Cleveland Kidnapping

[Flagg]

Yes, I agree her home-life was certainly less than ideal, although demonstrably survivable. However bad her day to day existence was, I believe we can assume that whatever Castro would do to her if she was caught trying to escape would be considerably worse, and very possibly fatal.

They were already suffering savage beatings, apparently for nothing worse than daring to get pregnant when raped! "Less than ideal?" Let's see... malnourishment, regular physical abuse, threats, being chained up. You find that somehow tolerable?. Beating a woman severely enough to cause a miscarriage (which apparently happened more than once) can be fatal. An unattended miscarriage has the potential to be fatal. Unattended childbirth likewise has the potential to be fatal.

I just don't understand how you can be so cavalier about such horrific circumstances.

Castro apparently liked to play a "game" early on in their confinement where he would deliberately give them a chance to escape and then pretend to leave the house only to brutally beat them if they tried to get away. Some sick psychological conditioning on his part. I still don't believe in it, but if they can make the death penalty stick I won't be crying.

[Saxtonite]

What's this about people denigrating the way Charles talks?
<snip>
Slack pricks.

[Some] White Americans hate any distinct cultural markers and self-assertion of Black Americans as it detracts from the "one nation under God" bullshit which is promoted by the majority

Or they just think it sounds goofy and get judgmental about the grammar- any thought which can be expressed without the cultural markers of black culture can be expressed with it, but it's easy for intellectuals to be snobbish about a dialect where people routinely say "All X are not Y" when they mean "All Y are not X."

The actual intended audience gets the message anyway, but the snobs do not and assume it is pure ignorance.

I think the intellectuals are ok with "dialects" which are not prestige though. At least linguists are.

[Losonti Tokash]

It's not "just" racism, there's also a strong element of classism involved, which is why you'll see mocking of white southerners with basically the same accent and similar dialect. Though obviously not to the same degree.

[Saxtonite]

It's not "just" racism, there's also a strong element of classism involved, which is why you'll see mocking of white southerners with basically the same accent and similar dialect. Though obviously not to the same degree.

It is still prestigious in the American South to speak that way, especially if you are a politician. I believe the only main mocking comes from the people on the major cities on both coastlines. And it is probably some left-over from the Civil War.

[fgalkin2]

Posting from my phone, so comments will be limited, but interesting perspective on the whole thing

“So, you know, I figured it was a domestic-violence dispute,” Charles Ramsey told a reporter for the ABC affiliate in Cleveland, explaining what happened after, as he put it, he “heard screaming. I’m eating McDonald’s. I see this girl going nuts trying to get out of the house.” Ramsey, and others who gathered, helped her break open the door, kicking it from the bottom. She told them her name, Amanda Berry. She had been kidnapped at the age of seventeen, ten years ago. There were two other women in the house, Gina DeJesus, who is now twenty-three, and Michelle Knight, now thirty, who had also been held for a decade. There was at least one small child.

Ramsey’s 911 call is transfixing. “Yeah hey bro,” it begins, “hey, check this out.” His intensity, the McDonald’s shout-out, his undoubtedly loose paraphrase of Berry’s account (“This motherfucker done kidnapped me and my daughter”), and also his competence (he does a better job with the essentials like the address than the 911 operator) make him one of those instantly compelling figures who, in the middle of an American tragedy, just start talking—and then we can’t stop listening. (See Ruslan Tsarni, Ashley Smith.) But one phrase in particular, from the interview, is worth dwelling on: “I figured it was a domestic-violence dispute.” In many times and places, a line like that has been offered as an excuse for walking away, not for helping a woman break down your neighbor’s door. How many women have died as a result? They didn’t yesterday.



Three men are now being held—reportedly Ariel Castro, a bus driver who owned the house, and his two brothers, all in their early fifties. The three women were examined at a hospital, and there are already pictures of reunions with their families; the Plain Dealer reported that “drivers passing the hospital and the neighborhood honked their car horns in support.” Most people thought they were dead; the big tips in their cases, in the last few years, had been about where the bodies might have been dumped. The police chief talked about the emotion on the faces of officers who’d been looking for them for years.

During the call, the operator asks Ramsey if Berry needs an ambulance. He replies.

She need an ambulance, or what? She needs everything. She’s, uh, she’s is in a panic. I guess she’s been kidnapped, so you know, put yourself in her shoes.
Put yourself in her shoes. Berry and the others will need everything—they have lost so much of their lives, and will now have what’s left exposed and questioned. But Berry didn’t give up, and, in the end, she got them out of there. According to a police conference on Tuesday morning, her chance came when she forced a hole in a screen covering the lower part of the door which was big enough for her to push her arm through. Then she started to make noise. (One recalls the way that Natascha Kampusch, an Austrian girl held for eight years, kept looking for a moment to run, and finally found one.) Ramsey came when Berry screamed; and yet she took a risk by trying to get the attention of a stranger. What if he had just told his neighbor, with whom, he told reporters, he’d hung out at local barbecues—“ribs and what not”—that someone in his house was being loud? “Amanda is the one,” Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba said at the press conference on Tuesday morning. “She came out of that house and that started it all.”



