"No Prison Time for … Day-Care Provider Who Tried to Hang Toddler"

Minnesota state judge Jay Quam took the view that her actions stemmed from a "perfect storm of factors unlikely to ever be repeated."

So reports Paul Walsh (Minneapolis Star-Tribune); the sentence was 10 years of probation, with credit for the 20 months she spent in jail before trial:

A judge pointed to a "perfect storm" of circumstances Monday when he spared prison for a Minneapolis home day-care operator who attempted to hang a toddler in the basement before fleeing in her minivan and leaving a trail of mayhem, seriously injuring two people.

Nataliia Karia, 43, abandoned a possible insanity defense and pleaded guilty in February to attempted murder in connection with the hanging of the boy from a noose ….

The 16-month-old survived after a parent dropping off a child intervened and took the noose from the boy's neck.

Karia also admitted before Hennepin County District Judge Jay Quam to third-degree assault for striking a pedestrian, another driver and a bicyclist as she fled in her minivan. She was snatched from a Minneapolis freeway overpass, ready to jump, and taken into custody….

In deciding against prison time, Quam agreed with the assessment by doctors that Karia was "a low risk" to reoffend. He called her actions "the perfect storm of factors unlikely to ever be repeated." …

Karia, who fought back tears and low sobs throughout the hearing, read a statement in Russian spelling out in great detail the abuses she alleges her husband inflicted upon her and her children since they arrived to the United States from Ukraine in 2006. She said he hit and threatened to kill her, drove the family into financial ruin, forced her to work despite her psychological struggles and prevented her from getting medical attention.

Comments

[damikesc]

Sorry, but punishment is justified here.

I don't care how rough her life is. She tried to kill a toddler and injured two others.

People despise mandatory-minimums, but seem to forget WHY they came to be in the first place.

[Krayt]

If she had succeeded in killing the toddler, would they reduce her sentence massively, also because it was a perfect storm of conditions unlikely to be repeated?

[EscherEnigma]

Probably not. The "attempted" part does change things a lot.

[RoyMo]

Thirty years ago I heard a stand up comedian do a routine on attempted murder and how it wasn't a good idea to reward incompetence. I remember that the argument was rather sophisticated, he noted that as much as he thought incompetence should be punished in itself, it would be wrong to create a further incentive for successful murder.

[David Nieporent]

"Attempted murder?" Now honestly, what is that? Did they ever give anyone a Nobel prize for "attempted chemistry?"

[Lee Moore]

If it's a joke, it went over my head I'm afraid. They tend to hand out Nobel Prizes for successful efforts rather than unsuccessful ones. In the sciences, I mean.

But life is full of failed attempts. The President that we most recently avoided failed the DC Bar exam. But that doesn't mean she didn't attempt it. She attempted it and failed. Come to think of it she made an attempt at becoming President. Twice. And failed twice.

[RoyMo]

Yes, but society tends to encourage attempts to solve physics problems.

Besides the vast majority of murders do not, contra Poirot, Fletcher, et al., involve novelty. If a physicist keeps failing to replicate Galileo's inclined plane or a chemist can't calculate the equivalence point on a titration curve they tend to get a bad grade in the lab.

[Longtobefree]

The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to United States President Barack Obama for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".

[Sarcastr0]

Man, never thought I'd see the day when the Internet missed a Simpsons reference.

[David Nieporent]

Man, never thought I'd see the day when the Internet missed a Simpsons reference.

Yeah; am I just getting old?

[Lee Moore]

You probably are. But in this case, although I quite enjoy the Simpsons I've probably seen less than 5% of the shows, so the occasional joke will have passed me by.

I'd do a lot better with Two and A Half Men.

[RoyMo]

That is a very brave admission, I commend you for your honesty.

[less lean eel son]

Too me a minute to place it, but I read it in the voice of Kelsey grammar, so I realised it was SSBob, (and not Frasier).

