Posted on 08/23/2007 6:07:00 AM PDT by libstripper
It's been a hoot reading and listening to pundits and armchair legal analysts speculate on the fate awaiting Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick on charges of illegal dogfighting.
First the easy part: You can expect Vick to be handed a harsher sentence than the one year being bandied about by some observers.
The judge has already said the acts described by Vick's co-conspirators suggest "aggravating" circumstances. Often that means a sentence more harsh than lenient.
With Vick as the major, if not only, source of funding for the operation, it's likely the judge will view him as the ringleader of the enterprise.
The federal guidelines generally suggest a sentence of anywhere from 12 to 18 months for the crime to which Vick will plead guilty. My guess is that the judge may well hand down a longer jail term. Why? Because the men who pleaded guilty ahead of Vick will probably get the stiffer end of the suggested sentencing range, or about 18 months.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Dogfighting is a gambling device. Football players are forbidden to gamble on ANYTHING.
Art Schlichter, Alex Karras and Paul Hornung come to mind. Karas and Horning got one year suspensions and Schlichter got a career ban.
“a ticking time bomb in your back yard”
I was headin’ to Cleveland’s Chinatown yesterday. As I exited the freeway, I saw a pack of a dozen or so dogs, and at least half of them were Pits/Staffordshire type dogs. I’d hate to be on foot and run into them!
The race pimps Jackson and Sharpton will make damn sure he is given the CHANCE.
The only scenario I see that would make this a moot point is if after his federal prison stay, VA goes after him on state charges and he has to serve time in the state pen.
He would probably then be too old to make it at QB.
That is the strangest wording in an indictment that I have ever seen. Animals cannot be "executed". Execution means to inflict capital punishment on; put to death according to law, or, to murder; assassinate. The government lawyer who wrote this indictment must think that dogs really are people. After this display of perverted thinking, I think it's safe to say that the very same lawyer would never, ever get caught dead using the word "execution" to signify the killing of a preborn baby.
Cordially,
OK, he broke the law and should be punished, but sheesh, why the big deal?
Do you understand the difference between killing chickens or cows for the purpose of making food out of them, or killing a snake that could be dangerous to your pets and/or kids, and torturing and brutally killing a dog just for the enjoyment of seeing it suffer and die? If you were to do to a chicken or a cow the things that are done to dogs in the dog fighting business, there wouldn't be much value in the meat.
I visited Manhattan in 1977 for a weekend with three other active duty Navy buddies and we spent two days in a city filled with drug addicts and other low lifes and spent the entire two days looking over our shoulders.
I visited Manhattan last week with my teenaged daughter and we spent one week in a city filled with normal (albeit liberal) people doing normal, decent activities such as filling the sidewalks without fear at night, riding subways filled with folks you would see at the PTA and being surrounded at Central Park by mothers with their kids, softball teams playing at the Great Lawn, joggers running down every path and with almost as many cops at Times Square as Japanese tourists.
If your town has reached that depth of depravity and has stayed there, you and the rest of your community need to either elect a local government that will clean up your town like Giuliani cleaned up Manhattan or you should really consider moving to a decent town.
At our town, the local library is filled with kids studying.
Life is too short to live it in a cesspool.
Good. These guys are not above the law and shouldn’t be an example to our kids when they behave like that.
Ditto. And it is more interesting. One bowl game this past season was the most exciting game I watched.
Your right, we can’t forget the gambling. And lets not forget Pete Rose wasn’t tried or convicted for gambling and still got a life time ban from baseball. I think Vick would be lucky if 1 or 2 teams wanted him at this point. But my guess is he is so radioactive that no teams want him. I think in the end a lot of the owners will come together and have some kind of gambling investigation done on Vick. That would prevent any team from picking him up and giving the NFL the bad PR they don’t want.
Yeah, had Pete Rose been black who knows Charlie Hustle might still be in the game.
Reminds me of some thing I read over 50 years ago
Article said if Marilyn Monroe was on one corner, Rita Hayworth on another, Ava Garner on a 3rd and two dogs fighting on the 4th —all the men would be watching the Dogs fighting
This whole thing begs larger questions : why? What was the end game here? What possible good could come from it? Didn’t he receive an education at Virginia Tech - oh! that’s right, he dropped out after 2 years on a full scholarship.
He should have stayed in school, maybe he would have learned the words : Illegal, Immoral and cruel.
It wasn’t just the dog fighting or the betting. He was involved in killing the “poor performers” as well. Some of them he personally electrocuted with a homemade electrocution device.
Are you comfortable with a man who gets his giggles by electrocuting animals being a celebrity role model?
BS? I think you just called what I said BS, then repeated what I said in very similar terms.
“Thugs breeding back the natural aggression that’s been suppressed for eons’—so, they are doing what they were bred to do, right? Fighting dogs is hardly a new development. Knowing men at least as well as I know dogs, I imagine Ugh bet Grunt that his dog could whip the others dog and put his best club up as ante.
There are lots of dog breeds that have been developed to be aggressive and to be submissive only to their masters will, assuming their masters have some idea of how to be the master. To say all dog breeds were developed to be docile is BS.
Dogs will not fight to the death? I have decades of experience living in a rural area full of working dogs, wild dog packs and coyotes which have taught me otherwise-— many times. You put three dogs together with the least bit of aggressive nature in the open spaces and let them run awhile, and they will kill any dog in their territory that doesn’t submit to the dominant male. And by submit, I mean join the pack and not wander in and out of their territory. They catch the outsider, they will often kill it. Fido and Spot living in bordering backyards, aren’t ‘natural’ dogs.
Is it a big deal? Not to me. I know where my food comes from and how it gets there. I have spent enough time in the wild to know that viciousness is the norm. I’ve spent enough time with all sorts of animals to know that what they ‘want’ isn’t what I would want for them and it’s silly to see them as humans. I would never fight dogs for sport and find the practice disgusting and should be outlawed, but in the overall scheme of all the violence and perceived injustices in the world, no, it isn’t a big deal to me. but I don’t hold it against you for thinking it is.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.