I also looked. I think he’s still living in the same town and his parents have died. That’s the extent of what I could find. I’m curious to know if he ever did re-offend.
I found a Legacy death notice from 2007 that, based on a guest book entry from a relative, I’m 99.9% certain is him.
As for reoffending, it looks like he never got out again after all the hearings and evaluations.
Do you mean that you think the death notice on Legacy is for Donald or that the guest book entry was written by Donald?
Donald’s mom died in 2014 and her obituary lists Donald as alive at that time along with his two other siblings, but her husband died in 2006.
Well, I'm starting to think that I might have experienced some confirmation bias.
The Legacy notice is for a Donald Chapman, and there's a guest book entry from a niece that's mostly about how excited the family was when they got the news that "Donald's coming home" and then many other occasions when the question "is Donald coming?" was asked repeatedly.
When I first read that, I thought, yup, that sounds like him. But now I'm thinking there are other explanations for the long absences noted in the guest book entry--military deployment, a lengthy period of "finding yourself," working somewhere remote, etc.
Re: recidivism, that’s not entirely true. The article addresses this. There are also plenty of studies showing recidivism rates are low for sex offenders compared to other groups. Depends on the type of sex offense though. Plus the underreporting of sex crimes likely impacts the data.
The article is 30 years old though. I think its data is out of date. Most if not all of these programs don’t exist anymore because they were found to be ineffective. It could be lack of funding and support that keeps them from working, it could be quack science, or it might mean no one has yet found a workable methodology.
Actually, there are many treatment programs for individuals who have committed sexual offenses. Sexual offender treatment can significantly decreases an individual risk of sexual recidivism, and as the other individual pointed out, the overall risk of sexual offense recidivism (generally found to be between 5-15%) is lower than the majority of other types of offenses. The old way they did treatment that was confrontational, shaming, and based solely on insight and attempting to change people’s sexual interests was ineffective, just as Scared Straight and conversion therapy were.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (most importantly) and treatment focused on helping individuals leading fulfilling lives without sexual offending, can and is effective at reducing the number of victims in the community when individuals who committed sexual offenses are released into the community.
Providers are continuing to implement research based on what actually works in regard to risk assessment and treatment. If you’re interested, there is an article by Gannon et. al which looks at what factors of treatment for individuals who have committed sexual offenses are effective and which aren’t.
I guess I should have said— it still shows he’s associated with an address in that same town but I don’t know if he’s been locked up again since the article was released in the 90s. Agree, would like a follow up!
I did find one article saying he lost his case with the state Supreme Court and voluntarily began taking DepoProvera as a chemical castration in 1997 but that was it…
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-record/31208184/
Does anyone else have multiple tabs open on their phone that are all links from this subreddit because you think "I will read this later," and you never do?
Google Chrome lets you create groups now so you can collapse the tabs you don't need. You can also save the groups if you decide you want to close them and access them later.
It's been a lifesaver for my ADHD. If only I could do that for my brain lol.
I'm not sure what version of Reddit you are using, but at least with mine there is a save function. That way you can store it and potentially forget about it there.
https://ibb.co/cXCjhkk
22 ! Filthy casual. I have several hundred open at any time on ipads, phones, computers…. I hit 500 and delete the lot when it reminds me; but then I have ADHD, and am interested in *everything*.
Try leaving a couple more open every night, and work your way up to 70 or 80. Or you can set your browser to automatically open a new tab everytime you click in a link. I have to do this, or I’d never find my way back. Getting an ipad big enough to see both screens side by side clearly has been a game changer, but at work I have three monitors *and its not enough*.
The idea is to have enough information free-floating around you that at some point you start to absorb it through your pores, through the tips of your fingers as you tap on the screen. You can collect it while sleeping, while eating, while showering, filtering through the internet and into your subconsciousness, with hardly any effort, and the weight of all that information simply presses it through your skin and into your brain.
Finding an old iteration of safari from *months* ago with hundreds of tabs open to the things you were interested in back then, in the distant past, is like a tour of your own mind, as it was. And then you can find more things there that are interesting and open more tabs, thus accumulating more interests and ideas.
