Rape? Hey, Stuff Happens.

The New York Times, of all things, has a story today about the violent rape of a young teenage girl (the defendant did not contest it and pleaded guilty), followed by a sentence of zero imprisonment.  But not to worry  —  the judge determined that incarceration for Mr. Nicey was “not appropriate” after “praying” about it.

I am not making this up.  Indeed, I don’t have to make it up, since it has a good deal in common with the notorious Stanford rape case about which that same NYT was kind enough to print my op-ed, see here.  Still, in the Stanford case, at least the rapist got a token jail sentence.  I guess New York is more “enlightened.”  Criminal justice reform, dontcha know.

Here are some of the details from the NYT:

The girl was 16 when Christopher Belter raped her, according to court documents. He was a teenager too, a student at an elite private boys school whose family’s western New York home was known as a party house where teens gathered to consume liquor, marijuana and Adderall.

Look, a little pot, a bit of Adderall  —  it’s harmless (or so we are relentlessly told).  Legalize it all!  Enough of this stodgy Puritanism.

This week, Mr. Belter, 20, was sentenced in the assault on M.M. and in sexual attacks on three other teenage girls. Facing up to eight years in prison, he was instead given eight years’ probation by a judge who said he had “agonized” over the decision.

Yes, there were three others.  But the judge agonized, so not to worry.

“I’m not ashamed to say that I actually prayed over what is the appropriate sentence in this case because there was great pain,” the judge, Matthew J. Murphy III of Niagara, N.Y., County Court, said at Mr. Belter’s sentencing on Tuesday…“There was great harm. There were multiple crimes committed in the case.”

Still, the judge continued, “It seems to me that a sentence that involves incarceration or partial incarceration isn’t appropriate.” He told Mr. Belter, who must register as a sex offender, the probation would be “like a sword hanging” over his head for the next eight years. He offered no further explanation for why the sentence did not include prison time.

God forbid that Mr. Belter be given something resembling an incentive not to do it again  —  at least not to do it again for eight years.  I guess he can resume when he’s in his late twenties.  He should still have a good engine then, as it were.

Steven M. Cohen, a lawyer for M.M., said late Wednesday that M.M. was “deeply disappointed” by Judge Murphy’s decision….“My client threw up in the ladies room following the sentencing…”

But, as the sentencing reform crowd always reminds us, she’ll get over it!  (This the same crew that was bellowing yesterday and will be bellowing tomorrow about how they’re the ones who care about violence against women).

The most astonishing, and disgusting, part of the story is buried many column inches down:

After initially being accused of more serious crimes in the four attacks, the younger Mr. Belter resolved the charges [two years ago] by agreeing in 2019 to plead guilty to third-degree rape, attempted sexual abuse and two misdemeanors, court filings show.

A different judge gave Mr. Belter, who was 16 and 17 at the time of his crimes, an interim sentence of two years’ probation. The sentence offered him the chance, if he met its terms, of being treated as a youthful offender when his final sentence was decided — reducing, or even eliminating, any potential prison term and allowing him to avoid registering as a sex offender.

In explaining the sentence at the time, according to court records, the judge, expressed doubts about whether Mr. Belter could abide by its conditions. Her skepticism turned out to be warranted.

So the rapist was a repeat customer.  He was given the much-fabled “second chance”  —  a chance he had done nothing to earn  —  and, as is so often the case with criminals given unearned leniency, cashed in at the expense of the next victim.

And here’s the kicker:

Judge Murphy explicitly cited Mr. Belter’s violation of [one of the terms in the earlier, probationary sentence] in [his] decision, which made the sentence handed down Tuesday especially galling to Mr. Cohen.

“There were absolutely no consequences” for Mr. Belter’s violations of the earlier probation terms, Mr. Cohen said. That, he added, gave him little confidence Mr. Belter “would suffer any consequences at all for future violations of the terms of probation.”

We are often told by the sentencing reform crowd that leniency will make us safer.  I have two observations.  First, this is just flat-out false.  Over the last five or six years, as the sentencing reform agenda has gained more subscription around the country, the murder rate has surged like never before, and the number of murders is thousands above what it was over the same period before the reform agenda got traction, see this table.  And most murder victims are black  —  a fact the reformers very much like to keep behind the curtain.

My second observation is nastier but unavoidable at this point.  It’s not just that the sentencing reform folks aren’t telling the truth when they say that we’ll be safer with their agenda.  It’s that they don’t care whether we’re safer or not.  Their program is not about safety and never was.  It’s about pushing their view that America (make that “Amerika”) is an uncaring, punitive country of nativist wahoos, and that what’s needed is to correct its vicious injustices no matter what the price.  If the price is that more blood is to run in the streets  —  or more high school girls get raped without consequence  —  so be it.

For its centuries of sinfulness, Amerika has it coming.  This is what they (or those of them who are driving the ideological train) actually think, and it’s time to say so out loud.

8 Responses

  1. Brett Miler says:

    Hi Bill – Brett Miler here. I know that there will be at least some probably justified outrage over this decision that you tapped into (at least in part because of this defendant’s background – White, priviliged). I would just like to try to correct two errors in your post. 1. You implied that the rapist claimed another victim by the original interim probation – he only violated probation by watching pornography and thus there was no “next victim” as you claimed. 2. Your claim that the murder rate “has surged like never before” is probably inaccurate. The chart shows a murder rate of 4.4 in 2014 and then went up and down before arriving at a murder rate of 5.0 in 2019. I am probably unfashionable among this crowd but I just view incarceration as a very negative experience that should be avoided by trying to change people’s lives and giving them every possible chance to change before using prison – using prison as a solution to crime seems to deprive individuals of hope and direction to become positive and productive members of society. Thank you for listening to what I have to say. Brett Miler

    • Bill Otis says:

      Thanks for your engagement. Let me try to respond to a few points.

