Crime Victims Media Report is back, after an unexpected hiatus. Some updates:
Loc Buu Tran
A reader informs me that Loc Buu Tran, previous granted probation for a kidnapping and sexual assault in Clearwater, Florida has finally been convicted of murder in Orlando, after his trial for slaughtering his girlfriend was repeatedly delayed:
Loc was convicted of sexual battery, kidnapping, and obstruction of justice in 1998. The woman he kidnapped and raped had “rejected him.” For this shockingly violent crime, he got . . . a get out of jail free card by some sympathetic judge who probably believed it was merely an acting-out-sort-of-kidnapping-and-rape-thing. Two years probation for sexual assault and kidnapping. They probably apologized to him for his inconvenience.
In 2001, the state had another chance to punish Loc and protect women when he violated his probation by committing multiple acts of credit card fraud. Consequently, he faced prison time for the sexual assault, along with the new charges. But instead of taking into consideration his new status as a recidivist, another judge gave him another “first offender” chance and telescoped down all his charges to one sentence. You can guess what happened after that:
Well, he is now, at least until the defense attorneys manage to find the golden key that sets the rapists free. When Floridians pay property taxes this year, they should remember that they’re now bankrolling Loc’s endless appeals.
I’ll be writing that in the subject line of my check.
Maybe it would be cheaper if we just let him go again, like all the anti-incarceration activists chant. Of course, they’re also the ones making it so expensive to try people in the first place. CourtWatcher Orlando, which witnessed Tran’s trial(s), has more to say about the way defense attorneys ran up costs at his trial. Tran committed murder in 2006. A few months ago, after the state finally got around to trying him, his trial was suspended because the judge realized Tran had been her client earlier in his epic crawl through the courts. Responsibility for this mess-up can be laid directly at the feet of the defense bar, which has made prosecuting any defendant so mind-numbingly drawn-out and irrelevantly complicated that the courts can’t cope with even an obvious murder like this one. Every delay is a victory for the defense bar, which tries to make trials as expensive as possible in order to bankrupt the system.
Then last month, Tran’s trial was postponed again because a translator got sick. That means dozens of people on the state payroll, and all the jurors who had reorganized their lives to do their duty to society, and the traumatized family members and witnesses, were all left twiddling their fingers for the second time in a row. Yet CourtWatcher is reporting that Tran didn’t even need a translator.
And, of course, we paid for the translator. If we had not paid for the translator, that would doubtlessly be grounds for appeal, even though Tran didn’t need a translator. Nevertheless, I predict that something relating to the translator will be appealed anyway, just because it’s there. All this costs money. Our money.
Instead of letting convicts out of prison early to save money, state legislators should be taking a hard look at the ways the defense bar wastes our money, all in the name of some people’s utterly manufactured version of “rights.” It’s another must read from Orlando, here.
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Meanwhile, in Georgia, Michale Coker writes to report the capture of Charles Eugene Mickler, one of the absconded sex offenders featured in a story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
*Need To Know is one of the for-profit broadsheets detailing offenders. It is not on the web but sells in hard copy.
Mickler does not appear to have served any time in prison for his 2007 sexual battery conviction. Then he absconded. Of course, the story in the paper didn’t raise the question of why someone convicted of sexual battery was not imprisoned for the crime. Instead, the reporter wrote that the public need not worry about all those absconded sex offenders because they generally “just” target people (ie. children) they know. Except for the ones who didn’t, as I detail here. See my original post here.
How many of those absconded sex offenders have been located? The media already answered that question. The answer goes something like this:
In fact, the only coverage, to date, of these 250 absconded sex offenders has been the one story focusing on scolding the public for caring that these men have violated parole and gone hiding.
Policing public sentiment is so much more important than policing sex offenders, you know?
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Until it isn’t:
John Albert Gardner, who is being held in Chelsea King’s murder, is a convicted sex offender who had been given an easy plea deal for a prior sex offense. He could have served 30 years in prison but was released in five, instead, against the recommendations of psychiatrists, who said he was a high risk to attack more little girls.
But, hey, California saved some money cutting him loose instead of incarcerating him, didn’t they? And prisoner re-entry is so important.
Now Gardner is also being investigated in other horrifying crimes. Isn’t there a different end to the story?
Disturbed enough, yet? Here is more disturbing information:
In 2000, Gardner didn’t go out and attack a stranger: he targeted someone he knew, a 13-year old neighbor, to be precise. If Gardner had lived in Georgia, that would qualify him for the “don’t worry, those absconded sex offenders only target people they know” category.
Until they don’t. And what does it matter anyway, except as an idiotic argument by people who can’t stop justifying the behavior of sex offenders and opposing sex offender registries? Gardner’s record illustrates a disturbing point that anti-registration types never acknowledge: it takes real nerve, and a real lack of worry over consequences, to target children who know you and can identify you. Maybe people should be more worried, not less worried, about child molesters who know their victims. Unlike anti-incarceration activists, child rapists don’t worry so much about the distinction. They go after children they know, and they go after children they don’t know: one is just easier to access than the other.
Although the real solution would have been to never let Gardner out of prison again, once the sick coddle of California justice cut him loose, DNA database laws and sex offender registration probably saved some lives, including the lives of the little girls whose mother was shacking up with Gardner. How could any mother let some man move into her house, with her two young children, without checking to see if he shows up on a sex offender registry?
If you know a co-habitating mother who hasn’t checked her partner’s background, do it for her. Today. The world is full of sex offenders cut loose by some judge or prosecutor or parole board.