Geophysicist who attempted to flee US after Capitol riot sentenced to 5 years in prison - eviltoast
Jeffrey Sabol was convicted of using a stolen police baton to assault a down officer on Jan. 6.
  • @sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
    6•3 months ago

    Sabol was convicted in a stipulated trial in August of obstruction of an official proceeding, robbery and assaulting a police officer with a dangerous weapon – all felonies. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop more than a dozen other counts against him.

    On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras sentenced Sabol to 63 months, or a little more than five years, in prison. He will receive credit for more than three years spent in pretrial detention following his arrest in early 2021 while attempting to flee the country.

    These sentences seem, uh, strange. I’m not really very knowledgeable about sentencing in general, but I’m pretty sure I’ve read of a lot of people getting way harsher sentences for much lesser crimes.

    • @TechNerdWizard42@lemmy.world
      4•3 months ago

      Smoke marijuana? 25 years in prison. Try to overthrow the government and murder the vice president? Best we can do is 5 years, and since time served is 3 years, actual length will be 0 (half of term minimum before release usually).

  • @PrinceWith999Enemies@lemmy.world
    5•3 months ago

    Okay, I’m not a believer of free will, and so I’m not in favor of a justice system that’s used to punish rather than rehabilitate.

    However, given the current system, it seems odd to me that they give credit (if we can call it that) for pretrial detention based on detaining the person attempting to flee. It recalls Jean Valjean, who got a tremendous amount of extra time in prison for his attempt to escape.

    On the other hand, I believe that Germany has a legal policy to not consider attempting to escape from prison a crime, because wanting freedom is a very natural state of mind and shouldn’t be criminalized. I am, not surprisingly, more in favor of Germany’s philosophy on this.

    But its examples like this that make me appreciate Robert Sapolsky’s position that it’s really challenging sometimes to have to keep your scientifically derived ethical position in mind when faced with a crime that really gets to you.

    • @JoBo@feddit.uk
      1•3 months ago

      However, given the current system, it seems odd to me that they give credit (if we can call it that) for pretrial detention based on detaining the person attempting to flee.

      The sentence is based on the crimes they were convicted of, including any aggravating factors. In this case it was a plea deal, so some charges were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea to the remainder.

      Time spent in prison on remand is counted towards any eventual custodial sentence because anything else would be outrageously unfair. Not least because the court system grinds so slow, many are held on remand for longer than any eventual sentence (assuming they’re convicted at all).