Berry made her own 911 call at the same time as Ramsey. Her first words were, “Help me. I’m Amanda Berry.” Her name was what she wanted to get out, before telling the dispatcher, “I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for ten years, and I’m, I’m here, I’m free now…. My name is Amanda Berry, I’ve been in the news for the last ten years.” Ramsey told ABC that one of the first things she said, after they got her out: “Call 911. My name is Amanda Berry.” The reporter asked him if he’d realized what that meant—Berry’s disappearance was one of Cleveland’s famous unsolved cases. “When she told me it didn’t register until I got to call 911. And then, I’m calling 911 for Amanda Berry? I thought this girl was dead,” Ramsey replied. Or, as he described that moment of cognitive dissonance to the 911 operator, “She said her name is Wenda Berry or some shit. I don’t know who the fuck that is.”

For Berry and the others to be rescued, in other words, two things had to happen: she had to never forget who she was, and that who she was mattered; and Ramsey needed to not care who she might be at all—to think that all that mattered was that a woman was trapped behind a door that wouldn’t open, and to walk onto the porch.

Amy Davidson on Ariel Castro’s first kidnapping victim, Michelle Knight, and on Castro’s court appearance on Thursday.

Above: Exterior of the house where, on Monday, three women who had disappeared as teenagers approximately ten years ago were found alive in Cleveland. Photograph by Bill Pugliano/Getty. Lower: Amanda Berry, right, hugs her sister Beth Serrano after being reunited in a Cleveland hospital on Monday. Photograph courtesy WOIO-TV/AP.



Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/c ... z2Sv4REAwk

Have a very nice day
-fgalkin

[The Yosemite Bear]

oh god what a Gorian/Ng like sick fuck, whell that anwnsers the question of why there weren't more babies being produced by that Harem that monster was probably going to rape the six year old once she got a bit older too. Please tell me your going to never let that fucking monster out again? Or charge him with negligent homicide for the miscarriages as wekk

[Flagg]

They are talking death penalty for the forced miscarriages.

[Aaron MkII]

Is that because its the easiest way to get it for them?

[Flagg]

Is that because its the easiest way to get it for them?

It's the only way. I think they are using it to get him to plead to life, though.

[Broomstick]

oh god what a Gorian/Ng like sick fuck, whell that anwnsers the question of why there weren't more babies being produced by that Harem that monster was probably going to rape the six year old once she got a bit older too. Please tell me your going to never let that fucking monster out again? Or charge him with negligent homicide for the miscarriages as wekk

In Ohio terminating a pregnancy against the woman's will is aggravated homicide, not negligent. It's a potentially death penalty offense. The only difficulty will be proving that such occurred, and how often.

The penalty for kidnapping (of which there are four counts) is a minimum of 15 years and a maximum of life in prison. Convicting him of that shouldn't be too hard given the evidence.

[Saxtonite]

These girls were all lower class types too

hmmm what do you mean by that?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Because US law provides for sentences for kidnapping to automatically be served consecutively rather than concurrently, it's an automatic death penalty for a man in his 50s to get four kidnapping raps, which aren't in doubt. Because of that they should really go for broke and push as hard as possible to get the death penalty out of those potential aggravated homicide charges. Nothing should be spared in the effort. Beyond the human dimension, and thinking only coldly about the matter, enslaving people is an affront to the social order of the state.

[Broomstick]

Because US law provides for sentences for kidnapping to automatically be served consecutively rather than concurrently, it's an automatic death penalty for a man in his 50s to get four kidnapping raps, which aren't in doubt.

Incorrect. As no state lines were crossed only Ohio law would pertain and Ohio law, according to my brief research, requires a minimum of 15 years per count of kidnapping of this sort. That's a minimum of 60 years, which is life for a man in his 50's, but it's not automatic death penalty by any stretch of the imagination. I suspect that if convicted he won't get the minimum in this case.

Now, Federal law still has death as a possible penalty if I recall correctly but it doesn't apply here.

Because of that they should really go for broke and push as hard as possible to get the death penalty out of those potential aggravated homicide charges. Nothing should be spared in the effort. Beyond the human dimension, and thinking only coldly about the matter, enslaving people is an affront to the social order of the state.

I disagree. Aside from my moral objections to the death penalty, I view his imprisonment alive for as long as possible to be a fit punishment for locking these women in cages for 10 years.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Uhhh, Broomstick, your first comment is exactly what I said in my post. 15+15+15+15 = 60 + 52 = 112, so, an automatic death penalty. I was referring to the widespread legal custom in the US, NOT the federal code, to have sentences served consecutively for kidnapping.

