Even as Conrad Murray was marched off in handcuffs after his conviction last week for involuntary manslaughter, legal analysts and the district attorney himself pointed out that Murray was unlikely to serve an "appropriate sentence." The maximum sentence for his crime is four years, but even if the judge throws the book at him on November 29, it will be largely meaningless. The truth is that he probably will serve almost no time in jail.
Why? That's the easy part. Prison overcrowding. It's a problem not only in California but across the nation. To deal with the unconstitutional problem, the legislature passed a bill called AB 109, which provides that convicts such as Murray, with no criminal record, are supposed to serve their sentences in county jails and not state prisons. But the county jails are just as crowded as the state prisons, so they routinely release those sent there literally in days or weeks, or sometimes even hours.
Consider the case of another famous wrongdoer: Lindsay Lohan. After reporting for her fifth jail sentence arising out of two arrests for drunk driving and repeated probation violations, Lohan spent about four and a half hours of her 30-day sentence in jail before going home. She reported to the jail at 8:50 p.m. and was back home by 2 a.m. According to jail officers, she skipped the meal offered to her. Imagine: no dinner.
Then there are the other cost issues: If you're going to deprive people of their liberty, you have to feed them and take care of their health and protect them, all of which costs as much as a year in college. Talking tough is easy. Passing "harsh" laws makes politicians look good. Paying for it all is another matter.
Observers of the Conrad Murray case speculate that the judge probably ordered him to be marched off to jail pending his sentencing on November 29 because he knew that once he was sentenced, he wouldn't be spending much time in jail. The optics of seeing the convicted defendant taken away in handcuffs at least made it seem like the punishment would fit the crime. It won't. It usually doesn't.
PROTECTED ACTIVITY The state and the union shall not impose or threaten to impose reprisals on employees, to discriminate or threaten to discriminate against employees, or otherwise to interfere with, restrain or coerce employees because of their exercise of rights guaranteed by the Ralph C. Dills ACT MOU 5.03 section A
The problem is that the media has not gotten their hands on these types of information to make the public aware of what is really going on. The public would be pissed if they had a clue as to how many inmates are being released! The public really does not have a clue.....
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