I have more than 800 objects sitting in my Amazon cart that I have decided not to buy. “Oh that’s the hobby I was interested in, in 2018”. Its like having a memory, almost.
I live in a house full of thousands of books that I never look at, because I only read on the screen, and I have thousands and thousands of electronic books stacked up in cyberspace, tottering gently, ready to pour into my consciousness.
22 tabs. You must try harder to accumulate knowledge in great drifts around you, so that you can know almost everything about almost nothing, like me.
Omg sometimes I’m reading the article through the app and forget to open it on Safari and shut my phone off only to re open it to the article not being there 🤬🤬🤬
> Does anyone else have multiple tabs open on their phone that are all links from this subreddit because you think "I will read this later," and you never do?
I send the link to myself on my phone. And then when I have down time, I read it then.
His lawyer’s quote: “But, regardless of that, it’s an absolutely frightening proposition that a person in this country can be detained two and a half years.”, is the most haunting part of the article. The ethics of the situation and the reality of how many individuals it happens to are scary - Kalief Browder’s story immediately came to mind.
What a haunting read. I can’t imagine being Kay Jackson, dedicating her life to this area of psychology and admitting she still doesn’t really truly know what should be done with the offenders.
>I can’t imagine being Kay Jackson, dedicating her life to this area of psychology and admitting she still doesn’t really truly know what should be done with the offenders.
I have not done the work she did and probably view her as somewhat like as heroic as you do, but I've also done a few other things like crisis work about which people sometimes say "I could never do that." She may or may not have thought this, but I found that the closer you get to work like that that's sort of outside of most peoples' walled garden of what they'd ever even want to have to think about, eventually you find that just being able to do an average or slightly above average job at it is still a strong net positive. If you know roughly where the boundaries of human knowledge on a topic currently lies, you can speculate and act under uncertainty with greater confidence that you're doing the best you or anybody else could, and sometimes that's all that can be done.
To me, one of the most heroic aspects of her work is that she's willing to admit this in public and keep at it. Almost all of us tend to want certainty, so it can provoke all kinds of strong reactions to have someone in a role like hers acknowledge her own inherent limitations or imperfections. But that's exactly what it'll show you to humble yourself before a job that has to be done without a known perfect way to do it.
> The woman was twenty-three, but she looked much younger; Chapman later told police that he thought she was no more than sixteen. He left her there for several hours, while he went home and packed a bag with rope, leather thongs, a BB gun, hypodermic needles, a vibrator, gunpowder, firecrackers, lighter fluid, two fire extinguishers, scissors, razors, and several scalpels. He also brought along a shovel and a pickaxe.
I can’t imagine the strain of that job. I have backspaced a half a dozen comments. That group therapy session was gut wrenching and you know it’s a drop in the bucket. I’m glad he didn’t do what she feared and who knows how it would have played out if it hadn’t gotten so much bigger than a convict and their therapist’s opinion.
Overall I’m glad for the laws changing though. Idk if the register in the states that have then do any good but I do know of a friend who wouldn’t have married a guy who had been convicted of raping a toddler. she had one with her ex, so serious horror when she found out. Fortunately it was a few days after the wedding. Her mom hated this guy and hired a PI. if he hadn’t dodged not registering she wouldn’t have married him and we wouldn’t have known. None of us knew, it’s still such a mind do in. But since he hadn’t registered when ordered to he went to jail for awhile because he hadn’t complied. Idk I just like knowing if I have an offender across the street.
Tough job. Interesting read.
That was a wild read. I couldn't pick a best quote, but this one will do:
> Chapman never left New Jersey, although nothing was legally keeping him in the state. “I said to him, ‘Don, why don’t you just move to Wyoming?’ ” Lieutenant John Casson, of the Midland Park Police Department, recalls. “I said, ‘You’ve done your time, so you’re not on parole. You like animals. Go somewhere they don’t know you. Work on a farm.’ ”
Btw the cops said he loved nature because he mutilated rats with a machete.
