I would have let him rot.
 

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Musi....ap/index.html


This is one connected musician.


After something like this happens, you begin to realize exactly how powerful a US senator can be.

Four years for possession of 1.26 grams of cocaine, and you would have let him rot? With that quantity, it was obviously for his personal use. It's not like he was dealing or anything. Is four years a reasonable sentence? In our country, you kill a guy in a bar fight and you might get 4 years -- provided you have a hard-ass judge. Four years for simple possession seems a bit harsh to me.

Maybe harsh in the US. He was not in the US. And what business does a US senator have getting involved with someone who has been convicted of such a crime? This guy was arrogant enough to bring hard drugs into an arabic country so I say again, let him rot. But, of course,he didn't rot did he? He skated on the whole thing.

We usually don't agree, but I 100% agree with you in this instance. It seems much too harsh.

I served my mission in Ecuador. Ecuador has extremely stiff penalties when there are injuries resulting from auto accidents. People can be jailed for years. Missionaries who drive mission vehicles are instructed that in the event of an auto accident, they should immediately leave the scene of the accident and return to the mission home, at which time their departure from the country will be expedited. Do you agree with this policy, or should the Church just let missionaries rot in foreign jails?

Just another reason the Church isn't true...

On the contrary. It's a perfectly reasonable policy. There are times when it is proper to look after your own.

That's also the policy of most uninsured drivers. I love driving in DC.

I agree with nonseq. We need to punish and to protect our own. Nobody else will.

That's fascinating. Except that the story wasn't talking about missionaries and neither was I. Remember the story? A rich R&B artist that got bailed out of bringing cocaine into an arab country by a United States Senator(remember Hatch and the whole RIAA thing)?

So a missionary getting into a car wreck = R&B artist attempting to bring cocaine into Dubai? Try again.


I have addressed everything else already.

One more thing:

I realize that sometimes our citizens are going to get the short end of the stick in other countries' courts because of circumstances not in their control. I don't want any american losing a forearm because he stole an apple in a muslim coutry either(which wasn't what happened here). I don't feel like someone should skate either(which is what happened here) on a drug crime just because he is an american. Its too bad that there wasn't some sort of middle ground that could be reached. It was stupidity and arrogance that he had it there to begin with.

A missionary getting in a car wreck is not the same as an R&B artist bringing Cocaine into Dubai. It's much worse. In a car wreck, there is the possibility of an innocent person being injured, maybe even killed. Some guy wanting to get high in his hotel room is pretty inconsequential.

Of course it isn't the same thing- it is an analogy which, by definition, is not the same thing. It is a pretty good analogy too, if you ask me.

I assumed that we were talking about the consequences that the missionaries would be facing(that they would need to flee). It sure seemed like that's what you were saying.

And for Pete's sake, we weren't talking about what a guy was wanting, we were talking about what a guy was caught doing. You have not addressed this or much of anything that I've said. All you've done is switched to your missionary scenario and sat on that and somehow equated the two.


Just to be clear, I said in another post in this thread(which has not been commented on at all), I think that 4 years was too long for what he was caught doing. That I would let him 'rot' was a poor choice of words. I don't want the guy to spend forever in jail. My main issue is the elitism that was involved in him getting rescued and being able to skate on the whole thing. I realize now that I didn't communicate this very effectively. Sometimes I don't write as clearly as I would like.

Yes I am aware that its not the same thing, thanks. One is a rich pop star being rescued for a drug offense in Dubai and another is two misisonaries getting in a wreckk in south america. I think that I understand that the two are not the same incident. What I was trying to say that the two sets of facts are not even analogous. One was an accident and one was not.

I think what he is trying to say is that both are considered crimes. You may think one deserves punishment and not the other, but according to the countries where the crime occurs, both deserve punishment.

The church's position, evidently, is to get people out before the heavy hand of "justice" can swoop down on the missionaries. Would you consider that to be elitism too?

Why is it elitism if the government bails someone out but not if the church does?

That is why I thought it was a good analogy.

Carry on.

To answer your question; no I would not consider a church missionary getting into a car accident and being protected from years of prison by the church, elitism. Of course not. The missionary was not being protected because of his riches or his fame and it would not have mattered to the church if he had either one.

I suppose we could keep discussing punishments for car accidents applied to foreign nationals in other countries. Or we can revisit what the article(remember the article?) was about. The rich american getting busted for beinging cocaine into an arab country and escaping because of his connections. Do you feel that a rich pop star being saved by a United States Senator from punishment for a crime(which is a crime even in the US) which he clearly commited, is elitism? Do you feel that he would have gotten off if he had not been a rich pop star?