Judge rules that Texas man must choose a life sentence(With his girlfriend) to avoid 15-day jail sen - Polidicks

[quote]“Is she worth it?” Judge Rogers asked Bundy, according to court transcripts. “I said, well to be honest, sir, I was raised with four sisters and if any man was talking to a woman like that,” recalled Bundy, “I’d probably do the same thing.” Judge Rogers asked Bundy if he was married to Jaynes and then said, “You know, as a part of my probation, you’re going to have to marry her…within 30 days.” If Bundy declined to do the probation, he would be sentenced to 15 days in jail. “He offered me fifteen days in jail and that would have been fine and I asked if I could call my job [to let them know],” said Bundy. “The judge told me ‘nope, that’s not how this works.’” Jaynes, who was in the courtroom said the proposal from the judge embarrassed her. “My face was so red, people behind me were laughing,” said Jaynes. “[The judge] made me stand up in court.” Afraid of Bundy losing his job if he spent two weeks behind bars, the couple applied for their marriage license and scheduled a date with the justice of the peace to get married.[/quote] [quote] But with only 18 days to plan, even the people most important to them were missing. "My father didn’t get to go, and that really bothers me, I know he would have liked to be there,” said Bundy. “None of my sisters got to show up, it was such short notice, I couldn’t get it together." The father of the bride, Kenneth Jaynes, wanted answers. “[I felt] anger; I was mad. [The judge] can’t do this by court ordering somebody to be married,” said Kenneth Jaynes. “I contacted a couple of lawyers but they told me someone was trying to pull my leg…that judges don't court order somebody to get married.”[/quote][URL="http://www.kltv.com/story/29721876/judge-sentences-east-texas-man-to-get-married-or-face-jail-time"] http://www.kltv.com/story/29721876/judge-sentences-east-texas-man-to-get-married-or-face-jail-time[/URL] Til death or incarceration.

Sounds like the set up of a shitty rom com. I wasn't aware this was even legal.

What a shitty judge

why is there no checks on the abusive power of judges. when judges do shitty things, nobody can fire them. wtf

Like, I [i]want[/i] to be okay with this because it sounds both hilarious and an oddly appropriate "slap on the wrist" given the circumstances, but I really can't shake the fact that A: it has no real legal reasoning and B: it fucked up their wedding. Plus the whole bible verses thing? The fuck? I don't care if the guy's Christian and the judge asked prior to sentencing if he was, that seems to heavily blur the lines of church and state.

[QUOTE]“He offered me fifteen days in jail and that would have been fine and I asked if I could call my job [to let them know],” said Bundy. “The judge told me ‘nope, that’s not how this works.’”[/QUOTE] that's fucking bullshit

[QUOTE=proboardslol;48401377]why is there no checks on the abusive power of judges. when judges do shitty things, nobody can fire them. wtf[/QUOTE] Because otherwise nobody would want to be a judge for fear of being persecuted for their decisions. Under the law this isn't abuse, anyway.

[QUOTE=U.S.S.R;48401595]Because otherwise nobody would want to be a judge for fear of being persecuted for their decisions. Under the law this isn't abuse, anyway.[/QUOTE] So they should just be able to fuck around as long as it's legal to compensate? I'm not allowed to jerk around at work else I'll get fired so why can judges do it

I decided to head to the link and figure out what the hell is going on here. [quote] In July, a Smith County judge sentenced Josten Bundy to get married to his 19-year-old girlfriend as part of his probation, which also included writing Bible verses and getting counseling. [/quote] Oooh... hmmm.. go get married and write some bible verses. Nice [quote] “[The ex-boyfriend] had been saying disrespectful things about Elizabeth, so I challenged him to a fight,” said Bundy. “He stepped in and I felt like it was on and I hit him in the jaw twice.” Bundy said the ex-boyfriend did not require medical attention, but pressed assault charges. [/quote] Well, okay this guy is actually a pretty stand up guy. Guy was talking shit to his girlfriend, he said step right up. And he did, and got knocked in the jaw twice and put down. And then his pussy really started to dump all its sand, and he pressed the assault charges. I think this judge forcing a young couple to do consoling and getting married in under a month is a bit preemptive and obscene. Maybe the judge wanted this to be one ol christian happy ending but probably made one of the shittiest weddings ever.

[QUOTE=U.S.S.R;48401595]Because otherwise nobody would want to be a judge for fear of being persecuted for their decisions. Under the law this isn't abuse, anyway.[/QUOTE] He also made Bundy write verses from the bible, isn't that directly against your constitution? [editline]7th August 2015[/editline] Judges who judge on moral principals have no place in a justice system

I would imagine you could take this to the federal level. There is a massively corrupt judge here. What gives this man the right to force people to get married?