      — ” I know that there will be at least some probably justified outrage over this decision that you tapped into (at least in part because of this defendant’s background – White, priviliged).”

      I noted his background solely because it was in the news story, but it has nothing to do with his crime or my assessment of it. White, black or brown; rich, poor, or middle class — we all have a conscience, and anyone with a conscience knows you don’t violently rape school children. And if you DON’T have a conscience, the case for your incarceration is just that much stronger.

      — “You implied that the rapist claimed another victim by the original interim probation – he only violated probation by watching pornography and thus there was no “next victim” as you claimed. ”

      As my friend Prof. Paul Cassell has written about extensively, porn is not a victimless crime. There is wide variation in the extent of victimization (taking and marketing pictures of a nude but willing 17 year-old is a different matter from taking and marketing pictures of a 5 year-old being forced to have sex with a horse). Some porn is also of rape and things even worse than rape. But you are correct to the extent that I failed to specify (because I don’t know) what kind of porn, or other prohibited behavior, Mr. Belter was into. One way or another, though, he was given a second chance and decided that he would do what he wanted to anyway.

      — “Your claim that the murder rate “has surged like never before” is probably inaccurate. The chart shows a murder rate of 4.4 in 2014 and then went up and down before arriving at a murder rate of 5.0 in 2019. ”

      I would just rely on the chart itself. It shows that in the five years after 2014, when the “progressive” agenda began to make considerable headway, we had about 10,000 more murders than in the five years before. I would also not that the chart does not include data for 2020 or for this year, when (1) the “progressive” agenda has continued to advance, and (2) the rate of increase in murder — 30% I believe — was the highest it’s been since the FBI has been keeping track.

      — ” I just view incarceration as a very negative experience that should be avoided by trying to change people’s lives and giving them every possible chance to change before using prison…”

      Once a person has become an adult, it is not up to the rest of us to change his life. It is up to him to conform himself to law, to abide by normal standards of civilized behavior, and at the minimum not to violate teenage girls with force and against their will. If adult males are unwilling to do that, then (a) they deserve prison, and (2) prison will at least keep them out of children’s bedrooms for the period of their incarceration.

      • Brett Miler says:

        Hi Bill – Thanks for replying to my post. I just think that a more understanding and compassionate approach to human beings and realizing that we are all capable of making mistakes and that some people have more of a genetic/familial predisposition to crime can be more helpful to them and to ourselves as we can learn to become more forgiving and compassionate. I know that you were a former AUSA and that you associate thinking like mine with the crime spike in the Sixties and Seventies you so often warn us about but it just seems to me that if we can adopt a more compassionate approach that can help more individuals grow from their mistakes and lead positive lives we will be safer than the approach you advocate – a scolding, fear-mongering. I just feel like you, Kent, and Mike like to scare people and a more understanding approach may better help us all – thank you for reading my posts. I enjoy reading what you have to say even if I think it is too harsh or unforgiving. Brett Miler

        • Please quote something I have written that would support an inference that I “like to scare people.”

          • Brett Miler says:

            Hi Kent –
            I was just commenting that the general tone here seems to be one of making people afraid of shortening sentences and makes people think that if we take action to reduce prison population, more crime will result. It just seems to me to be a lack of acknowledgement that we have probably reached a point of too much prison and we probably need to reduce sentences. I was not saying that you “like to scare people” specifically – it was just a general observation of the tone of the posts here and the fact that you tend to support efforts for more prison and longer sentences by inferring that if sentences are shorter, more crime will occur thus scaring the general public.
            Brett Miler

          • First, you did specifically say that each of the three of us — Bill, Mike, and I — like to scare people. There is not much point denying that you did, when it is right there in the thread for everyone to see.

            Second, your disagreement with us on a matter of policy is not a logically valid basis for inferring an improper motive for our position. You have not provided any reason to conclude that we are not warning the public of what we believe to be a genuine danger. The tactic of impugning people’s motives rather than challenging their position on the merits has, unfortunately, become regrettably common in public discussion.

            If you want to comment on tone, then comment on tone. And since each of our bloggers has his own style, such comments should be more specifically directed.

            Finally, there really is not much doubt that shorter sentences for violent criminals will result in more violent crimes. Criminals are largely incapacitated, as least as to targets outside the walls, during the time they are in prison, and given the high rate of recidivism reducing that time will inevitably increase the number of crimes committed. Deterrence may be debatable, but incapacitation is not.

  2. Charles Andrews says:

    I’m confused by the connection between this sentence and criminal justice reform. It does not appear to be the result of either an ameliorative change in the law or the actions of the district attorney. Rather it seems like another example of the racism that is a basic part of the criminal justice system. Does anyone really think a poor black defendant would have gotten this sentence.

    • Bill Otis says:

      “I’m confused by the connection between this sentence and criminal justice reform. It does not appear to be the result of either an ameliorative change in the law or the actions of the district attorney.”

      At its base, it is, like the engine of criminal justice “reform,” a product of an unthinking and unserious impulse toward leniency, an impulse that overlooks the offender’s culpability and devalues the victim.

      “Rather it seems like another example of the racism that is a basic part of the criminal justice system. Does anyone really think a poor black defendant would have gotten this sentence.”

      Thank you for putting your finger on one of the key factors that has led me for many years to advocate binding sentencing guidelines, to wit, that sentencing should look more to the characteristics of the offense and less to the characteristics of the offender.