Comment by antihero
Comment by antihero 3 days ago
It's amazing. Absolutely insane that people are incarcerated so long for non-violent drug crimes, though.
Turso also looks really neat for small Payload sites.
Comment by antihero 3 days ago
It's amazing. Absolutely insane that people are incarcerated so long for non-violent drug crimes, though.
Turso also looks really neat for small Payload sites.
He played a lot smaller part than the Sackler family, who ran Purdue Pharma and pushed their drugs into communities. They killed a lot more people than this guy, and yet none of them are in jail.
The Sacklers are comfortably above the law and that's a bad thing, but that doesn't make small time carfentanyl operations any less bad
Evil is a threshold, it's not a competition with limited spots
Sometimes big crime families or notorious serial killers get away with it, but it doesn't lower the threshold for anyone else
It doesn't make it any better that someone else is doing even worse. You don't get to do a little crime, as a treat
Evil is a religious concept.
Selling drugs isn't evil. Not selling drug doesn't make you good. People take drugs for various reasons. If a doctor sells them they are good but if someone else sells them they are evil?
The person buying could have been fired and can't afford Doctors prescription so the person selling could be an angel.
> Evil is a threshold, it's not a competition with limited spots
No, but our enforcement has limited resources. We can't arrest and jail every offender of every crime, so we pick and choose where to spend our enforcement resources. All the money spent pursuing, arresting, trying, and imprisoning this guy could have been spent going after people like the Sacklers.
Bush and his cronies resulted in the death of far more innocent people than your typical murderer. But we don't stop sending murderers to prison just because Bush/Cheney are not in prison.
I've voted for drug legalization (including possession). However, that doesn't mean that I condone all drug dealing behavior.
It took something like a decade to put Capone away. We still locked up murderers during that period.
The whole thread is silly. I don't think a lot of people here are going to stick up for a 15 year stretch for a 24 year old for selling opiates. Probably don't need to pull the Sacklers into it.
> But this guy was selling carfentanil
Do you have a source? It seems that guy was selling MDMA and marijuana. Here's the relevant quote from https://pthorpe92.dev/intro/my-story/
I was caught with MDMA coming in the mail from Vancouver, and some marijuana coming from california (the latter of which is what I am currently serving my time for right now)
Gluing a few stories together (links included below where I'm not citing to your link) it seems like:
~2012 he was caught selling MDMA and marijuana, and went to prison
~end or 2015 or start of 2016 he was released on probation
[Edit: Added entry] December 2016 police responding to a domestic violence call enter his apartment to make contact with the alleged victim, and discover U-47700 (a synthetic opioid) https://www.courts.nh.gov/sites/g/files/ehbemt471/files/docu...
April 2017 the police find traces of carfentanil while executing a search warrant at his place - plausibly but not provably linked to some recent carfentanil deaths - and police announce they are searching for him. https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/man-wanted-suspected-let...
May 2017 he ends up back in prison.
Aug 2017 he pleads guilty to possession of U47700 (a synthetic opioid) with intent to distribute https://www.wmur.com/article/defense-plans-appeal-of-search-...
Oct 2017 he's sentenced to 15-30 years on the above charge, he has not been charged with possessing the carfentanil (yet) despite the apparent evidence https://www.wmur.com/article/man-facing-carfentanil-charge-r...
The articles aren't clear on this, but given his own recounting I assume that a suspended sentence for Marijuana was un-suspended as a result of the new charges and he is serving that sentence first, or concurrently.
From elsewhere in the thread:
* https://apnews.com/general-news-d68dca63e95946fbb9cc82f38540...
* https://www.doj.nh.gov/news-and-media/preston-thorpe-sentenc...
I find it somewhat amusing that I woke up to this post at ~9 AM, and was surprised at the crowding-out of discussion about the article, by people sort of half-groping at a straw or two they picked up, trying to make a definitive case on his...goodness? morality?...based off the straw they're holding.
It is now 4 PM, about to clock out for the day because I gotta wait for CI run thats >30m. I come back here and it's still going on. This is #3 comment I see when I open HN, ensuing thread takes up two pages scrolls on 16" MBP.
It's bad of me to write this because, well, who cares? Additionally, am I trying to litigate what other people comment?
The root feeling driving me to express myself is a form of frustrated boredom -- rolling with that and verbalizing concretely, a bunch of people writing comments with the one thing they're hyperfocusing on their record to drive a conclusion on their value as a person/morality, and then people pointing out that's not some moral absolute, asking for links, discussing the links...
...well, it's all just clutter.