[QUOTE=Louis;48401812]So they should just be able to fuck around as long as it's legal to compensate? I'm not allowed to jerk around at work else I'll get fired so why can judges do it[/QUOTE] Because every bitter convict would try to sue the piss out of a judge who rules against them otherwise. Judges in pretty much every country including yours have the same protections. As long as they aren't breaking any laws or legal procedures through their rulings, they can do what they want.

This is the most amazingly terrible example of "well if you like her so much why don't you [i]marry her[/i]???"

[QUOTE=U.S.S.R;48401595]Because otherwise nobody would want to be a judge for fear of being persecuted for their decisions. Under the law this isn't abuse, anyway.[/QUOTE] I think there's a big difference between making unpopular decisions and making illegal or very biased decisions.

[QUOTE=Last or First;48401919]I think there's a big difference between making unpopular decisions and making illegal or very biased decisions.[/QUOTE] According to judicial immunity, he can't be held liable anyway. This isn't to say that the guy can't get off on an appeal in a blink of an eye, which he probably will.

[QUOTE=FalconKrunch;48401846] Judges who judge on moral principals have no place in a justice system[/QUOTE] I don't mind judges making an assessment on character, and moral principals. As long as the person seems to be a decent person, and was trying to make a bad situation better through means that seem fit for the time. This judge had all the right to just prosecute this guy and boom done. He did kind of a nice gesture but at the same time was a complete dick. Oh, marry her in 30 days. Im sure your family could totally make it on a 15 day notice.

Cruel and unusual punishment!

What I'm most concerned about is how the fuck a judge can involve a second, innocent person into the sentencing of the defendant?

The article didn't say they couldn't get divorced right after, did it?

[QUOTE=matt000024;48402399]The article didn't say they couldn't get divorced right after, did it?[/QUOTE]Irrelevant and doesn't matter. The judge is stupid and needs to be relieved of his position.

[QUOTE=FalconKrunch;48401846]He also made Bundy write verses from the bible, isn't that directly against your constitution? [/QUOTE] I mean, I wanna say it is or at least should be, but I honestly don't know.

[QUOTE=Richard Simmons;48402112]I don't mind judges making an assessment on character, and moral principals. [B]As long as the person seems to be a decent person[/B], and was trying to make a bad situation better through means that seem fit for the time. [/QUOTE] That's the issue. Based on your own moral views, who or who isn't a decent person changes. Having sympathy for someone's situation doesn't require your moral views to align.

-snip-

[QUOTE=FalconKrunch;48402794]That's the issue. Based on your own moral views, who or who isn't a decent person changes. Having sympathy for someone's situation doesn't require your moral views to align.[/QUOTE] So it should just be "You broke the law, you could be a decent person acting in good faith, but you broke it and now fuck you. max sentence"

What the fuck? The judge has no power to create circumstances like these. This is bullshit.

[QUOTE=Richard Simmons;48403567]So it should just be "You broke the law, you could be a decent person acting in good faith, but you broke it and now fuck you. max sentence"[/QUOTE] No, I'm saying that whether or not someone is a decent person shouldn't be taken in account at all because it introduces personal bias when judging. I don't see how that suddenly escalates to giving people maximum sentences. What I'm saying is that your moral views shouldn't be a base to judge on.

