Why was cop killer paroled?

[WhiteFeather]

Read the blame game, to many to quotes. We really need to revamp the criminal justice system and stop this catch and release policy.

Gun owners have been demanding more jail time for violent repeat offenders for years. What is P.C. version/solution? Past another gun law that won't be enforced any more than the rest. Where is the holding accountable of the people that let these plea deal / bad guys off?

Read the sad facts here about the lack of holding these violent criminals accountable for their crimes in report.

PA Firearms Laws & PA Commission on Sentencing Reports
http://acslpa.org/n-legislative/pa_p...egislation.htm


http://www.philly.com/inquirer/onlin.../49536667.html

09/26/08 Why was killer paroled?

Gov. Rendell yesterday said he had ordered a review of the circumstances leading to the parole of Daniel Giddings, the convicted violent criminal who gunned down Officer Patrick McDonald only weeks after being released from prison.

"We are looking at it to see if it was a bad judgment call," Rendell said.

Giddings' release outraged Mayor Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, who have demanded an inquiry of the state Board of Probation and Parole.

Giddings, 27, was released Aug. 18 from Frackville maximum-security prison after serving 10 years of a 6- to 12-year sentence for robbery and aggravated assault.

On Tuesday, Giddings killed the 30-year-old patrolman after a traffic stop, firing the fatal shots with an illegal .45-caliber semiautomatic as he stood over the prone officer. Police shot and killed Giddings as he attempted to flee.

District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham yesterday blamed retired Common Pleas Court Judge Lynn B. Hamlin, who sentenced Giddings to the minimum mandatory sentence in 2000, despite a prosecutor's plea that Giddings had amassed an appalling juvenile record and seemed likely to reoffend.

"The anger and pointing finger should go back to Judge Hamlin," Abraham said at a news conference.

Hamlin, 62, a former prosecutor who stepped down from the bench in 2002, could not be reached yesterday. A woman who answered the phone at her Haverford home said Hamlin was out of town.

More details about Giddings emerged yesterday as officials scrambled to explain how someone who was first charged with a violent crime at age 10 was able to move in and out of institutions most of his life, and was ultimately granted parole.

Catherine C. McVey, chairwoman of the state parole board, said in a statement yesterday that the board's decision was "based on all of the facts before us at that time. "

She noted that the board had denied parole to Giddings twice previously "based on both the nature of the crimes that he committed and due to his poor behavior in the early years in his incarceration. "

Giddings "had undergone extensive counseling and academic instruction" in prison after 2006, she added.

McVey declined to answer questions, saying she would have more to say after the review ordered by Rendell. But she extended the board's sympathies to the families of McDonald and Officer Richard Bowes, 36, who was shot and wounded before he killed Giddings.

"Our thoughts and our prayers are with the families of these heroic officers," she said.

Bowes is recovering at Temple University Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition with a leg wound. McDonald's funeral was scheduled for Tuesday.

Last night, federal authorities charged a South Carolina man with illegally buying the .45-caliber Taurus pistol that Giddings used to kill McDonald. Jason Mack, 29, was arrested without incident by agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Columbia, S.C., said John Hageman, bureau spokesman in Philadelphia.

Mack, who was accused of lying on a federal form when he bought the gun from a dealer, was being held in Columbia pending an arraignment. Federal agents said their investigation into how the pistol got from South Carolina into Giddings' hands was continuing.

Giddings' criminal history and his record as an inmate are undergoing intensive reexamination.

Susan McNaughton, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, said Giddings was bounced from Rockview to Albion - two medium-security facilities - before landing at maximum-security Frackville.

She said Giddings was found guilty of 13 misconduct charges between 2001 and 2006, including stealing from cellmates, assault, passing sharpened metal objects to another inmate, and other offenses.

As punishment, Giddings served 498 days in restricted housing - a jail within a jail sometimes called "the hole" or solitary, she said.

"A lot of this happened in the beginning," she said. Giddings served four years more than the minimum sentence largely because of his misbehavior.

In his final two years in prison, Giddings enrolled in a drug and alcohol group, participated in group counseling, and took courses in anger management, citizenship, violence prevention, victim awareness and parenting (Giddings fathered three children before he was jailed at age 17).

"You have to look at his overall situation," said McNaughton. "The fact that he was misconduct-free for the last couple of years was good, and he had completed a lot of programs. "

Giddings absconded from a Philadelphia halfway house a week after his release on Aug. 18, and a bench warrant for his arrest was issued. On Aug. 27, he got into a fierce tussle with police officers who stopped him in a car that they later discovered was stolen. Giddings escaped.