And yikes, no wonder a 2.5 men fan wouldn't recognize a joke. Hopefully wouldn't pass a bar exam himself either...

[Ron]

I know a person who the court let get away with murder and he then tried a couple more times. NO one knows where he is today and how many more times he's tried and or succeeded.

[Malvolio]

I ask you, what is "attempted" murder? Do they give the Nobel Prize for "attempted" chemistry?

[Bob from Ohio]

"People despise mandatory-minimums, but seem to forget WHY they came to be in the first place."

Exactly. People got tired of "bleeding heart" judges letting criminals off with slaps on wrists.

We got crime levels down so now we are forgetting how we got the levels down in the first place.

[jdgalt1]

Mandatory minimums weren't created to solve that problem. They were created to solve the "problem" (from the point of view of certain fanatical Feds) that states were sentencing people a lot longer for things like robbery and murder than for offenses such as selling drugs that the Feds decreed to be worse crimes.

And they're an insult to judges and juries, who should be left to determine sentences for themselves. (Though this judge obviously isn't good enough at it, and I would support an effort to recall or impeach him.)

[damikesc]

jd, there were plenty of issues of judges giving absurdly lenient sentences for crimes as well.

I dislike mandatory-minimums, but judges seem all too willing to offer nothing sentences for rather serious crimes, largely because those crimes are so unlikely to impact them directly.

If they cannot be trusted to administer justice, then other options will be pursued.

[AmosArch]

Always the man's fault of course. I wonder if we're going to see the same nationwide outrage over this as we saw for guys who bang drunk girls and get off.

[gormadoc]

Why bang drunk girls if you can't get off?

[theobromophile]

I ache for women who find themselves ensnared by master manipulators whom no one saw coming, but -- eventually, adults understand that having these abusive people in their lives hurts everyone around them, too.

You're a woman who dates and marries an abuser? You're giving him access to your nieces and nephews, enabling him to bully your parents when they are older, or, in these cases, breaking you to the point where you hurt other people or other people need to stage an intervention to save you.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Female privilege. Statistics show that women are sentenced to less time for the same crimes as men.

[rsteinmetz]

Men make up 49 % of the population but represent 86% of federal prisoners. There must be discrimination in the criminal justice system.

[FlameCCT]

Disparate impact!!!

[EscherEnigma]

To a degree, sure. Depends on your view of the "role" of prisons/jails for how unjust it is though.

If they are there to punish, then men and women should obviously get the same punishment for comparable crimes.

If they are there to improve public safety by locking up people that are "dangerous", then lesser prison sentences for women are easily justified.

If they are there to "rehabilitate" then what matters isn't the crime but the person and what they "need" to become a "healthy well-adjusted citizen", and that's vague as shit so you can justify anything.

So it really depends on what the role of prisons is, and that's something society, as a whole, has never been able to agree on.

[AmosArch]

Either whats good for the goose is good for the gander or society finally admits that this notion of absolute equality in anything besides the eyes of God or whatever entity progs believe is decreeing all the strange rituals they follow is probably bunk. No more of this 'have your cake and eat it too' hypocrisy where STRANNNNNNG INDEPENDENT WOMEN need to be constantly coddled and taken care of by the government while everyone is constantly being reminded and forced to proclaim by corporate commercials and government laws how STRAAAANG and INDEPENDENT they are.

[Sarcastr0]

Good lord.

[EscherEnigma]

So you want a strict "Justice is about punishment" model, eh? Sounds good. Next step, convincing everyone else that your preferred model is the best one.

Until then, we're stuck with the ambiguous mix of rehabilitation/public safety/punishment where that kind of hard-line stance rarely works.

[AmosArch]

Nope, its a "fairness" model. Punish women where you'd punish men. Rehabilitate women where you'd rehabilitate men. No legislation or government funds used directly or indirectly to overtly help one sex over the other. We don't need a VAWA how about a (anti) Violence against Everyone Act? Also no end runs around the spirit of equality. No proclaiming everybody must meet the same standards in the military and then lowering them to get enough women on a unit.

