Discussion Forums

The principal suspect in last Saturday's masacre in Puerto Rico, Alexis Candelario, had been recently released from prison after serving five years of a 12-year sentence for five counts of first -degree murder. That amounts to one year for each of the murders! He is out on parole, although now, he faces a count of parole violation for the seven murders he committed last Saturday (plus 20 wounded).

Our lenient judges should learn a lesson from this: Give a violent criminal a short sentence, and you place many innocent people at risk.

I don't disagree, except that one should take into account the fact that the drug trade generates most of the murders nowadays. Add to the people left to rot anyone who introduces a person into drug use. It's the same as murder, only slower.

A fair summary sentence for anyone caught selling drugs should be to force him to consume all the drugs he gets caught selling all in one shot. Get caught selling a lot, die of an OD. Get caught selling little, feel the pain you have caused.

Well, if the kid got scared out of the drug trade, it was money well spent. Stories abound in my neighborhood of kids turning others in is exchange for lenient sentences. Unfortunately, most end with the informant murdered shortly thereafter. There is no honor amongst drug dealers, only retaliation.

Selling pot has killed infinitely more people than smoking it. One of my neighbors caught her son selling pot after school one day. She tried to get him out of that trap, but the allure of easy money was too tempting for a 15 yr old kid. He lived to be 17. A rival drug peddler shot him dead while claiming "the corner" as his.

<<<Well, if the kid got scared out of the drug trade, it was money well spent.>>>

He never considered it. He was hounded into it by someone else who needed to turn someone in. Finally, he said, "ok, I'll get you some weed." He's facing a felony conviction. It's poor police work and a bastardization of our justice system.

I'm sorry but pot should just be legalized. In California, they'd have looked the other way. This was all about a detective and DA trying to bolster their arrest and conviction rates.

"The idea behind decriminalization is that is removes the traffickers from the equation thereby eliminating the violence generated by them similar to the repeal of alcohol prohibition removing the criminal element from the trade of spirits. "

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. I bought $5.00 a pint moonshine in Oklahoma when it was the last dry state. You had to go around to the back of a little white house, drive up and blow your horn. The law enforcers were receiving 20% of everything sold. Every cab driver in the United States had a dozen half pints under their front seat and could take you to someone who would sell you a 12 bottle case in ten minutes.

The same concept went on after hours in states which had repealed prohibition for at least twenty more years...especially in the south.

"I always knew you were an alchie.."

Ol' CyberPsychic strikes again!

<<<What you narrate is an open-and-shut case of entrapment that would not last ten minutes in a court of law. I hope these are the facts, for this kid's sake. If not, he has some trouble ahead.>>>

It is, of course, possible I'm not getting the complete story. However, I've read it's very difficult to be acquitted using an entrapment defense in PA. In this case, just the fact the kid was known to smoke pot may be enough to counter an entrapment defense.