[QUOTE=Archonos 2;48401866]I would imagine you could take this to the federal level. There is a massively corrupt judge here. What gives this man the right to force people to get married?[/QUOTE]Federal already? Nah, you take it to the state level and if you're lucky you'll get heard there. Federal court is not easy to get into at all, and I'm pretty sure something as minor as this isn't going to compete with the likes of legalization of gay marriage and reviewing the ACA. [QUOTE=FalconKrunch;48402794]That's the issue. Based on your own moral views, who or who isn't a decent person changes. Having sympathy for someone's situation doesn't require your moral views to align.[/QUOTE]That is absolutely not how our legal system works and for good fucking reason:[QUOTE=Richard Simmons;48403567]So it should just be "You broke the law, you could be a decent person acting in good faith, but you broke it and now fuck you. max sentence"[/QUOTE][QUOTE=FalconKrunch;48403787]No, I'm saying that whether or not someone is a decent person shouldn't be taken in account at all because it introduces personal bias when judging. I don't see how that suddenly escalates to giving people maximum sentences. What I'm saying is that your moral views shouldn't be a base to judge on.[/QUOTE] Scenario: you're in a convenience store and somebody robs it, and during the course of the robbery they start threatening to kill the cashier. They become increasingly unstable, eventually you realize you have to act and hit the guy from behind with a can of soup. Then you hit him again when he moves, but this time the impact seems a little... hollow. You realize you've killed him, bashed his skull in with a can of soup. Nobody else in the store had seen him move, it looks like you finished him off to a few people and others think you were just scared. You go to court and after a trial your moral character is brought up and it's clear that you're not a violent person at all, and your testimony that you thought he was trying to bring his gun against you establishes that you really didn't mean to kill the guy and your non-violent past helps your case. You're found not guilty of murder. The reason why moral character plays a part in US law is it establishes [i]intent[/i] which can be the different between first and second degree murder, or even if it's worth prosecuting you at all! Our country was founded on a mixture of what is right and also what is legally just. For Americans, the concepts of morality and legality quite often overlap because our legal system encourages us to hammer out our laws (especially at the state and local level) based on what the population finds to be acceptable. Sometimes this bites us in the ass, the push to end segregation was largely a push to make Southeastern states conform to the rest of the country which meant trampling on the concept of "state's rights." These things are important tenets of the United States, it's what actually makes our country unique our government was designed so that the individual states functioned like little countries from the start. (I'm paraphrasing here, it's a bit more complicated than that) So! With that having been said, our legal system's really based around this weird touch-and-go type of thing which relies a lot on common sense. Under the strict letter of the law this guy should be doing a minimum of five years for assault even though he had good intentions, that's where the moral view comes into play because anyone with [i]common sense[/i] can see that would be grossly inappropriate. Of course this can (and sometimes has) backfired but it is intrinsically tied in with how our country operates on a basic level, and plus it works far more often than it doesn't so there's that. Additionally the US values legal precedence far more than it does written law, our system is based around the [i]spirit[/i] of the law rather than the [i]letter[/i] of the law. When this is forgotten or ignored, that's where you get the wildly outrageous legal conflicts and it generates controversy. See, the whole "spirit vs letter" approach was formed out of necessity due to the English legal code having a bunch of crazy shit in it that made no sense and people abusing the law by using it as a weapon. Unfortunately it seems this trend is happening more and more as time goes on and who knows, maybe in a couple decades we'll have somebody who says, "wait wait wait, let's reevaluate our laws because we seem to have forgotten why we have them in the first place!"

[QUOTE=FalconKrunch;48402794]That's the issue. Based on your own moral views, who or who isn't a decent person changes. Having sympathy for someone's situation doesn't require your moral views to align.[/QUOTE] Oh my god, I agree with this so much. On a related note, in a book called [i]The Stranger[/i], there's a prosecutor in court that's condemning the protagonist, who is on trial for a murder he commited. The one thing that pissed me off about him was how he going around acting like the things the protagonist did like watching a comedy movie with his girlfriend after the day of his mom's funeral or hanging out with someone who was a warehouse worker and kind of an asshole should somehow worsen his punishment because "hes not a normal human being/doesn't have a soul EVIL EVIL EVIL", which is typical arbitrary bullshit. How about we punish him on the basis of what he did to end up being a courtroom in the first place instead of whatever kind of personality he has? I have no idea if this is how courts usually work or not nowadays, but it would seem like the kind of thing that you would expect to see more in the time era where the book took place and less in this time and age. And Jack, I get that there can not-so-evil intents to what would normally be considered crimes like acting in self-defense and such, and it makes sense that others would use one's personality to try and pinpoint the intention of a crime, but when a judge tries to use one's personality alone to try and justify a harsher punishment, it just seems crazy.

[QUOTE=Skerion;48404298]And Jack, I get that there can not-so-evil intents to what would normally be considered crimes like acting in self-defense and such, and it makes sense that others would use one's personality to try and pinpoint the intention of a crime, but when a judge tries to use one's personality alone to try and justify a harsher punishment, it just seems crazy.[/QUOTE]I'll address this point since it's directed at me and it would answer the rest of it anyway. He didn't try to justify a harsher punishment, this was the judge's attempt to throw the guy a bone. He was facing a felony assault charge dude, getting married to your girlfriend and reciting bible verses is a really fucking great alternative to five years in prison. I'm not Christian [i]at all[/i] and I'd absolutely write some goddamn bible verses to get out of prison.

[QUOTE=JumpinJackFlash;48405288] He didn't try to justify a harsher punishment, this was the judge's attempt to throw the guy a bone. He was facing a felony assault charge dude, getting married to your girlfriend and reciting bible verses is a really fucking great alternative to five years in prison. I'm not Christian [i]at all[/i] and I'd absolutely write some goddamn bible verses to get out of prison.[/QUOTE] Well of course anybody would but judges being able to do stuff like this is still kinda fucked and sets a bad precedent.