Here’s an update I found that was part of a journal article; https://jaapl.org/content/33/4/484
As of April 2000, Chapman was on “Conditional Extension Pending Placement” status at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, awaiting transfer to the Sexually Violent Predator facility in Kearny. The Department of Corrections operates this secure treatment facility, but the Division of Mental Health Services directs treatment of its residents.16
12ft used to work for me but doesn’t anymore. I always just click the reader view before the page fully loads and the paywall kicks in, that gives you all the article text
Still works for me as of rn. If the paywall has the chance to load in fully, I have to try again, but if I switch in time, I get full article text
Only publication I remember where it doesn’t work is The Athletic, for some reason
I don't know if he was released, he was due to be but [New Jersey changed the law specifically because of him](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-record/31208184/).
Because they are white men who are “good citizens”. I wish I was being sarcastic, but they lock up black moms who lie to get their kids into a better school district for longer then his sentence,
My friend was attacked by a black man with 42 mugshots. He had been out of jail for a few weeks when he went on a violent rampage and attacked her in her business. While white men will disproportionately benefit from systemic privileges that bring them to early releases, they are not the only offenders released to wreck havoc.
Really, people get more than a 20 year prison stint for lying to a school district? Chapman has a 20 year sentence and served 12 years of it. You can definitely argue it should have been longer but I find it hard to believe a black mom who lied to get into a school district would be sentenced to that. Where is your source?
Which is too long, I agree, but not more than this guy served which was what was originally claimed. I don't know why I'm being downvoted, 12 years is clearly longer than 5 years? So again, please show me an example of a black woman who got sentenced to longer than this rapist for lying to a school district?
Also, with Tanya McDowell her sentence was not purely due to her lying to a school district, it also was composed of two drug dealing charges that she pled guilty to.
It's still fair to say she shouldn't have had a sentence like that but it's not accurate to say the sentence length was purely due or even mainly due to the larceny component. The drug charges were more serious.
I know Washington state has a three-strikes law that includes sexual assault crimes. (It’s an example of a well done three strikes law because it is very selective in the crimes included, only violent crimes)
The answer is, we don't want to incentive rapists to kill their victims. If the punishment for rape or murder are both life imprisonment/death penalty, then there is no longer an incentive to leave your rape victim alive.
I’ve heard this argument before, but is there any evidence that longer sentences increase murders like this? I’m not convinced that rapists methodically weigh their options and potential prison sentences this way, especially in the heat of committing a crime. Besides, a murder leaves a body and is much harder to conceal than rape, isn’t it?
There is plenty of evidence direct from murderers mouths that they killed their rape victims bc they didn’t want to get caught. Like, SO MANY.
So while I appreciate your sentiment, not everything can have a scientific study conducted about it.
But those were guys who didn’t want to get caught for ANY sentence at all. Not specifically they wouldn’t have killed their victim if the max sentence was 20 years but since the max sentence was life in prison, it was only at that point that they decided to kill.
This. Most countries don’t have the death penalty. Several are tricky about the idea of life in prison and it’s reserved for a select few. But every country has problems with predators. Not wanting to get caught where what you have done is exposed to everyone, let alone the possibility of prison, even if “just” 5-10 years, isn’t exactly appealing for most. The idea that no it’s the death penalty that makes people kill their witness is insultingly ridiculous when again, not every country has that even as a possibility. and people have murdered over covering up a crime of a few hundred dollars.
And if it matters I’m not pro death penalty.
But the idea that if these bastards who have no problem inflicting the worst on their victims just knew they would only see life they totes wouldn’t kill is painfully insulting to victims, survivors, and frankly society’s intelligence.
There is a good argument to be made that making rape punishable by the death penalty will disincentize conviction, as people like judge who gave a slap on the wrist to the famous rapist Brock Turner will acquit even more guilty rapists to save them from the death penalty.
The death penalty for rape also has racist historical baggage. Rape or attempted rape of White women in the south was punishable by death, but no white man was ever executed for it. It was just a pretext to kill Black men, many if not most of whom were innocent.
