A New York judge sentenced a woman who pleaded guilty to fatally shoving an 87-year-old Broadway singing coach onto a Manhattan sidewalk to six months more in prison than the eight years that had been previously reached in a plea deal.
This story is weird. Who shoves an old woman for no apparent reason?
According to prosecutors, Pazienza attacked Gustern after storming out of a nearby park, where she and her fiance had been eating meals from a food cart.
This is speculation, but sounds like maybe she got in an argument or was angry about something and was storming off somewhere. NYC is crowded and if you’re angry, trying to get somewhere, and not composed (getting into the mindset here, not what I really think) then “this old bitch in my way fuckin’ move arrrggg!” shove
Obviously, there’s nothing right about it and most of the time people behave themselves, even when they’re angry. Sometimes, though, they don’t. This isn’t a justification in any sense - more of a speculation in furtherance of an attempt at comprehension.
The costs of the actions you commit while angry often far outweigh the initial cause of the anger.
Her fiance perspective is that there was an argument and the suspect storms off and murders someone. Like, maybe now is a good time to see you’re engaged to a monster.
You’ve never encountered a rich, white woman in NYC, have you?
She was drunk and got angry that the kicked her out of the park, so assaulted an old woman. Bitch deserves more than just 8.5 years. I prefer that her citizenship is revoked as well.
Revoking citizenship is illegal under the Geneva convention and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Signatory countries aren’t allowed to intentionally make a person stateless. It is actually a big problem that has been abused several times throughout history. Nazi’s revoking Jewish citizenship is a prime example. More recently, we have the Uyghur Muslims in China.
The issue with revoking citizenship as a punishment is that it only pushes the burden of citizenship onto another country. It also removes any kinds of legal protections that a citizen may have had. Imagine if a country only allows citizens a right to an attorney. All that country would need to do to remove your legal council is strip your citizenship. Even if you later manage to get the citizenship back, you’ve still lost your original court case because you were forced to go through it without a lawyer.
Well that’s gross. I’m not comfortable with giving the government the power to revoke a person’s citizenship; sounds ripe for abuse, but I get the outrage
Judge saw through the crocodile tears, and sentenced her appropriately. I see a lot of pearl clutching in this thread, would you be so empathic towards this sociopath if the victim were your mother or grandmother?
“If you were unable to think rationally about the case, you would have a different opinion” isn’t the slam dunk argument you seem to think it is.
What’s actually being punished? Would she have been sentenced to 8.5 years in prison if she pushed an 87 year old who was slightly less frail and instead of dying sustained major injuries? Would she have been sentenced if she pushed an extraordinarily healthy 87 year old who knew how to gracefully fall and sustained no serious injuries?
It seems that the act of pushing alone isn’t enough to sentence a person to nearly a decade in prison. There was likely no intention to kill, though that was the outcome. What if she sneezed on the 87 year old, and in a fit of panic the 87 year old fell over and died? Again, no intention to kill, though that would still be the outcome.
I think it’s clear this should be punished more intensely than sneezing, pushing an old person would very commonly result in serious injury, so this is definitely assault.
For cases where injury was sustained there is legal doctrine know as the Eggshell skull rule
The rule states that, in a tort case, the unexpected frailty of the injured person is not a valid defense to the seriousness of any injury caused to them.
This wasn’t a tort case.
This is a simple case of assault in which someone unintentionally died. It’s textbook manslaughter.
Sure sure, but 87 year olds are expected to be frail. It’s what they normally do.
pushing an old person would very commonly result in serious injury.
This is why she’s being punished. You cannot assault an 87 year old without expecting serious injury or death. Just like you can grab a 20 year old and shake them by the shoulders and they’ll be fine, but if you do the same to an infant they’re probably going to die.
This is the problem of moral luck. We often want to punish people more because factors outside of the perpetrator’s control turned out badly. Either we should punish everybody harshly when they push an elderly person, whether or not it injures them, or someone like this should get a pretty light sentence. Yet we have an irrational pull to treat the cases differently.
So you’re saying that you don’t understand what manslaughter is. You ask a lot of questions, but I get the feeling that you’re not the type of person that is actually looking for answers
you’re saying that you don’t understand what manslaughter is
No, they’re just saying that instead of manslaughter being a more severe charge than assault, maybe it should be lessened to be equivalent. Similarly, maybe attempted murder should carry a charge equivalent to actual murder.
Muder is murder. Manslaughter is manslaughter. Intention, knowledge, negligence, does not matter for manslaughter, unless the intention was to kill, which upgrades it to muder instead.
The judge didn’t believe the defendant was actually repentant.
I found a different article that quoted her “former friends” and one said she was basic. Another said she’s the poster child for white privilege and a third said she’s nothing but trouble lol
Like damn wtf… How are you this hated?
I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I think someone who pushes the elderly in fits of rage isn’t very chill.
While this woman is pure scum and I wish her the worst, is the legal system allowed to do that? Like is it constitutional for you to reach a plea deal and then have years added to it? Like isn’t a plea deal like the final say?
Plea deals are between the prosecutor and the defendant. The judge can sentence you to anything. That’s why, frequently, prosecutors will drop the most serious charges in a plea deal. That way the judge is limited to sentencing to only the lesser charges.
Eight and a half years for the senseless murder of one of our society’s most vulnerable citizens.
Legally speaking you’d have a hard time prosecuting that as murder. You’d have to prove that she was intending for the old lady to die when she shoved her. I’m guessing she was charged with some combination of second degree assault and manslaughter, maybe more. She was facing up to 25 years and took a plea deal for 8, which I assume included part of the charges being dropped.
Removed by mod
Do you always get unreasonably angry when knowledgeable people correct you about things you’re ignorant of?
I expected more maturity out of pp boy.
Why lmao literally all I do is shitpost on this account and engage in bad faith arguments
Well, enjoy your ban then.
Have you tried… I don’t know maybe not doing that?
I don’t really know what 6 months more or less is gonna do in this case, but ok I guess?
Honestly I think it just made the judge feel better to make it longer
Seems kinda petty
Who knows maybe by adding 6 months it puts her in a different category for parole or something. It only takes $1 to move you from one tax bracket to another one. Maybe something like that is involved. I honestly don’t know.
I think you might have a misunderstanding about how tax brackets work (at least if you’re taking about american federal income taxes). Progressive tax rates mean that only the income that is over the threshold for the new tax bracket gets taxes with the higher %. So if you are $1 over the limlt for a new tax bracket, only that dollar gets taxed with the higher percentage. You can read about this anywhere, this is just the first source I found.
So, I don’t see how this example still applies here. But after some reading, apparently the prosecution got some new information after the plea deal, so the asked for 9 years, and the judge compromised on 8.5. That’s at least what this article implies.
Pazienza’s plea agreement called for an eight-year sentence but prosecutors asked for nine years based on new information contained in a presentence report, a spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said.
That’s not how tax brackets work. If you were one dollar over the next tax bracket, only that dollar would be taxed at that amount.
You’re right I was just trying to illustrate something and I thought that was a good enough example but you’re absolutely correct
