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submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

A Louisiana man has been sentenced to decades in prison and physical castration after pleading guilty to raping a teenager, according to a news release from the region's district attorney. 

Glenn Sullivan Sr., 54, pled guilty to four counts of second-degree rape on April 17. Authorities began investigating Sullivan in July 2022, when a young woman told the Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office that Sullivan had assaulted her multiple times when she was 14. The assaults resulted in pregnancy, and a DNA test confirmed that Sullivan was the father of the child, the district attorney's office said. Sullivan had also groomed the victim and threatened her and her family to prevent her from coming forward.

A 2008 Louisiana law says that men convicted of certain rape offenses may be sentenced to chemical castration. They can also elect to be physically castrated. Perrilloux said that Sullivan's plea requires he be physically castrated. The process will be carried out by the state's Department of Corrections, according to the law, but cannot be conducted more than a week before a person's prison sentence ends. This means Sullivan wouldn't be castrated until a week before the end of his 50-year sentence — when he would be more than 100 years old.

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[-] MagicShel@programming.dev 178 points 7 months ago

You know, I always used to say they ought to do this. But now, presented with the reality of it, I don't like it at all.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 57 points 7 months ago

I mean, when the state of Louisiana agrees, it's only reasonable to wonder if you're being the baddy.

[-] teamevil@lemmy.world 24 points 7 months ago

If I've learned anything after coming back to the south south (for some dumb reason) if you find yourself agreeing with the state you're definitely the baddy, with ☠️ and all.

[-] wide_eyed_stupid@lemmy.world 52 points 7 months ago

This is because we can be of two minds about these things. You can have a personal response to heinous acts, but still think the government ought to be better.

If some guy murders the murderer of their kid, I can absolutely 100% understand why, and I could even admit that I might do the same in their position. But I still think that as a society we should not lower ourselves to this standard and I will always be against the death penalty (especially because the system will never be perfect and I will never think it's worth killing even one innocent person by accident).

It's why vigilante justice is so easily understood, but it's still something we, as a society, shouldn't accept.

Emotional reactions can cloud our minds to these things. But I absolutely agree with you. This is horrendous and barbarous. I can still somewhat understand the "he deserves it for what he did"-response, but I'm absolutely against this on a deeper level.

[-] EatATaco@lemm.ee 15 points 7 months ago

I don't think it's about having "Two minds" about it, for as you describe it doesn't seem to fit the op, as he admitted that he wanted the state to do it.

Imo, this is about abstraction vs reality. In theory something might sound good, but when you are actually faced with the reality of it, it's a huge turnoff.

I'm reminded of the reddit story where a guy got into scat porn. It became a fetish so he hired a prostitute to shit in his mouth. On the day of the deed, once the shit hit his mouth, as he described it, he was "just a guy on the floor with shit in his mouth."

The shit is just hitting the OPs mouth right now.

[-] wide_eyed_stupid@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

Exactly right! I think we're actually agreed on this.

I just meant that OP used to say they ought to do it, which was his 'emotional' response to it, which is easier when it's in abstract. But in reality he doesn't like it at all when his government actually does it.

I'd never heard about that reddit story, but I think it's very apt, lol.

[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

It’s also why vigilante justice is far more sympathetic than government camps to torture prisoners.

I believe in bodily autonomy even for the worst people

[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 50 points 7 months ago

Yeah I get wanting it, but I don’t want a government that can do it. I also don’t think a reasonable interpretation of the bill of rights allows it. How is removing body parts not cruel and unusual punishment?

[-] androogee@midwest.social 0 points 7 months ago

Originalism is a cancer on the justice system.

[-] tearsintherain@leminal.space 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I suspect your downvotes might be from folks misunderstanding originalism.

"a legal philosophy that the words in documents and especially the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted as they were understood at the time they were written"

It's like religion stating everything we ever needed to know was written thousands of years ago and we should just apply it like we were living in those times.

https://www.vox.com/21497317/originalism-amy-coney-barrett-constitution-supreme-court

Barrett is a self-proclaimed originalist, embracing a theory of the Constitution that is also shared by at least two other sitting justices: Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

[-] FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

Religion and guns. It’s impossible to have any reasonable discussion with someone who thinks laws written in musket times should be enshrined forever. Originalists conveniently forget that the amendment process exists for an reason and absolutely hold us back.

[-] Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 7 months ago

laws written in musket times

I'm just going to point this out - at the time the 2nd amendment was written revolvers existed, as were weapons that would be the earliest forms of what are now automatic weapons, there was even a relatively quiet rifle that could fire 22 shots per reload. Honestly, right around then was a time of massive innovation in the firearms space, with a lot of ideas and designs not getting much traction for various reasons.

These were "musket times" not because muskets were the best guns out there, but because muskets were cheap and easy to produce and literally any gunsmith worth the title could produce and repair them easily. Making them cheap to deploy for a military and also the most common gun for a citizen-soldier. Those other guns had limited manufacturing, required specialized knowledge to fix and maintain, or were expensive enough that they weren't common. That last one I mentioned (the Girardoni air rifle) was notable for being carried by the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803 (it didn't see a lot of military use because they were expensive and also required specialized parts and knowledge to maintain - ten men with muskets is a better use of military spending than one guy with a Girardoni).

Claiming that any firearm more sophisticated than a musket was so far beyond belief that the authors of the 2nd amendment couldn't possibly have imagined it and therefore they shouldn't be counted as "arms" is ridiculous. And also the argument you could use to claim the 1st amendment shouldn't apply to anything other than in person speech or print works, not film or TV or radio or the internet because those are light-years farther outside the realm of things the authors of the 1st Amendment could have imagined than a rifle that can hold and fire 30 rounds.

should be enshrined forever.

No one says laws should be enshrined forever, there's a process for changing or revoking them. For regular legislation, passing further legislation is all that's needed. For the constitution, there's an amendment process baked into it that has been used several times and even originalists accept that those amendments were valid, they just assume that the words used mean what they meant when the amendment was written, not what they might mean today if there's a difference.

[-] BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 46 points 7 months ago

Any punishment with no possibility of back pedaling should never be given. The chances of permanently harming a potentially innocent person are far too great.

[-] cley_faye@lemmy.world 12 points 7 months ago

I'm usually on that side of the discussion, too, but this case doesn't leave much room for the guy to be innocent. Beyond the "pleading guilty" part, which is sometimes done strategically, he's the biological father of the kid a 14yo got. There is no shot at this being a mistake at this point.

I still agree though; if this should exist, it must require even stricter than the usual "beyond reasonable doubt" conditions or something.

[-] mojo_raisin@lemmy.world 31 points 7 months ago

The state having the power to do this is horrible. A victim doing this to their attacker with a butter knife on the other hand.

[-] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 3 points 7 months ago
[-] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago

Only because the victim will be traumatized by what they did. Other than that, it's a legitimate self-defense.

[-] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I agree. I do not like the purge

[-] Rakonat@lemmy.world 26 points 7 months ago

This falls squarely under no cruel and unusual punishment for me. Heinous as the crime was this is just inhuman.

[-] Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone -4 points 7 months ago

Well, in Louisiana, it might be the only way to get gender affirming care

/s

[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

That’s the other thing Louisiana may use this to further their unjust associations between trans people and pedos

[-] Scubus@sh.itjust.works 5 points 7 months ago

Yeah, chemical castration seems a lot better than the bull band treatment

this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
374 points (98.7% liked)

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