Oklahoma Sentences Teen to Attend Church

[The Grand Nudger]

Which is still illegal and was enough to get manslaughter charges to stick. I don't like the judge using church as a punishment, but that does not change the fact that the kid should be grateful for not being incarcerated.

If we're so ready to discard the consistent application of law -in reference to the limits it imposes on itself - by law....when we feel that we've "gotten off the hook" what room do we have to complain about that process when another who we feel is undeserving gets off the same hook? Should we be grateful when the law convicts a violent offender and then simply says "don't do it again - get your ass some jesus boy" as they take off the cuffs?

If we were interested in demanding justice ourselves at some point, we would encourage people to demand that the law be carried out properly and consistently even when it is to their detriment. We wouldn't encourage people to be grateful when it hasn't been..simply because that failure to do so was beneficial to them (in truth..it isn't). A defendant who stands before the court demanding that they sentence him appropriately as they attempt to "let him off the hook" has a much greater claim to any future "justice" than the one who slithers off content to have gotten away with what they had been convicted of. This person can no longer make demands of the law (imho- and it cuts both ways, a law that operates like this can no longer make demands of us).

Obviously, the relief of avoiding punishment can toss this whole justice thing to the curb pretty thoroughly. But we aren't doing ourselves any favors if/when we do so. Not something specific to this particularly "sentencing", just as a general aside with regards to what one "should be grateful for".