Or YouTube comment-level discussion, unless we're planning on relitigating every case he's been involved in.
This all would be better if it the kangaroo court stuff was confined to a thread with all of the evidence against him, so we didn't have a bunch of weak cases, or if people didn't treat this as an opportunity to be a drive by judge. Article def. ain't about his crimes, and he ain't saying he's innocent or an angel.
(and the idea that "drug crimes" implies "hippie selling weed or psychedelics" so calling them "drug crimes" is hiding the ball...where does that come from? Its especially dissonant b/c you indicate the mere fact he sold an opiod is so bad that this guy is...bad? irredeemable? not worth discussing?...so presumably you care a lot about opiods, so presumably you know that's whats driven drug crime the last, uh, decade or two?)
> trying to make a definitive case on his...goodness? morality?
Speaking for myself, I'm actually just discussing the idea that a non-violent crime like drug dealing necessarily deserves a light sentence in general.
> Sounds like a you thing
It is a me thing. That's why I said "brings to mind".
I'm a product of my time. I remember when weed and psychedelics meant demonization and heavy sentences, and it was absurd because those substances aren't that dangerous.
This is the context in which I'm accustomed to calling drug dealing a "non-violent crime". So, I feel like I need to point out that things are not quite the same with deadly drugs like carfentanil.
They are largely the same though. Small-time dealing of any drug is often just being the guy in your circle of users that does the group buying, maybe it was just your turn. Or your dealer says you can pay for your purchase by driving this package across town. Now you've been caught with enough pills to kill 30 people and the intent to distribute - is that an action that hits your threshold for heavy sentences and bad people?
Oh absolutely. Voters always favor harsher punishments or making things worse for those already convicted of crimes. You never get any more votes by pushing for lower punishments for any crime or by doing anything to reduce recidivism. I suspect that a pretty solid litmus test for "politician who is actually trying to make the world a better place" based just on how they vote for lowering recidivism.
>Once you have executed someone there is no coming back.
Once you've taken 10 years of someone's life there is no giving that back either. As technology progresses the cost of recording evidence will go down which will help convict and prove the innocence of people.
> As technology progresses the cost of recording evidence will go down which will help convict and prove the innocence of people.
Minority Report is a counterfactual to this claim. The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed. Technology is a tool to extend one’s grasp to meet one’s reach, and vice versa, and is a tool that serves power. Those with power are best able to bend tools to their ends, just or unjust.
> It is the duty of the poor to support and sustain the rich in their power and idleness. In doing so, they have to work before the laws' majestic equality, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
Sure, some people might say that. I’d say that’s also quite cruel, and that there might be a third option that’s better than both.
Many dealers and addicts who are involved in extremely violent crimes are plead down to drug crimes after having been charged with both drug and violent crimes.
https://www.courts.nh.gov/sites/g/files/ehbemt471/files/docu...
>"On December 24, 2016, three Manchester police officers responded to an apartment following a report of a domestic dispute. The report was made by the mother of Ashley Arbogast, who advised that her daughter had called her Stating that her boyfriend had broken her arm during an argument."
Ok, but we should punish people for the crimes they're convicted of, not the crimes we've decided for ourselves they committed.
He is being punished for what he was convicted of; whether you agree with the penalty or not. If we do change the penalties, the convictions will change too.
I just wanted to point out that there is clear evidence that this individual was involved in at least one violent act, as is often the case with ‘non-violent drug convicts’.
Any yet there are coke-cola machines everywhere including inside police stations which kills more people each year.
And only one company is allowed to import the specific leaves/material (coca leafs). The government restricts everyone from importing them unless it's one of the biggest companies in the world.
He didn't kill anyone, unless he misrepresented the product and the customer used the product incorrectly and died as a result. Even then there's argument for tainted product and considering the persecution around the industry, I as a juror would acquit any charge reliant on that as the underlying logic. Even then, if I foresaw more than 12 years sentence for anyone I would acquit and jury nullify on human rights grounds. Humans must be free. The big moral failure of modern states is their lack of unmolested opt-out.
People like big strong dominating government until it gets replaced with the Mormon church, or a Caliphate, then nooo it's not statesmanship but just religion. (Hint: all states are religions, and codes are religious texts. What do freedom of religion and freedom of association mean in this context, instead of the toothless safe-for-government one you're used to thinking of it in?)
"Non-violent drug crimes" brings to mind hippies selling weed or mushrooms. But this guy was selling carfentanil. I'm not saying he's to blame for the opioid crisis turning street people into shambling zombies, clogging emergency services with overdoses, and causing death, but he certainly played a part.