Cruel victories

Jim Henley notifies me that Michael Vick has just pled, taking 18-36 months. If I were religious, I would suspect that this would be the least of the sentences he could expect. As it is, I'm not sure it's enough, but I'll take a grim pleasure in knowing he didn't walk.

Jim, meanwhile, is struggling with his inner vigilante:

Prosecutors will recommend 18+ months, though his own attorneys will ask the judge, pretty please, for less than a year. Since cruel and unusual punishment is wrong, I won’t recommend breaking Vick’s arms and legs and tossing him into a pit with his own dogs.

Comments

What Michael Vick was morally heinous, but why should it be a crime? No matter how awful the things he did to his dogs might have been, the fact remains that they were HIS DOGS. Why should Vick lose 18 to 36 months of freedom because he mistreated that specific class of property, when the law would not punish him at all for mistreatment (or destruction) of other items of his property? I can certainly understand Vick's employer firing him -- because his stupid, callous, morally unforgivable mistreatment of the dogs will cost the team ticket sales and, presumably, goodwill -- but The People's imprisoning him for mistreatment (or destruction) of his own property is unconscionable. No matter how much The People might not like it, a person should be able to treat his property as he sees fit.

Posted by Bob | August 20, 2007 7:06 PM

Dang.

I was going to write a snarky parody of the "Poor Scooter"/"Sentence out of proportion"/"Where's the underlying crime?" variety.

But someone beat me to it.

Our times beggar parody...

Posted by Santa Monica Jeremy | August 20, 2007 8:23 PM

Had Michael been Michelle, and merely destroyed a "clump of cells" instead of some of the more viscious of "man's best friend(s)", there would have been no problem.

Proportion in everything!

Posted by Ed Reid | August 20, 2007 8:49 PM

Great. Bob thinks legislating against cruelty to animals is the first step towards totalitarianism, and Ed Reid thinks anyone who supports abortion rights and/or IVF and stem cell research should smile upon the torturing of puppies.

Class acts, both.

Posted by Warren Terra | August 20, 2007 9:33 PM

Bob, property rights are bundles of disparate prerogatives. e.g. with land there's domiciling, usufruct, grazing, scavenging, mineral extraction, water collection etc etc etc. It's not surprising or dismaying that the bundle changes with the nature of the thing owned. A dog is, for instance, not an umbrella, nor yet a sheep. There's no astonishment or necessary injustice that my property rights in my dog differ from my property rights in my umbrella differ from my property rights in my sheep.

Posted by Jim Henley | August 20, 2007 10:15 PM

The judge had better be quick to impose sentence: last I heard, the Army is looking for Bradley drivers.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | August 20, 2007 10:24 PM

Vick may be ready to plea because his so-called friends involved in the dog fighting were ready to testify against him. That's not unusual in and of itself, except that Vick had gotten jobs for some of them. They're showing their gratitude by being willing to testify against Vick to save their own scrota. As the old saying goes, with friends like that ...

Posted by Peter | August 20, 2007 11:05 PM

I'm no Vick fan, but I think 18 months in prison for dog-fighting seems overly harsh to me, at least as long as we still allow people to kill and eat animals in this country. If he should get 18 months, then the real criminals that actually do things like rob us at gunpoint or steal our cars should probably never get out.

Posted by ed | August 20, 2007 11:37 PM

This is very counter-intuitive, not to mention Soft Fuzzy-Headed Liberal, of me, but it occurred to me that he might benefit by being put into one of those programs where prisoners - under strict supervision and with rigorous training - socialize and rear service dogs. Having one in his care under such conditions might make him realize in his gut that dogs are living feeling beings, and if that happens, it will surely give him a revulsion of feeling towards his old ways. And of course if it doesn't work, which it may not, he can go back to serving his sentence - under the stigma of being a guy who flunked out of the dog program. The key, of course, being strict supervision and rigorous training. Of the man, not the dogs.

Posted by Pat Mathews | August 21, 2007 8:58 AM

What Michael Vick [did] was morally heinous, but why should it be a crime? No matter how awful the things he did to his dogs might have been, the fact remains that they were HIS DOGS. Why should Vick lose 18 to 36 months of freedom because he mistreated that specific class of property, when the law would not punish him at all for mistreatment (or destruction) of other items of his property?

I can certainly understand Vick's employer firing him -- because his stupid, callous, morally unforgivable mistreatment of the dogs will cost the team ticket sales and, presumably, goodwill -- but The People's imprisoning him for mistreatment (or destruction) of his own property is unconscionable.

No matter how much The People might not like it, a person should be able to treat his property as he sees fit.

Posted by Bob | August 20, 2007 7:06 PM

____________

Precisely the argument slave-owners (and their apologists) used when being chastisted for mistreating, abusing, torturing killing their slaves.

Well done, Bob. Now that's goin' old school.

Posted by David Richey | August 21, 2007 10:10 AM

Leonard Little of the Rams had multiple DUIs - killing someone's Mom in the last one. He's still in the League - nobody cares. Jared Allen of the Chiefs drives drunk basically as a hobby - the NFL reduced his suspension from 4 games to 2 after repeat offenses. Mike Vick's action are reprehensible, but as long as these guys are still playing he deserves the opportunity to make a living in the NFL, too.

Posted by Aaron Joseph | August 21, 2007 10:24 AM

David Richey says: "Precisely the argument slave-owners (and their apologists) used when being chastisted for mistreating, abusing, torturing killing their slaves."

One BIG difference, David: the slaves were human beings. Dogs are, yannow, dogs.

Posted by Bob | August 21, 2007 11:29 AM

Dogs are, yannow, dogs.

Indeed. The question is what that means. Your assertion that an owner's obligation to his dog is identical to an owner's obligation to, say, his bicycle, is entirely unestablished so far.

Posted by Jim Henley | August 21, 2007 11:52 AM

If the dogs deserved to live, market forces would have saved them.

The State has no right to prevent me from copulating with dogs, should I so desire. I've had worse.

Posted by Ayn Rand | August 21, 2007 11:56 AM

"What Michael Vick was morally heinous, but why should it be a crime? No matter how awful the things he did to his dogs might have been, the fact remains that they were HIS DOGS. "

You are missing the function of the criminal justice system in this instance. It is not obtaining justice for the benefit of the dogs. It is acting on behalf of the people.

The people's interest is two-fold. First, they have an interest in not having vicious, dangerous animals trained to hate humans. Second, they have an interest in rehabilitating humans, or deterring the behaviour of humans who are willing to torture animals. The torture of animals for pleasure is an excellent predictor of violent crime. Prison teaches the sadist that though they may have no empathy to deter them from torturing, society has jails to deter it.

You might argue that there should be no penalty unless people are actually harmed, but then attempted murder and reckless endangerment wouldn't be crimes either.

Anyone who uses animals for work might have their animals killed when they no longer can perform their work. A lot of people don't like it, but it isn't a crime in and of itself. Michael Vick isn't being charged for killing his dogs. He is being charged for making his dogs and himself into a danger to society.

Posted by Njorl | August 21, 2007 1:46 PM

There's also the difference between killing an animal essentially painlessly with a gun or injection and hanging/drowning/electrocuting/slamming to the ground. From the documents, it really doesn't seem that the "hanging" deaths were of the broken neck variety, more like the Iranian "hoist them up using a cord around the neck until you slowly strangle, fighting to the last second" type.

Posted by Hey | August 21, 2007 9:24 PM