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US: Florida man gets 20 years in prison for stealing $600 worth of cigarettes

Jabberwocky

Frumious Bandersnatch
Joined
Nov 3, 1999
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84,999
PENSACOLA, Fla. ? A man who stole $600 worth of cigarettes from a convenience store in Florida has been sentenced to 20 years in state prison. A jury in Pensacola convicted 48-year-old Robert Spellman of burglary and grand theft in August.

Authorities say Spellman took 10 cartons of cigarettes from a stock room in the store manager's office last December. He was sentenced Friday.

Police found Spellman nearby with the cigarettes in his possession, the State Attorney's Office told The Pensacola News Journal.

Spellman reportedly had 14 felony and 31 misdemeanor convictions prior to the cigarette theft, which qualified him as a habitual felony offender. That led to the lengthy 20-year prison sentence imposed Friday by an Escambia County judge.


Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florid...medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark
 
I wonder if this guy even cares that he's going to jail for a long time or maybe he has simply stopped caring a long time ago :(
 
Some people are more comfortable In jail/prison, I had a good friend who was chronically homeless. He had a conviction from his youth that ruined any real opportunities to improve his life, he'd get locked up just because his life was better inside than outside.
 
The headline is horrible, but then you see said individual has had MORE than enough second, 3rd... 44th chances.
 
You think that's MAYBE a bit of overkill?

TWENTY years for stealing a shitload of cancer sticks?

I mean fuck.

I don't think stealing $600 of ANYTHING, unless maybe it's like life saving cancer/AIDS medication, could POSSIBLY be worth more than 5 years in prison.

Seriously, I'd give the guy like 3 years in prison.

It's just relatively minor theft, even at $600, it's not worth 20 years of someone's fucking life.

I don't care if he's a repeat offender.

I don't believe in this idea of a bunch of smaller crimes equally out to a sentence of a 1/4th of a human beings life.

If he hurt, assaulted or raped someone it would be an entirely different story.
 
No, he has over 40 convictions, fuck him. Even if it's just shoplifting (and I doubt this is his first burglury, or other more serious offense) fuck him, pull yourself together. You've had many many chances to do so.

I know of someone who is 29, has a woman beating, domestic violence with a weapon, multiple larcenies, many counts shoplifting, and he walks the streets. They let people get away with way too fucking much. You should be in prison at the age of 29 if you have done all that shit, at least until 40.

Again, as someone who has known numerous career criminals, they don't get into that line of work because they are nice people. Fuck this guy.
 
No, he has over 40 convictions, fuck him. Even if it's just shoplifting (and I doubt this is his first burglury, or other more serious offense) fuck him, pull yourself together. You've had many many chances to do so.

I know of someone who is 29, has a woman beating, domestic violence with a weapon, multiple larcenies, many counts shoplifting, and he walks the streets. They let people get away with way too fucking much. You should be in prison at the age of 29 if you have done all that shit, at least until 40.

Again, as someone who has known numerous career criminals, they don't get into that line of work because they are nice people. Fuck this guy.


Well, I guess to an extent since he's done so many other bad things maybe, but I just don't think BY ITSELF stealing $600 of cigs is worth that much time.

I also would wonder how many of his offenses are drug offenses, since I believe all drugs should be legal, so if any of them are I think they shouldn't count.

But chances are he's done a lot of bad shit.

I'd just wonder if he did other things that were worse than this why he didn't get that time then and it took this crime to put him over the top.
 
thats some florida shit right there
Yes it's such a Florida thing. Never mind that Washington (a blue state) was the first state to pass a true "three strikes" law in 1993, followed by California the following year (when Prop 184 was overwhelmingly approved by voters 72 percent to 28 percent). Also never mind the fact that California judges can consider misdemeanors when imposing "three strikes." In fact in addition to Washington and California, all the following solidly "blue" states have three strikes laws: New York, Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont and Massachusetts, and the following blue-trending swing states have them as well: Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
 
3 strikes is no good. I think 40 strikes is getting into ridiculous territory unless it's minor "vagrancy, trespassing" type shit, which I doubt because the guys a burglar.
 
Thanks to our broad public records laws, I put his name into the Escambia County Clerk of Courts website and Jesus H. Fucking Christ tapdancing on a Pogo stick. To go down the list of cases that came back would take the better part of a day. I could only begin to scratch the surface, but the sampling of cases I did see does not paint a picture of the bumbling petty criminal. He's had multiple violent felonies and I only randomly sampled from the first 10 cases that came up, including domestic violence, assault, battery and sexual assault. I don't feel bad at all that he's going to cool his heels for a while at the governor's hospitality.
 
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