Rendell noted yesterday that offenders such as Giddings eventually get released.

"This person and people like him do get released back on the street, whether it is 10 years or 12 years," Rendell said. "Obviously, if it was 12 years, Officer McDonald would be alive today. But violent criminals that are sentenced to non-life sentences will get out. And that's a reality that we have to confront. "

But if Judge Hamlin had followed the prosecution's recommendation in 2000, Giddings would have been in prison until at least 2020.

Assistant District Attorney Joseph Coolican portrayed Giddings, then 19, as already beyond repair and asked for the maximum: 22 1/2 to 45 years.

"From what I have seen in the four years of prosecuting violent crime, I have never seen an individual who presents a higher risk of reoffending," Coolican told the court.

Hamlin, nevertheless, sentenced him to the mandatory minimum: 6 to 12 years.

Abraham yesterday said the judge gave Giddings "a low-ball sentence when she could have given him enough prison sentence that he would have been prevented from hurting anyone. "

I forgot its always the gun fault and the need for more gun control laws to deal with these repeat violent criminals. - NOT!

[stephpd]

Looks like typical political 'kick the can'. Rendell says they'll eventually get out. Parole board says he's been good for a couple of years so all the crimes he committed while in jail, as well as those before these, justify early parole. WTF?

Prosecutor blames judge. Judge can't be reached for comment.

[shefearsnothing]

It's cheaper for these guys to be on parole...

I'm not justifying it by any means. A bullet is cheaper then housing murderers but that's just me. Of course, I'm FOR the death penalty. (yeah I know the guy in this article wasn't initially in for murder).

I think we need to revamp the whole system and stop taking shit from criminals. Look at how other countries handle theft...lose your hand. I bet they don't have too much trouble with people stealing, now do they? Yeah yeah, cruel and unusual. By whose standards? How many other countries tolerate the crap that we tolerate (especially from violent offenders)? WE have become the "unusual" when it comes to punishment with how lax we are. It's downright cruel to the rest of society to force the rest of us to cohabitate with these animals.

[imperialism2024]

It's cheaper for these guys to be on parole...

I'm not justifying it by any means. A bullet is cheaper then housing murderers but that's just me. Of course, I'm FOR the death penalty. (yeah I know the guy in this article wasn't initially in for murder).

I think we need to revamp the whole system and stop taking shit from criminals. Look at how other countries handle theft...lose your hand. I bet they don't have too much trouble with people stealing, now do they? Yeah yeah, cruel and unusual. By whose standards? How many other countries tolerate the crap that we tolerate (especially from violent offenders)? WE have become the "unusual" when it comes to punishment with how lax we are. It's downright cruel to the rest of society to force the rest of us to cohabitate with these animals.

If our country were able to give up on the ridiculous "War on Drugs", in addition to the people directly made non-criminal (by virtue of the fact that what they do/did is no longer illegal), we would reduce other crime indirectly by eliminating or reducing the influence of gangs and the other undesirable effects of an enormous black market. Cutting out that large chunk of crime would free up more than enough resources to tackle the rest of crime in this country.

Or we could start hacking off peoples' limbs and giving government the ability to kill people arbitrarily, justifying it as being "not any worse" as the countries we're willing to invade and bomb to change their ways.


You can probably figure out which choice I support. I'll start entertaining a serious discussion of how to fix our criminal justice system once we eradicate our obsession with exclusively prosecuting malum prohibitum "crimes" in this country. Until then, we may as well be discussing which noose is best to use to hang ourselves.

[kpw]

If our country were able to give up on the ridiculous "War on Drugs", in addition to the people directly made non-criminal (by virtue of the fact that what they do/did is no longer illegal), we would reduce other crime indirectly by eliminating or reducing the influence of gangs and the other undesirable effects of an enormous black market. Cutting out that large chunk of crime would free up more than enough resources to tackle the rest of crime in this country.

I don't see how legalizing drugs would significantly reduce crime. It would make the use and possession of drugs legal but they still have to buy them. Most hardcore drug users are not productive members of society. They tend to steal & rob to support their habit and that wouldn't change because drugs are legalized. As for working and raising a family. Not hardly. Many end up on disablility because they can't work so we foot the bill. The families suffer because any money that does come in goes for drugs, not food, clothing or utilities. Most OCY cases around here involve children with parents that are addicts. Legalizing their habit wouldn't solve any of that and may just make it worse.

As for the scumbag discussed above, society would be far better off without him. I'd like the government and the people to get tougher with criminals like him. He's earned a place in the holding pen at the slaughterhouse.