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Nothing cruel and unusual about sending away a double murdering MS-13 member for life, even if he was just 20 at the time, court rules

A federal appeals court today upheld local MS-13 enforcer Edwin "Sangriento" Gonzalez's sentence of life without parole for helping to murder two teens in East Boston for the sin of belonging to a rival gang by stabbing them dozens of times.

The US Court of Appeals for the First District in Boston rejected the assertion by Gonzalez's attorney that the sentence is cruel and unusual because Gonzalez was just 20 at the time of the murders of Wilson Martinez, 15, in September, 2015, and Cristofer Perez de la Cruz, 16, in January, 2016.

The Supreme Court has ruled that people convicted of murders when they are 17 or younger have a right to a separate hearing on whether they should be sent away without parole; the appeals court said it was not about to try to raise that age to 20.

The appeals court said that, to start, the Supreme Court rulings only applied to cases where life without parole is mandatory, not discretionary, as in the case of Gonazlez - who won the gang nickname "Sangriento," or "Bloody" after the two murders, in which he led the two to their slaughters by convincing them they were about to meet girls, instead of MS-13 members armed with knives, rocks and guns.

But in any case, the court rejected the Gonzalez argument to revise the age upward to 21 because of scientific research on the immaturity of the adolescent and young-adult brain, that a 20-year-old just doesn't have the properly wired brain to distinguish between what is right and partaking in stabbings so brutal that one piece of evidence was a knife point nicked off when it hit one of the victim's bones.

The Court drew the line at eighteen not because that age marked the apotheosis of full-scale physiological development but, rather, because it represented "the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood."

For example, the court said, 18-year-olds can vote. And the appellate judges continued that Gonzalez's lawyer failed to show that the science of maturing brains had "seismically" changed since the Supreme Court rulings in 2005 and 2017.

The lack of evidence suggesting a breakthrough confirms what is likely an inconvenient truth from the defendant's standpoint: even though he can point to recent scholarship about the immaturity of the eighteen to twenty-year-old brain, he has failed to identify the kind of scientific breakthrough that itself might compel an extension of Miller, given the more holistic analysis that the Eighth Amendment demands.

The court also rejected the argument that the sentence should be overturned because the jury in the case actually found Gonzalez guilty of second-degree, rather than first-degree murder, and that it was the judge in the case who concluded that Gonzalez met the criteria for being imprisoned until his own death. Now 25, he is currently an inmate at a federal prison in Atwater, CA.

The court said that is something a judge in federal court is allowed to do.

A sentencing court, faced with the question of whether a murder should be deemed relevant conduct in a particular case, may make that determination based upon a preponderance of the evidence. ...

In the case at hand, the district court made the requisite findings, articulated its rationale, determined that the defendant had committed two murders that comprised relevant conduct, and correctly calculated the resultant base offense level.

Federal judges use a formula, based on a variety of considerations, including the severity of the crimes at issue and past convictions, to help determine a sentence.

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Comments

Back in your cell, scumbag.

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putting the accused to death is a merciful judgment in this case. life in prison is completely fair. he can still love, learn, forgive himself and others from jail--he just can't be free. it makes sense.

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"nice try΅, I guess, but they must have known it was hopeless.

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There's been a lot of that going around lately.

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If it's so terrible to lock up someone who was 20 when they committed murder, it must be really bad to kill people who were 15 and 16.

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Two wrongs don't make a right. We shouldn't inflict more punishment on someone than is necessary even if that person is really really bad; that's kind of the whole point of banning cruel and unusual punishment. And life imprisonment without parole is one of the most severe punishments you can do.

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If you don't want a severe punishment, don't murder people.

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n/t

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He's not in a cage to punish him; he's in a cage to protect the rest of us from him.

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There are multiple purposes to incarceration, including, yes, societal protection, but also punishment and deterrence.

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...the next time you hear an argument to lower the voting age to 16. The evidence used in this case according to Adam (typo included) is:

"For example, the court said, 18-year-olds can voted. "

Well, if 16 is too young to understand you are murdering someone, it is certainly too young to decide who will write the laws that might put you in jail. Seems like a tautology to me.

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In this instance, 18-year-olds voted to has cheeseburgers

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"For example" is not really being used here to mean "because." I seriously doubt that a sane judge would use it that way.

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