CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

One man confesses to raping a 7-year-old girl countless times and
gets 60 days in jail from a Vermont judge who no longer "believes" in
punishment. Another man, a quadriplegic in D.C., basically gets a
death sentence for getting caught with a single marijuana joint.
There's much to be said for judicial discretion, but this point
spread is ridiculous. There no longer seems to be any national - or
rational - standard in matters of crime and punishment.

In September 2004, D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Retchin sentenced
27-year-old Johnathan Magbie to 10 days in the D.C. Jail for his
first offense, a misdemeanor. Magbie, who was paralyzed from the neck
down in a drunken driving accident when he was 4, never made it out alive.

During a four-day period, Magbie - who had a tracheotomy, a pulmonary
pacemaker, and required a ventilator to breathe at night and smoked
pot to ease the pain of a bone infection - was allegedly parked
overnight in a locked infirmary cell. He could not reach the
emergency button to call for help. While in the District's custody
for less than a week, he reportedly became dehydrated, contracted
pneumonia and died during an acute respiratory crisis.

"I'm not saying he shouldn't have been punished," his mother, said
Mary Scott. "I just don't think it should have cost him his life."

Last fall, she filed a $100 million lawsuit against the city for
negligence. Seeing as Magbie weighed 130 pounds when he went to jail,
and only 90 pounds when he died, she has a pretty good case.

The real crime here is that neither the clueless judge, the supremely
inattentive corrections officers or the equally incompetent health
care workers at Greater Southeast Community Hospital have yet been
punished for their part in Magbie's untimely and unnecessary death.