No more games where you pass laws that themselves appear to be fair but disproportionately preoccupy themselves with the concerns and neuroses of one group, which is how much of Western legal code becomes militantly feminist in the first place. Society is reformed to care as much about women as they do about men...ie not very much at all.

Or you can admit that men and women are not identical down the the last gluon and stop pushing this dogma down our throats.

[Lee Moore]

You are arguing for "consistency" which is merely a tool that the patriarchy uses to keep women in chains. We will hold you to the standard of consistency because you are an oppressor. But the oppressed need not recognise any such limitation.

[EscherEnigma]

Go for it. Persuade enough folk and it'll become law.

[Lee Moore]

this notion of absolute equality in anything besides the eyes of God ..... is probably bunk.

In fact absolute equality is a useful (and practical) political concept, in the sense of "equal liberty."
The misapprehension that rights clash with each other and so we have to do difficult balancing acts to see how much of A's rights we need to sacrifice to give a few more rights to B is resolved by the concept of "equal liberty."

Liberty consists in the obligation of everyone to allow everyone else to do their thing without interference (unless invited.) Since my thing and your thing might clash, we need our things to retreat - equally - until they no longer clash. And the simple rule is that I can have as much liberty as you have, and we can keep expanding the sphere of our liberty as far as we like, so long as we have it equally.

But if my liberty is extended beyond the point where you can have equal liberty, we've gone too far.

[AmosArch]

The approaches of absolute equality, maximal individual liberty, and understanding biological reality all have merits beyond the approach we're taking these days which is basically state sponsored misandry but the real kick in the pants is that the propaganda inverts the reality of the situation. If men are going to be second class citizens, at least it should be told to them plainly.

http://www.ibdna.com/paternity-testin.....in-france/

[NToJ]

Yea but they only earn .80 on the dollar for penal labor.

[TwelveInchPianist]

And yet, it takes about 4 minutes of penal labor to accomplish the same task as 12 hours of vaginal labor.

[Sarcastr0]

Statistics do show that. Liberals would all agree. The new hotness is how the patriarchy creates male fragility. Yeah, I'm rolling my eyes a bit too.

But I dunno if we should drag that up in this particular anecdote. Welp, too late, lol!

[AmosArch]

Statistics show people in their 90s die at a much higher rate from age related diseases than people in their 20s. Therefore society must at best harbor an unconscious bias against providing health care for the elderly vs young adults or at worse be actively conspiring against the elderly causing this higher death rate. This bias is 100% responsible for the entire discrepancy or at least consumes the lion share of responsibility to the point that we don't care about any other factor. Also it is to blame for every pairwise comparison where an old person died and their respective young person didn't . Don't worry, we normalized by income and lifestyle.

[Sarcastr0]

What even is this analogy?

Sometimes correlation can mean causation without every time correlation meaning causation.
Sometimes social biases can be an intermediate cause without every time social bias being an intermediate cause.

[EscherEnigma]

Almost two years already served, unlikely to re-offend, and only *attempted* murder?

Yeah, I can see how the judge let her off easy.

That said, it's annoyingly difficult to find data on average prison sentences. I was able to find data on average prison time served for murder... From 1992 (7 years, if you're curious).

But I was unable to quickly find data to see how this sentence compared to the norm for attempted murder, making it difficult for me to judge how easy she really got off. The '92 data for *successful* murder implies (to me) that her sentence isn't that out-of-line, but that's some pretty old data.

[Bob from Ohio]

"unlikely to re-offend"

Why?

[Rigelsen]

Apparently the judge believes women are lesser creatures who are incapable of malevolent action unless somehow forced by circumstance or others. And, at least in the case of women, criminal justice does not include punishment.

The wages of patriarchy.

