Pirates versus sex offenders
Whoís the bigger threat according to our judicial system
Jurors in the Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. trial recently ruled that he is eligible for the death penalty.
Whether or not you believe in the death penalty is a different topic. However this proceeding has raised certain issues in relation to sex offenders.
It is a national tragedy that people have to be killed or abused in order for tougher penalties to be created. Dru’s Law is just an example of how it took a tragedy in order to create a national sex offender database.
Although I applaud the efforts of the politicians who assisted in bringing Dru’s Law to the president’s desk for signing, it wasn’t until I watched a movie this summer that I realized we still aren’t doing enough.
The movie I watched didn’t address sex offenders. I watched “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
But the idea that enough wasn’t being done popped immediately into my mind just as I put the movie into my DVD player.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the FBI warning at the beginning of most films. They warn us that it is a federal crime to make unauthorized copies of the movie we are watching.
But have you ever paid attention to what the penalties of such actions entail?
If you read closely you’ll notice that a person found guilty of video piracy can face up to five years in prison and up to a $25,000 fine.
That’s a pretty tough penalty for making a copy of a movie, considering you’re not physically harming anyone nor ruining a person’s life.
I am in no way endorsing video piracy. Still, the laws that protect DVD’s are harsher than many of the rulings our judicial system has made against sex offenders.
In a sense, our judicial system is saying that our CD-burners pose a greater threat to us than sex offenders.
To prove my point I visited the North Dakota Sex Offender Website (www.sexoffender.nd.gov).
I visited the profiles of some high-risk sex offenders to see what sorts of sentences were imposed on them.
According to the Web site, a high-risk sex offender is one who is “statistically the most likely to commit another sexual offense, and high-risk sex offenders have typically committed more than one offense, have refused to engage in sex offender treatment, or have engaged in behaviors that contribute to an elevated level of risk”.
I warn readers that some of the things that I am about to write are without a doubt horrid and graphic, but are taken directly from the sex offender site. I write these only to prove my point.
As I read through the Web site, I was shocked, dismayed and outraged.
One man was found guilty of fondling two teenage girls while another person held their arms. His sentence was a mere one year and 30 days in jail.
Another man was found guilty of kidnapping three boys and attempting to have sexual contact with them. He was sentenced to only 50 days in jail.
Finally, one man offered a ride to a 20-year-old female and drove her to a deserted area and forcibly raped her while holding a buck knife to her throat.
He was sentenced to 50 months in jail, almost a year short of the five-year imprisonment sentence imposed on video pirates.
It all boils down to this: we need tougher laws now.
How can we allow rapists and child molesters to run the streets while our federal law enforcement locks up movie pirates?
Apparently Hollywood’s lobbyists have convinced our lawmakers to throw the big issues overboard and focus on those swashbuckling, computer pirates instead.
So to our politicians and judges across the nation, we can certainly do much more to protect our children and citizens.
Let’s start by punishing the sex offenders that populate our communities with penalties harsher than those imposed on teenagers who burn movies for their friends.
The value of a human life far outweighs that of a motion picture.
Columnists' opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of The Spectrum