Word: crimeeds
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...whose day-to-day coverage of the prison beat led him to probe the case of Terence McCracken Jr., a teenager convicted of murdering an elderly man during a holdup. Woestendiek's yearlong investigation, which included interviews with several witnesses who placed McCracken elsewhere at the time of the crime and a re-examination of forensic evidence that had helped convict him, resulted in the case's being reopened. McCracken is now out on bail, awaiting a new trial...
...fear, anger and guilt into one sweating, simmering package: the comedian as psychotic. "I can legally kill anybody I want," he announces at one point. "I really don't think there's a court in the world that wouldn't say I was insane at the time of the crime...
...most fateful exercise of judicial discretion is the one that starts with the words "I sentence you . . ." Whether to slap the wrist or slam the cell door is a complex and partly subjective decision in which the particulars of the crime, the history of the culprit and the disposition of the judge all play a part. No wonder, then, that a stickup may draw anything from hard time to probation and defense lawyers maneuver to get their cases heard by judges known to go easy...
...nine-member commission created a system in which each crime is assigned a "base" number. That figure is then adjusted, depending on such variables as the use of a gun or how much money was stolen or whether the victim was elderly. The resulting number is plugged into a chart that weighs any previous record and comes out with a prescription for the sentence. For example, a bank robber starts by getting 19 penalty points, gets 1 added for taking $15,000 and 9 more for shooting someone and causing serious injury. If the robber served a 14-month prison...
...polishing that results, however, is not likely to ease the worrisome impact of the changes on federal prisons, already at 153% of capacity. The guidelines permit probation in fewer circumstances, mostly for the first-time offender who has committed a nonviolent crime. They also abolish the parole system for federal prisoners, as Congress has mandated, so that a five-year term will mean just that, minus no more than 54 days a year for good behavior. The commission estimates its tougher penalties will cause the federal prison population to grow by an extra 10% over the next decade. That could...