[RoyMo]

Well he was appointed by Tim Pawlenty, so Party of Walmart and all that.

[Cloudbuster]

As I see it, any woman who would hang a toddler, for any reason at all, is too dangerous to be allowed free. There's no convincing me that she won't take her unrelated anger out on the next poor innocent to stray into her path.

[James Pollock]

At which point they hit her with the probation violation, on top of whatever sentence goes with the new offense, and I'm going to guess that one of the conditions of the probation is "no being around other peoples' kids."

[David Bremer]

I'm going to guess that one of the conditions of the probation is "no being around other peoples' kids."

Indeed. In fact, I believe one of the conditions is not being around her own kids.

[Harvey Mosley]

And if she is successful the next time she attempts to murder a toddler no biggie.

[EscherEnigma]

That'd be the professional assessment of the doctors, the full details of which I am not privvy to.

[Lee Moore]

I don't claim to be privy to the details of the professional assessment of the doctors, but I am privy to the privy opinions of a friend of mind who is a shrink dealing mostly with criminals and drug addicts. He is, as you might expect, not 100% sane himself.

Nevertheless, he is pretty professional about his work and his considered opinion of those of his fellow shrinks that deal in medical assessments for court purposes is that roughly 95% of them are whores, pure and simple. They will write whatever the lawyer paying them wants to write. And defend it on their hind legs in open court.

Some judges understand this. Some don't. And some of those who do understand are just happy to go along with an opinion they like, even though they know it's baloney.

[James Pollock]

So, it's your opinion that the court-ordered shrink thought the judge wanted to hear that this chick was not dangerous, so that's what the report said?

[JimM47]

You would have to make an individual request to the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission in order to see what sentences are actually imposed.

What is easy is determining the presumptive sentence.The presumptive sentence for a person with a criminal history score of 0 and no custody enhancement who commits an attempted offense with a severity level of 11, is 153 months, consisting of 102 months executed and 51 months on conditional release.

The sentencing judge imposed a sentence within the guidelines, but also gave a downward dispositional departure, meaning that the sentence is stayed, permitting a probationary sentence and a term of local confinement.

It looks like the defendant in this case served 602 actual days (or 902 days with good time credit) and will serve another 365 days (243 days actual) in local confinement.

So, if I haven't screwed up my quick calculations, she will serve approximately 27 months local confinement under her stayed sentence. That's around a quarter of what she would have served in a state correctional facility under the presumptive executed sentence. And it is about half of what she would have served if she had been allowed to plea to the #2 charge.

The sentencing judge appears to have given the defendant a top-of-the-box term of confinement. Meaning that if her probation was ever revoked, she could serve 183 months, which is 20 months more executed and 10 months more conditional release than the presumptive sentence.

[jdgalt1]

It doesn't matter whether a particular criminal is likely to re-offend. The purpose of imprisonment is to deter tomorrow's potential offense from taking place. Letting sympathetic defendants off defeats that purpose, and gives those would-be offenders who expect similar lenience themselves a green light to go ahead and kill.

Some of them will, and their victims' blood is on Judge Quam's hands.

[James Pollock]

"The purpose of imprisonment is to deter tomorrow's potential offense from taking place."

Well, A purpose of imprisonment is deterrence, yes. The others are rehabilitation punishment, and prevention of other crime.

I'll admit I have limited experience talking with criminals about crime. But, in that experience, "I didn't think I'd get caught" comes up. "I was so high I didn't even care about getting punished if I got caught" comes up. "There was this one time when somebody got a really light sentence and I thought that's what I'd get" does not. YMMV, obviously, and apparently does.

[EscherEnigma]

The purpose of imprisonment is to deter tomorrow's potential offense from taking place.

At best partially true. Deterrence is a purpose of imprisonment, sure, but it's a far cry from the

[MP]

This is an unlikely post for the Conspiracy. Touched a nerve?

[Sarcastr0]

Shouldn't it have?

