Aafia Siddiqui, a US-educated Pakistani neuroscientist whose lawyers argued is mentally unstable, was sentenced to 86 years in prison in a New York district court for trying to shoot American soldiers in an Afghanistan police station two years ago.Question 1: Since federal law has no parole and does not allow sentence reductions for "good behavior," would it have been more merciful and just for Judge Berman to sentence the defendant to death (if he had had the power to do so) rather than sentence her to imprisonment for a term of 86 years?[snip, snip]
Richard Berman, the sentencing judge, was unswayed by the defense's request for leniency on the basis of mental illness. Siddiqui herself remained calm in court, and called for peace after her sentencing.
''Don't get angry,'' she said, according to Pakistan's Dawn newspaper. ''Forgive Judge Berman."
Question 2: Is it possible the defendant was sentenced to imprisonment for 86 years because she may be related by marriage to a mass murderer? (The article quoted above also states: "US court filings say she told FBI agents that she'd married Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the man who carried out most of the planning for the 9/11 attacks and who is in US custody in Guantánamo Bay.") What would you say if that were the case?
It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.
3 comments:
If the good judge had had the power to do so, would he have sentenced the defendant to death by stoning? By hanging? By electrocution? By her fellow inmates in a federal prison? For attempting to shoot American soldiers who were trying to interrogate, soldiers she perhaps thought meant to imprison her somewhere? For what, precisely?
But why should a judge specify the means of death?
(After all, he or she doesn't specify the prison in which a person is to be incarcerated.)
Felix,
What, I have no right to literary license?
"Federal law requires that the method of execution be that which is used by the state in which the crime was committed. The judge may select the method used by another state if the capital offense was committed in a state without the death penalty. All federal executions since 1976 have been by lethal injection." Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_the_United_States_federal_government#Method
In some states the sentencing judge may in fact have the authority to select the specific penitentiary in which a person will be confined, but I don't know that that's the case. It is not uncommon for a state sentencing judge to have some authority to specify the "conditions of confinement."
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