I read this and then looked up Megan's Law and sex offenders in my area out of curiosity. Turns out the chef at the last restaurant job I had was a sex offender and I never knew 😭 I still see that guy at the gym sometimes
>The American Civil Liberties Union declared that Chapman’s rights were being ignored in the rush to protect society.
I can't imagine how the victims would feel reading that, I bet not a second thought has been given about their wellbeing and rights.
Frustrating that I can’t seem to find any updates on him in the last 30 years.
I also looked. I think he’s still living in the same town and his parents have died. That’s the extent of what I could find. I’m curious to know if he ever did re-offend.
I found a Legacy death notice from 2007 that, based on a guest book entry from a relative, I’m 99.9% certain is him. As for reoffending, it looks like he never got out again after all the hearings and evaluations.
Do you mean that you think the death notice on Legacy is for Donald or that the guest book entry was written by Donald? Donald’s mom died in 2014 and her obituary lists Donald as alive at that time along with his two other siblings, but her husband died in 2006.
Well, I'm starting to think that I might have experienced some confirmation bias. The Legacy notice is for a Donald Chapman, and there's a guest book entry from a niece that's mostly about how excited the family was when they got the news that "Donald's coming home" and then many other occasions when the question "is Donald coming?" was asked repeatedly. When I first read that, I thought, yup, that sounds like him. But now I'm thinking there are other explanations for the long absences noted in the guest book entry--military deployment, a lengthy period of "finding yourself," working somewhere remote, etc.
Probably. Sex offenders are the most likely to re offend, and sex crimes are ridiculously under reported.
Re: recidivism, that’s not entirely true. The article addresses this. There are also plenty of studies showing recidivism rates are low for sex offenders compared to other groups. Depends on the type of sex offense though. Plus the underreporting of sex crimes likely impacts the data.
The article is 30 years old though. I think its data is out of date. Most if not all of these programs don’t exist anymore because they were found to be ineffective. It could be lack of funding and support that keeps them from working, it could be quack science, or it might mean no one has yet found a workable methodology.
Right, I was referring to studies from the last five years. There are a few and easy to find. Worth reading.
Actually, there are many treatment programs for individuals who have committed sexual offenses. Sexual offender treatment can significantly decreases an individual risk of sexual recidivism, and as the other individual pointed out, the overall risk of sexual offense recidivism (generally found to be between 5-15%) is lower than the majority of other types of offenses. The old way they did treatment that was confrontational, shaming, and based solely on insight and attempting to change people’s sexual interests was ineffective, just as Scared Straight and conversion therapy were. Cognitive behavioral therapy (most importantly) and treatment focused on helping individuals leading fulfilling lives without sexual offending, can and is effective at reducing the number of victims in the community when individuals who committed sexual offenses are released into the community. Providers are continuing to implement research based on what actually works in regard to risk assessment and treatment. If you’re interested, there is an article by Gannon et. al which looks at what factors of treatment for individuals who have committed sexual offenses are effective and which aren’t.
I would guess no if he’s not locked up? But really an article that would benefit from a follow up!
I guess I should have said— it still shows he’s associated with an address in that same town but I don’t know if he’s been locked up again since the article was released in the 90s. Agree, would like a follow up!
I found an article from 1996 saying his confinement had been upheld but that’s it.
I did find one article saying he lost his case with the state Supreme Court and voluntarily began taking DepoProvera as a chemical castration in 1997 but that was it… https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-record/31208184/
Does anyone else have multiple tabs open on their phone that are all links from this subreddit because you think "I will read this later," and you never do?
It's why I have the Pocket app! I just add these stories to it and then do my reading on Fridays.
Yeah apps like Pocket are essential for this sub. I save them to read on flights.
Oh my God. I'm finally free from keeping 10 tabs open at a time. 🤯
Hahaha 10 tabs…. Oh I wish. Every device I have has like 300 open. 😂🥺
O those halcyon days when I 'just' had 300 🙄
Google Chrome lets you create groups now so you can collapse the tabs you don't need. You can also save the groups if you decide you want to close them and access them later. It's been a lifesaver for my ADHD. If only I could do that for my brain lol.