[Bob from Ohio]

Does Minnesota have judicial recall? Jay Quam seems like a perfect candidate.

[Harvey Mosley]

This is how you get vigilante justice.

[Eddy]

I can see the credit for time served being equivalent to an actual prison sentence, but maybe add a little bit on top of that?

Then again, it could be that I'm missing something by way of mitigation which would make a term of less than two years be reasonable. I can't always rely on a summary of what I imagine would be a lengthy, well-documented proceeding.

[MonitorsMost]

As far as I know, pre-trial detention is always counted toward the sentence post-conviction.

It looks odd, but I can't immediately say the sentence was wrong. Sure seems like some form of psychotic break happened and I'm a pretty firm believer in mens rea being a very important factor in culpability. I hope the judge is right.

[Pettifogger]

One of the things the legal system must do is be seen to dispense justice. This is the second time in recent weeks that thought has come to me. If people lose confidence that the legal system will dispense justice, bad things will happen. Vigilantism is likely to be only part of it.

[David Bremer]

I happen to know Judge Quam personally. I wouldn't call him a friend, but have worked on bar matters with him in the past and certainly have conversations with him at various bar functions.

I don't know and can't comment on the specifics of the case; however, I will, to the extent I know him, vouch for Judge Quam's judicial fitness and fair evaluation of cases before him. While I'm sure we all--with our limited knowledge--were surprised by the sentence (and had we been on the bench, we all may have decided differently). But I wouldn't be so quick to pick up the torches and pitchforks here.

When he is quoted as saying this is the most difficult case he has decided, I trust that it was and that there was far more to the story than the relatively quick blurb in the Star Tribune.

[Bob from Ohio]

"When he is quoted as saying this is the most difficult case he has decided, I trust that it was "

Boo freaking hoo.

A 16 month child was strung up and would be dead except for a lucky intervention.

He screwed up and should resign.

[PublicName5]

Maybe that's how they built character in the old world.

[ActualRightWingPatriot]

Apparently this judge, who is graduated from University of MinnesoTTTa, isn't so lenient when it's a white male defendant.

http://www.startribune.com/jud.....303492751/

[David Bremer]

First, check the U.S. News & Word Report again. And, having read many of your posts, I also got a chuckle out of you looking down at any law school.

Second, do you think that maybe there's a big difference between (a) someone without a prior record who immediately reported her act to another parent, plead guilty, was suicidal is being treated, and is quite remorseful; and (b) a guy with a lengthy criminal record, knowingly drove drunk, without a license or insurance, who then openly posted the aftermath of his acts on Facebook, with a joke about the damage it did to his car?

[QuantumBoxCat]

"No Prison Time for ...."

"...with credit for the 20 months she spent in jail before trial."

Kind of razor thin there with the word choice, whoever opted for that headline. Assuming the latter refers to time spent in a county "jail" and the former refers to a sentence of incarceration in a "prison," then I guess both statements are accurate. But the woman was incarcerated as a result of her conduct, no matter what turn-of-phrase one uses to frame this as a soft-on-crime judge.

[Harvey Mosley]

Actually she was incarcerated because she either could not convince the judge to give her bail or she couldn't afford the bail. If she had been found not guilty she would have still served the time in jail. And for attempted murder of a defenseless child left in her care she shouldn't ever be free.

[QuantumBoxCat]

What happened that put her in the position of needing to convince a judge to grant (or lower) bail?

[Harvey Mosley]

She was charged with a crime. But if she had been found not guilty she would have still served the jail time before the trial was over. Being guilty just meant that she got credit for what would have been an injustice for an innocent person in her position.

[RoyMo]

A detail somewhat elided in the current version of the story elaborates on this portion of the article:

Sabir said he heard a baby crying in the basement and ran downstairs to find the child hanging from a noose made of girls' tights tied to an overhead pipe. He grabbed the child and ran out of the house.