[Lord Revan]

Correct me if I'm wrong but you're saying that the sentence even with the bare minium time would be so long that seeing these guys ever alive outside of prison is so unlikely as to be practically impossible and that is what you meant by automatic death sentence?

[Simon_Jester]

In this case, walling up the guys in an oubliette and shoving occasional food and water in really would fit the crime- and if we're going to the "attack on the essential principles of the state" arguement, Marina, I suspect that it would work just as well for that purpose.

[Saxtonite]

Correct me if I'm wrong but you're saying that the sentence even with the bare minium time would be so long that seeing these guys ever alive outside of prison is so unlikely as to be practically impossible and that is what you meant by automatic death sentence?

yes.

It's just a feeling of useless and atomisation of society so that we no longer really know our neighbours or have a community.

The neighbors knew the guy for DECADES. As in Barbecues. And new information came out (CNN interview) that he was Puerto Rican and lived in a 'Boriqua' neighborhood & it being described as 'tight knit' where people had a hard time hiding secrets (the shittiness of small towns in large cities)

[The Duchess of Zeon]

In this case, walling up the guys in an oubliette and shoving occasional food and water in really would fit the crime- and if we're going to the "attack on the essential principles of the state" arguement, Marina, I suspect that it would work just as well for that purpose.

That's torture, and I don't condone torture of anyone. Better a quick, clean decision of the firing squad of sixty rifles or so.

Lord Revan: That's accurate. Life imprisonment is just a death sentence--with a side of extra torture.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The neighbors knew the guy for DECADES. As in Barbecues. And new information came out (CNN interview) that he was Puerto Rican and lived in a 'Boriqua' neighborhood & it being described as 'tight knit' where people had a hard time hiding secrets (the shittiness of small towns in large cities)

I'm still surprised that nobody was more suspicious of the padlocked rooms, though.

[fgalkin]

Correct me if I'm wrong but you're saying that the sentence even with the bare minium time would be so long that seeing these guys ever alive outside of prison is so unlikely as to be practically impossible and that is what you meant by automatic death sentence?

yes.

It's just a feeling of useless and atomisation of society so that we no longer really know our neighbours or have a community.

The neighbors knew the guy for DECADES. As in Barbecues. And new information came out (CNN interview) that he was Puerto Rican and lived in a 'Boriqua' neighborhood & it being described as 'tight knit' where people had a hard time hiding secrets (the shittiness of small towns in large cities)

Yeah, they called the cops on him three times. The cops never came, so we should all thank the heroic Cleveland PD for him continuing for so long.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I mean, if I encountered someone who had padlocked the bedrooms in his house, I'd expect that he was running a meth lab or breeding illegal pit bulls, and a lack of endless dog barking would strongly suggest the meth lab.

[Broomstick]

Correct me if I'm wrong but you're saying that the sentence even with the bare minium time would be so long that seeing these guys ever alive outside of prison is so unlikely as to be practically impossible and that is what you meant by automatic death sentence?

Apparently that's what she means, but "life in prison" is different than "death penalty" in my mind. In the former case you're confining a person until they die of natural causes. In the latter, you deliberately kill a human being. No, they're not the same thing.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yes, it's far more unnatural to be locked in a box until you die than to get riddled with bullets or have your head lopped off with an axe. To call a death brought about by permanent confinement in the prison box "natural" is to court absurdity, not merely in ethical terms but in literal physical ones due to the much higher rates of disease and disorder in a real physical sense brought on by long-term prison confinement. If a Norwegian style 20-year rehabilitative sentence is unacceptable, the only next humane step is to shoot the offender.

[Alyeska]

Yes, it's far more unnatural to be locked in a box until you die than to get riddled with bullets or have your head lopped off with an axe. To call a death brought about by permanent confinement in the prison box "natural" is to court absurdity, not merely in ethical terms but in literal physical ones due to the much higher rates of disease and disorder in a real physical sense brought on by long-term prison confinement. If a Norwegian style 20-year rehabilitative sentence is unacceptable, the only next humane step is to shoot the offender.

To hell with innocent people. Lets execute people and fuck the consequences for killing innocent people on death row.

Life in prison gives the chance to right a wrong for those wrongfully convicted. But no, you would increase the rate of people put on death row. Thats a recipe for disaster.

[Stark]

Talking to Zeon about the death penalty when she's been saying the same thing for years seems futile. Its more interesting that her initial reaction seems pretty fair (its easy to imagine the people who commit these crimes being apart from us, and probably comforting) but completely wrong. The way people think about heinous torturers or other brutal criminals as special strange folk who lurk on the outskirts of town doing bad things is totally wrong, which you'd hope people can take away from this tragedy.

That recently posted article that talks about how people are inured to domestic violence is, I think, the real sad thing here.