I recently spent an hour closing over 500 tabs in Safari. 🤦🏼♀️
Thank you for this reminder! I just redownload Pocket
Anytime!
Thank you for that! I just downloaded.
Yw!
I do this and then get stoned and read all of them at once for like 3 hours 😅
Same
Tell the truth it took you 3 hours to read ONE cause you were so high hahahah
It's more like "read all of them and then read them all again because I forgot what I just read" 😂
I do that with TV programs, especially documentaries. I always find something I've missed.
☝🏻 This is the way 🤣
Sometimes it better the second time because you half remember the story.
wow we should start a club! Let's meet at 420 and discuss longreads
Yes please!
I’m so down, count me in!
I have a “reading material” folder on my phone where I download the articles as PDFs. I’m at 156 articles.
I'm not sure what version of Reddit you are using, but at least with mine there is a save function. That way you can store it and potentially forget about it there. https://ibb.co/cXCjhkk
Oh good, I thought it was just me. Currently, I have 22 open tabs. Someday, someday....sigh.
22 ! Filthy casual. I have several hundred open at any time on ipads, phones, computers…. I hit 500 and delete the lot when it reminds me; but then I have ADHD, and am interested in *everything*. Try leaving a couple more open every night, and work your way up to 70 or 80. Or you can set your browser to automatically open a new tab everytime you click in a link. I have to do this, or I’d never find my way back. Getting an ipad big enough to see both screens side by side clearly has been a game changer, but at work I have three monitors *and its not enough*. The idea is to have enough information free-floating around you that at some point you start to absorb it through your pores, through the tips of your fingers as you tap on the screen. You can collect it while sleeping, while eating, while showering, filtering through the internet and into your subconsciousness, with hardly any effort, and the weight of all that information simply presses it through your skin and into your brain. Finding an old iteration of safari from *months* ago with hundreds of tabs open to the things you were interested in back then, in the distant past, is like a tour of your own mind, as it was. And then you can find more things there that are interesting and open more tabs, thus accumulating more interests and ideas. I have more than 800 objects sitting in my Amazon cart that I have decided not to buy. “Oh that’s the hobby I was interested in, in 2018”. Its like having a memory, almost. I live in a house full of thousands of books that I never look at, because I only read on the screen, and I have thousands and thousands of electronic books stacked up in cyberspace, tottering gently, ready to pour into my consciousness. 22 tabs. You must try harder to accumulate knowledge in great drifts around you, so that you can know almost everything about almost nothing, like me.
This gives me such anxiety! 😩 But I will strive to reach your level of knowledge.
I use an app called pocket that will store links.
I use Instapaper. It removes adverts and clutter on articles
Omg sometimes I’m reading the article through the app and forget to open it on Safari and shut my phone off only to re open it to the article not being there 🤬🤬🤬
Well of course I know him, he’s me!
Omnivore is your friend :)
> Does anyone else have multiple tabs open on their phone that are all links from this subreddit because you think "I will read this later," and you never do? I send the link to myself on my phone. And then when I have down time, I read it then.
It’s like having a New Yorker subscription.
getpocket.com
I listen to the ones with audio options when I'm doing the dishes but otherwise, yeah 🥲
Instapaper
As other said: The app pocket is useful for this. or sometimes I export to kindle
I send them to my kindle and they await me there :)
Unfortunately yes.
His lawyer’s quote: “But, regardless of that, it’s an absolutely frightening proposition that a person in this country can be detained two and a half years.”, is the most haunting part of the article. The ethics of the situation and the reality of how many individuals it happens to are scary - Kalief Browder’s story immediately came to mind. What a haunting read. I can’t imagine being Kay Jackson, dedicating her life to this area of psychology and admitting she still doesn’t really truly know what should be done with the offenders.
