In Sleazy Massachusetts, What Does One Expect?
18-YEAR-OLD CHARGED WITH RAPE WILL NOT GO TO JAIL

- “It’s really discouraging when everyone in the process does their job and … then you see a sentence like this,” Berkowitz told ABC News today.
- He said the judge’s decision in this case is likely “discouraging for the victims” and also likely “deters other people from reporting their crimes” and “putting themselves through this entire criminal justice process,” because they will wonder, “is it worth it?….”
“I don’t think it would ever occur to a judge or lawyer that after someone [was] convicted of a murder, that they [would] just get probation because they deserve a second chance,” Berkowitz said.
“There would be a universal understanding that there are consequences for committing a crime that bad.”
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We should sympathise with Mr. Berkowitz’s indignation, but deplore his failure to recognise that, in Massachusetts, there’s a history of an absence of “consequences for committing a crime that bad.”
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