An earlier story on the case posted during the trial says:

"Sabir, who had placed his daughter in day care with Karia months before and lived next door, testified Wednesday that he was dropping his daughter off when Karia opened the door and said: "Call the police. Look what I have done."

This puts a somewhat different spin on things.

[Harvey Mosley]

How? Would this have made a difference if the child had died or would the child still have died?

[AmosArch]

If Brock Turner fessed up, everything would be peachy and the university coeds would be marching for a sentence reduction rather than his head.

[Harvey Mosley]

Please tell me that was sarcasm.

[Michael Cook]

Complicating the fuzzy line between attempted murder and successful murder is the ever-improving emergency care available almost everywhere. Years ago I happened to be escorting a jail inmate to a hospital ER for evaluation of mysterious symptoms of the kind that people in custody frequently complain about.

We were just sitting down for the customary two hour wait when almost directly outside the glass doors one street person shot another street person in the chest with a .45 pistol. The victim had the presence of mind to stagger far enough towards the entrance that the automatic sliding doors cycled and he could fall through!

The best medical care on the planet (equal to the best, anyhow) ran to him. He was snatched back from the jaws of death in front of our eyes. The perp, who was arrested almost immediately, was saved from Murder 1, or 2, or manslaughter. He likely did get some prison time.

In Seattle today the downtown courts are dying an accelerating slow death because jurors are literally afraid to come in for jury duty. Aggressive panhandling is disturbing enough, but the feces, the broken needles, the lewd displays and frequent public violence are inescapable. Seattle police rarely bother to arrest street folks for simple assaults, even if the cops witness them, because city prosecutors don't charge the homeless (they are victims of society I guess.)

[James Pollock]

25 years ago I lived in "Seattle". In truth, I almost never set foot west of the lake, because the jobs were on the east side of the lake.

A few hours south, in Portland, about half of all arrests made by the Portland Police Bureau are of homeless people.

[James Pollock]

This shouldn't be too hard to understand for anyone in the Party of Tax Cuts.

If the existing time in jail is sufficient to assure that this lady won't be stringing up little Bobby and Susie (plus the publicity from the event and trial cutting into the potential clientele), then feeding, clothing, and housing her at taxpayer expense is a waste of government funds. We can use that money instead fo feed, clothe, and house some SOB who got caught with a couple of roaches in his car ashtray.

Cutting taxes means cutting spending, and best first place to cut spending is cutting wasteful spending.

[Harvey Mosley]

I have expressed my sentiments in the past on the drug war. I think ALL drugs should be legalized for those over 21. So now do I get to have her locked up for at least 12 times longer than her time served since I want to free up all that money spent prosecuting the drug war?

[ReaderY]

If I were the state I'd appeal this. Imaging how black people felt when the people conducting a lynching were allowed to complain about their troubles and be let off.

[Longtobefree]

More like practicing medicine without a license.
It was a post birth abortion.

[Harvey Mosley]

Just what punishment is the judge going to be subject to if he is wrong and she does re-offend? And what if she is successful next time?

[Soronel Haetir]

Well, on the plus side she is unlikely to get to try (except perhaps with a child of her own).

[James Pollock]

Has anyone asked the victim's family what they think of this sentence? I couldn't help noticing that the victim response is missing from this coverage, and that's usually very first followup to controversial, or potentially controversial, sentencing decision.

[Michael Cook]

I have been waiting for a defense of Trump Derangement Syndrome to succeed with some judge on a major, shocking crime like this. The paid, anti-fa mobs skate on any civic disruptions they want in our fair bluest city in a blue state--blocking rush hour commuters, assaulting audiences trying to attend conservative rallies or speakers, or trying to shut down the campaign activities of candidates they don't like.

But anti-fa is just a renta-mob anymore. I want to see a real deranged leftist cleave an out of town tourist from heartland America who dare to wear a MAGA ballcap into Seattle with a butcher instrument, and not only the local judges think that is temporary insanity (if not justifiable on the face of it) but so do the review courts all the way to the top 9 robed far left Democrats in Olympia.