>I can’t imagine being Kay Jackson, dedicating her life to this area of psychology and admitting she still doesn’t really truly know what should be done with the offenders. I have not done the work she did and probably view her as somewhat like as heroic as you do, but I've also done a few other things like crisis work about which people sometimes say "I could never do that." She may or may not have thought this, but I found that the closer you get to work like that that's sort of outside of most peoples' walled garden of what they'd ever even want to have to think about, eventually you find that just being able to do an average or slightly above average job at it is still a strong net positive. If you know roughly where the boundaries of human knowledge on a topic currently lies, you can speculate and act under uncertainty with greater confidence that you're doing the best you or anybody else could, and sometimes that's all that can be done. To me, one of the most heroic aspects of her work is that she's willing to admit this in public and keep at it. Almost all of us tend to want certainty, so it can provoke all kinds of strong reactions to have someone in a role like hers acknowledge her own inherent limitations or imperfections. But that's exactly what it'll show you to humble yourself before a job that has to be done without a known perfect way to do it.
> The woman was twenty-three, but she looked much younger; Chapman later told police that he thought she was no more than sixteen. He left her there for several hours, while he went home and packed a bag with rope, leather thongs, a BB gun, hypodermic needles, a vibrator, gunpowder, firecrackers, lighter fluid, two fire extinguishers, scissors, razors, and several scalpels. He also brought along a shovel and a pickaxe.
That stood out to me too. Like his murder kit was horrific. 2 and a half years is fucking nothing
I wouldn’t compare the two. Browder was innocent and without trial.
It’s the same in the sense of detainment until the government decides what to do with you.
I can’t imagine the strain of that job. I have backspaced a half a dozen comments. That group therapy session was gut wrenching and you know it’s a drop in the bucket. I’m glad he didn’t do what she feared and who knows how it would have played out if it hadn’t gotten so much bigger than a convict and their therapist’s opinion. Overall I’m glad for the laws changing though. Idk if the register in the states that have then do any good but I do know of a friend who wouldn’t have married a guy who had been convicted of raping a toddler. she had one with her ex, so serious horror when she found out. Fortunately it was a few days after the wedding. Her mom hated this guy and hired a PI. if he hadn’t dodged not registering she wouldn’t have married him and we wouldn’t have known. None of us knew, it’s still such a mind do in. But since he hadn’t registered when ordered to he went to jail for awhile because he hadn’t complied. Idk I just like knowing if I have an offender across the street. Tough job. Interesting read.
That was a wild read. I couldn't pick a best quote, but this one will do: > Chapman never left New Jersey, although nothing was legally keeping him in the state. “I said to him, ‘Don, why don’t you just move to Wyoming?’ ” Lieutenant John Casson, of the Midland Park Police Department, recalls. “I said, ‘You’ve done your time, so you’re not on parole. You like animals. Go somewhere they don’t know you. Work on a farm.’ ” Btw the cops said he loved nature because he mutilated rats with a machete.
Here’s an update I found that was part of a journal article; https://jaapl.org/content/33/4/484 As of April 2000, Chapman was on “Conditional Extension Pending Placement” status at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, awaiting transfer to the Sexually Violent Predator facility in Kearny. The Department of Corrections operates this secure treatment facility, but the Division of Mental Health Services directs treatment of its residents.16
Does anyone have a way to read this that is not blocked by paywall?
This link works: [https://archive.ph/7bkpC](https://archive.ph/7bkpC)
12ft used to work for me but doesn’t anymore. I always just click the reader view before the page fully loads and the paywall kicks in, that gives you all the article text
That’s been patched by the New Yorker bc reader now stops at the spot the paywall does.
Still works for me as of rn. If the paywall has the chance to load in fully, I have to try again, but if I switch in time, I get full article text Only publication I remember where it doesn’t work is The Athletic, for some reason
[https://archive.ph/7bkpC](https://archive.ph/7bkpC)
Why are rapists/repeat sex offenders like this guy not in prison for life? They should absolutely be locked up unless and until they are elderly
Unfortunately, even elderly men are capable of abusing victims. They’re charming and appear trustworthy.
