, other than to say that Brown was obviously young and scared at the time and probably didn't know what else to do in that situation.  She's not a threat to society, she's someone who was caught under a very unfortunate set of circumstances.

I believe the time she already served was more than appropriate and she's definitely someone who's earned herself a second chance at life.  Haslam made the right call here.

It's better not to generalize. There are plenty of juvenile murders who richly deserve a life sentence. Though I agree that this is not the case here. To add to the other mitigating evidence, she was apparently affected by a mental illness (Fetal alcohol syndrome).

[Famous Mortimer]

I agree that I'm not confident she's blameless in the situation.

I also think, given the context of the crime she was convicted of, life in prison was an absurd sentence and fifteen years is much more reasonable. I find it hard to argue with granting her clemency, especially given that she was a minor.

yeah she was most likely guilty here for shooting and stealing but life in prison here doesn't fit the crime due to the circumstances

Anyway black civil right organizations have to choose better martyrs such as Rosa Parks vs Claudette Colvine .Botham Jean in Dallas should have been a bigger part of our country rather than some grocery robber like Mike Brown.

"Better martyrs"? She killed a child molester. That's a public service, and she's been in jail for 14 years for doing it. I can't think of a better martyr to rally around.

Having sex with a 16 year old isn't even a crime in most states. Let alone deserving of the death penalty.

[dead0man]

good news

[lfromnj]

I agree that I'm not confident she's blameless in the situation.

I also think, given the context of the crime she was convicted of, life in prison was an absurd sentence and fifteen years is much more reasonable. I find it hard to argue with granting her clemency, especially given that she was a minor.

yeah she was most likely guilty here for shooting and stealing but life in prison here doesn't fit the crime due to the circumstances

Anyway black civil right organizations have to choose better martyrs such as Rosa Parks vs Claudette Colvine .Botham Jean in Dallas should have been a bigger part of our country rather than some grocery robber like Mike Brown.

"Better martyrs"? She killed a child molester. That's a public service, and she's been in jail for 14 years for doing it. I can't think of a better martyr to rally around.

she told him she was 18. I don't disagree her circumstances were tough and the man was obviously guilty of statutory rape but he didn't deserve to die. 

Which is what a pimp tells an underage prostitute to do. We will never know what the victim of the shooting was up to; johns are often violent and abusive. Of course I would prefer that she had killed the pimp, the real monster in this scenario.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

If it is an armed robbery -- every armed robbery is a potential murder. Michigan has it right in giving the same sentence for armed robbery as for attempted murder: 25 to life. Occasionally an offender has an interesting back story (Mumia Jamal), and most violent offenders have a tragic upbringing. People must rebel against abusive parents by stopping the cycle and not by turning the abuse onto innocent people. 

We need remember that self-defense is often consummately violent. We are on no higher moral plane than bears protecting themselves, let alone mother bears protecting their young. But life- and-death situations bring out the worst in human nature because they bring out the most animalistic tendencies in us all. We reasonably try to avoid those situations, and even in warfare we have rules of engagement.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I do not know the story, but I can say this of police brutality: anyone who threatens a police officer can reasonably expect a brutal response. Police self-defense is police brutality, and often the consummate brutality -- death by gunfire. The question is not police brutality; it is whether the police brutality has justification. Cops wearing body armor make it far less likely that someone who pulls a gun on a cop will survive. The cop gets the advantage of reaction time, and the crook who shoots the cop ineffectively in the chest or the one who starts aiming for the cop's head will be killed .

If you wonder why there are fewer capital murder cases, it is because one of the most likely scenarios that gets someone the death penalty has been the murder of a police officer. Pull a gun on a cop, and the legal system may never refer one to Death Row. Twenty years on Death Row with a cop dead or the cop surviving and a would-be killer dead? I'll take the latter anytime. 

the dallas cop literally walked in drunk into a black mans house, with a door mat warning it was a different house, and saw a scary black man and shot him.

Absolutely one of the most disgusting things I ever saw but I hope the cop is found innocent so true change with police brutality can start to happen.

[Flyersfan232]

It's not victim blaming, the so-called "victim" in this case was a sexual predator. 15 years is a fair amount of time for the crime committed.

the crime was murder though.

[Bojack Horseman]

It's not victim blaming, the so-called "victim" in this case was a sexual predator. 15 years is a fair amount of time for the crime committed.

the crime was murder though.

Let's be real here, if the races were reversed then she'd be an NRA/right wing hero.

[Famous Mortimer]

It's not victim blaming, the so-called "victim" in this case was a sexual predator. 15 years is a fair amount of time for the crime committed.

the crime was murder though.

Let's be real here, if the races were reversed then she'd be an NRA/right wing hero.

If the races were reversed, she'd still be in jail because there would have been no media campaign to get her out.

[PSOL]

She has suffered enough and has done her time. It was ludicrous though to have jailed a minor sex trafficking victim for that long, surely her situation deserved some thought to her background. Well, glad she is free.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

She has suffered enough and has done her time. It was ludicrous though to have jailed a minor sex trafficking victim for that long, surely her situation deserved some thought to her background. Well, glad she is free.

I am curious what you, and many others, would say to the family of the murdered man here.  The actual victim, not the faux victim.

[PSOL]

She has suffered enough and has done her time. It was ludicrous though to have jailed a minor sex trafficking victim for that long, surely her situation deserved some thought to her background. Well, glad she is free.

I am curious what you, and many others, would say to the family of the murdered man here.  The actual victim, not the faux victim.

She was an abused, stressed out person who snapped under pressure, that should be enough to use as pretext for concluding she wasn’t in her right mind at the time of the murder. I feel bad for any loss dealt to friends and family, but punishing an abused girl won’t make the situation right.

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

Good. Should have happened years ago.

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

PS, There's another case in TN where  Kimberly Cunningham, a white woman killed her daughters alleged rapist and received very little jailtime.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

She has suffered enough and has done her time. It was ludicrous though to have jailed a minor sex trafficking victim for that long, surely her situation deserved some thought to her background. Well, glad she is free.

I am curious what you, and many others, would say to the family of the murdered man here.  The actual victim, not the faux victim.

She was an abused, stressed out person who snapped under pressure, that should be enough to use as pretext for concluding she wasn’t in her right mind at the time of the murder. I feel bad for any loss dealt to friends and family, but punishing an abused girl won’t make the situation right.

Restitution is only one aspect of the criminal justice system.  Deterrence is another.  

Punishing an abused girl who commits a murder with a long prison sentence WILL deter other abused girls from killing others because a history of past abuse does not necessarily mean one lacks the ability to weigh consequences, even under emotional stress.

I would also ask you what retribution the family of the victim in this case is entitled to?  

The victim's family has a legitimate grievance in the fact that the narrative of this case has become all about Poor Cyntoia Brown to the point where the victim is being treated as if he were the perpetrator.  That narrative was resoundingly disproved at trial; he was killed when he was sleeping.  Yet now, it's being dredged up again.  I'm not one who believes in promising "closure" to the families of murder victims, but this case has taken turns to where the family's wounds have been ripped open again, and no one cares.  All the caring is for Cyntoia Brown, and, quite frankly, THAT'S not right.

Again:  I concur in the result about this.  I don't believe minors should be sentenced to life without parole, and I do believe that there are mitigating factors here.  But Cyntoia Brown, victim that she is, is also a perpetrator and an HP.  If we're going to commute her sentence, that's fine, but it's one of the right things to do that one should not feel good about.