Common Sense Political Thought

On September 2, 2002, Dr. McIntosh was escorting the 23-year-old neice of a friend around the Penn community; the tour turned into a series of visits to bars in the University City area, and, in the end, Dr. McIntosh raped the woman in his office at the university. Dr. McIntosh pleaded no contest to sexual assault in March of 2004.

Common Pleas Court Judge Rayford A. Means then sentenced Dr. McIntosh to 11½ to 23 months . . . of house arrest!

I wrote last March:

Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham announced on Monday, 21 March 2005, that she would appeal Common Pleas Court Judge Raymond Means decision to sentence Dr. Tracy McIntosh to one year of house arrest instead of prison for sexual assault. (See A slap on the wrist.) The former University of Pennsylvania professor and director of Penn’s Head Injury Research Center had pleaded no contest to the sexual assault of a 23-year-old student, in which he had gotten her drunk, used what prosecutors claimed was a veterinary sedative and then gave her marijuana for the nausea she suffered, and then raped her. The District Attorney had requested a sentence of 5 ½ to 11 years in prison; Judge Means sentenced Dr. McIntosh to one year of house arrest, followed by 12 years of probation, 1,000 hours of community service, a $20,000 fine, plus a $20,000 payment to the victim to help her pay for counseling. Mrs. Abraham said that the sentence “is not even a slap on the wrist! To call it a slap on the wrist is an insult to people who really do get a slap on the wrist.”[1]

The sentence will be appealed to the state Superior Court; Judge Means had already turned down Mrs. Abraham’s request to reconsider the sentence, without comment.

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[1] – Jacqueline Soteropoulos, staff writer, “Abraham to appeal sentence in assault,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Tuesday, 22 March 2005, pages B1 and B6.

Well, Dr. McIntosh thought that he found a way around even the ridiculously light sentence that had been imposed on him. Dr. McIntosh flew to Milan, Italy, on January 21, 2006, to begin a six-month research appointment at the anesthesia and critical care facility at Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico.

When it learned of the trip, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office obtained an emergency hearing, on January 20, to try to block the trip, but Judge Means refused. The Judge said that Dr. “McIntosh has to be able to survive.”

Well, had Judge Means thrown his sorry ass in jail for the 5½ to 11 years that the District Attorney had asked, Dr. McIntosh would have had everything he needed to survive: three hots and a cot.

At any rate, Dr. McIntosh is back in Philadelphia, because the Milan facility apparently withdrew the appointment, after Italian newspapers began reporting the decision to hire a sexual assailant for the job.

The DA’s appeal of Dr. McIntosh’s original sentence is still before the Pennsylvania Superior Court, and the DA has asked Judge Means to recuse himself from any future proceedings involving Dr. McIntosh because his past rulings have raised questions of fairness. (Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Well, I don’t think that goes quite far enough. Judge Means should be removed from the bench! Any judge who sentences a convicted rapist to less than two years of freaking house arrest does not possess the judgement to hold his position.

There are persistent calls to get rid of mandatory minimum sentences; it is claimed that judges are not given enough discretion when it comes to handing down sentences. And the arguments generally make sense . . . until you come to stuff like this:

Burlington, Vermont — January 4, 2005

There was outrage Wednesday when a Vermont judge handed out a 60-day jail sentence to a man who raped a little girl many, many times over a four-year span starting when she was seven.

The judge said he no longer believes in punishment and is more concerned about rehabilitation.

Prosecutors argued that confessed child-rapist Mark Hulett, 34, of Williston deserved at least eight years behind bars for repeatedly raping a littler girl countless times starting when she was seven.

But Judge Edward Cashman disagreed explaining that he no longer believes that punishment works.

“The one message I want to get through is that anger doesn’t solve anything. It just corrodes your soul,” said Judge Edward Cashman speaking to a packed Burlington courtroom. Most of the on-lookers were related to a young girl who was repeatedly raped by Mark Hulett who was in court to be sentenced.

The sex abuse started when the girl was seven and ended when she was ten. Prosecutors were seeking a sentence of eight to twenty years in prison, in part, as punishment.

Public pressure on Judge Cashman pushed him to lengthening Mr. Hulett’s sentence, after the state gave the judge a fig leaf to save face:

A judge who was widely vilified for giving a child molester a 60-day jail term imposed a new sentence Thursday, increasing the man’s prison time to three to 10 years.

Judge Edward Cashman said he felt he could now impose the longer sentence because the state had agreed to provide treatment to the man while he is behind bars. The state had initially said such treatment would not come until after the man served his time.

Thanks to Sister Toldjah for the information on the Judge Cashman story.

Mandatory minimum sentences are a fairly recent innovation, which came about precisely because of judges like Edward Cashman and Rayford Means. Judge Cashman at least had enough sense to realize that he had fouled up, and found a way out of his predicament when offered a face-saving way. Judge Means was excoriated by the Philadelphia press and public for the sentence he gave to Dr. McIntosh, and he was still going to let a man he had himself sentenced to house arrest leave his house, for a prestigious job outside his jurisdiction and the country.