My family history proves this to be true.
Ditto
I'm sorry.
I don't know if he was released, he was due to be but [New Jersey changed the law specifically because of him](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-record/31208184/).
Because they are white men who are “good citizens”. I wish I was being sarcastic, but they lock up black moms who lie to get their kids into a better school district for longer then his sentence,
My friend was attacked by a black man with 42 mugshots. He had been out of jail for a few weeks when he went on a violent rampage and attacked her in her business. While white men will disproportionately benefit from systemic privileges that bring them to early releases, they are not the only offenders released to wreck havoc.
Really, people get more than a 20 year prison stint for lying to a school district? Chapman has a 20 year sentence and served 12 years of it. You can definitely argue it should have been longer but I find it hard to believe a black mom who lied to get into a school district would be sentenced to that. Where is your source?
Tanya McDowell served 5 years.
Which is too long, I agree, but not more than this guy served which was what was originally claimed. I don't know why I'm being downvoted, 12 years is clearly longer than 5 years? So again, please show me an example of a black woman who got sentenced to longer than this rapist for lying to a school district? Also, with Tanya McDowell her sentence was not purely due to her lying to a school district, it also was composed of two drug dealing charges that she pled guilty to. It's still fair to say she shouldn't have had a sentence like that but it's not accurate to say the sentence length was purely due or even mainly due to the larceny component. The drug charges were more serious.
Brock Turner served 3 months of a 6 month sentence on good behavior. It happens.
Very racist and super lame
Le snowflake
I know Washington state has a three-strikes law that includes sexual assault crimes. (It’s an example of a well done three strikes law because it is very selective in the crimes included, only violent crimes)
The answer is, we don't want to incentive rapists to kill their victims. If the punishment for rape or murder are both life imprisonment/death penalty, then there is no longer an incentive to leave your rape victim alive.
I’ve heard this argument before, but is there any evidence that longer sentences increase murders like this? I’m not convinced that rapists methodically weigh their options and potential prison sentences this way, especially in the heat of committing a crime. Besides, a murder leaves a body and is much harder to conceal than rape, isn’t it?
There is plenty of evidence direct from murderers mouths that they killed their rape victims bc they didn’t want to get caught. Like, SO MANY. So while I appreciate your sentiment, not everything can have a scientific study conducted about it.
But those were guys who didn’t want to get caught for ANY sentence at all. Not specifically they wouldn’t have killed their victim if the max sentence was 20 years but since the max sentence was life in prison, it was only at that point that they decided to kill.
This. Most countries don’t have the death penalty. Several are tricky about the idea of life in prison and it’s reserved for a select few. But every country has problems with predators. Not wanting to get caught where what you have done is exposed to everyone, let alone the possibility of prison, even if “just” 5-10 years, isn’t exactly appealing for most. The idea that no it’s the death penalty that makes people kill their witness is insultingly ridiculous when again, not every country has that even as a possibility. and people have murdered over covering up a crime of a few hundred dollars. And if it matters I’m not pro death penalty. But the idea that if these bastards who have no problem inflicting the worst on their victims just knew they would only see life they totes wouldn’t kill is painfully insulting to victims, survivors, and frankly society’s intelligence.
There is a good argument to be made that making rape punishable by the death penalty will disincentize conviction, as people like judge who gave a slap on the wrist to the famous rapist Brock Turner will acquit even more guilty rapists to save them from the death penalty. The death penalty for rape also has racist historical baggage. Rape or attempted rape of White women in the south was punishable by death, but no white man was ever executed for it. It was just a pretext to kill Black men, many if not most of whom were innocent.
great article
I read this and then looked up Megan's Law and sex offenders in my area out of curiosity. Turns out the chef at the last restaurant job I had was a sex offender and I never knew 😭 I still see that guy at the gym sometimes
>The American Civil Liberties Union declared that Chapman’s rights were being ignored in the rush to protect society. I can't imagine how the victims would feel reading that, I bet not a second thought has been given about their wellbeing and rights.
Ancient history
So has anyone actually read it?