[James Pollock]

"I have been waiting for a defense of Trump Derangement Syndrome to succeed with some judge on a major, shocking crime like this."

The best part is that TDS can be defense for people on either side. The people who support AND the people who oppose President Trump are both immune to reason and rationality.

[JonFrum]

She'd be a low risk to re-offend if she took a ride on Old Sparky, too.

[Michael Cook]

This reminds me of an argument I have long wanted to present concerning recidivism rates and murderers. Now it is true that a convicted murderer who has served maybe 10, 15. 20 or longer years of their sentence is statistically unlikely to ever commit another murder. Perhaps they have been rehabilitated, perhaps they have merely matured out of the age profile from which we expect most uncontrolled violence to erupt. Who knows?

But that isn't quite the question the parole board should be pondering. It may be exactly true that the 47 yr-old before them only has a 5% chance of reoffending if they release him. However, I could argue that in his peer group of males his age in the general population, only 1% of them are likely to murder someone.

Put that way, the potential parolee is 5X as likely to kill someone as the next guy on the street.

Now suppose he is released and kills a close relative of yours. What is the civil attorney you hire to sue the state going to stand up and say about all this?

[UVaGrad]

That hasn't been an option in Minnesota for over 100 years.

[Michael Cook]

Well, early release of any kind for a killer. Even Texas experimented with that back in the 1980's when they had the last of their liberal governors. They released a couple killas who went right back to their serial killing ways. sorry I am having difficult searching the names.....

[KH]

I live in MN and have followed a number of similar cases, so I thought I would add a few observations:

- It's not easy to mount a successful insanity defense here. The one prominent case that people might erroneously point to is that of an allegedly mentally ill kid named John LaDue, who avoided attempted murder charges in 2015 not by mounting an insanity defense, but because of a quirk in state law that made most of his actions legal.

(The state's mental health laws are pretty aggressive, so he may now be worse off than if he'd simply been charged with the lesser crimes he committed. That's definitely true if he's accused of a crime again, since Minnesota's medical hold statute allows for 72 hours of detention without judicial review, while criminal suspects must be brought before a judge in a day and a half. There's also no probable cause requirement in the former, no minimum justification for holding someone, no requirement to collect or preserve evidence and no requirement to immediately release them if the initial basis for detention falls apart.)

[...]

[KH]

- Our courts and some of our DAs are pretty reluctant to punish women maximally. I can think of a few notable examples:

http://strib.mn/2O0hESo

(Woman accuses a UMN professor of raping her so brutally that she required abdominal surgery, yet no associated medical record or witnesses to that exist. She also falsely tells the MPD that her boyfriend is a Hennepin County prosecutor and claims that the professor tried to run her over with a car, yet that car likely was in a lot with a dead battery at the time. The DA's office declines to charge her because doing so would create "a chilling effect.")

http://strib.mn/2LgMzLV

(Summary for those who hit their paywall: UMN student fabricates a rape, confesses, and is called a "victim-survivor" by the UMPD and "the most important person in all of this." It apparently doesn't occur to them that if they'd detained a suspect and put him in a lineup, he'd have a non-trivial chance of being fingered by happenstance and a fair chance of being falsely convicted.)

[...]

[KH]

http://strib.mn/2L6GPov

(Relatively affluent cheerleader coercively pimps her developmentally disabled teammate and pockets all of the money. The judge presents her good grades as a mitigating factor rather than as evidence that no matter how good her near-term prospects are, she can't resist violating trust and breaking the law.)

- They're also reluctant to maximally punish people who are in good academic standing:

https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-398916637.html

("District Judge Tanya M. Bransford departed from the felony charge under which Yonis was convicted in November. Instead, she imposed a gross misdemeanor sentence, taking into account that Yonis is seeking a doctorate so he can become a principal.")