Newsletter
 
 

Addresses You Can Use

Honorable Governor Rick Perry
PO Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711-2428
Phone: (512) 463-2000
Fax: (512) 463-1849
http://governor.state.tx.us/contact

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
president@whitehouse.gov

Texas residents:
Citizen's Opinion Hotline
(800) 252-9600

Pastor Hank Thompson
6000 Wier Hills Rd.
Austin, Tx 78735
Phone: (512) 426-2715

  


By Comparison, Excessive Sentencing

Consider Table 13, "Average Sentence Length in Each Primary Offense Category, Fiscal Year 1999" of the 1999 Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics: 

Joshua Thompson was sentenced to twenty-six years and Caleb Thompson to fourteen years for injury to a child.  They applied corporal punishment to an eleven year old boy who attended their church, as their mother had previously and persistently requested. Later, after the discipline, substantial bruising was discovered on the boy's body. He was given medical treatment at a hospital, because of the uncertainties that the healing of the bruises would overly strain his kidneys. Thankfully, the boy completely recovered and has absolutely no permanent marks or injuries - none.

The majority of the sentences below were given to people who either caused death or permanent and lasting injuries.

  • January 8, 2005 - A 26 year-old Austin Texas man was convicted of injury to a child in the death of his 21-month-old son and sentenced to 22 years in prison, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
  • In August 2004, an woman in Atlanta heated a pair of scissors on a stove and held it to her six-year-old son's neck before cutting off a piece of his tongue was given ten years of probation.
  • April 23, 2004 - A 23 year-old Arlington Texas woman was convicted of reckless injury to a child in the scalding death of her 7-month-old son and sentenced to 10 years probation, according to the Austin American-Statesman, April 25, 2004
  • 24-year-old University of Texas man convicted in Travis County of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in the beating death of another student and sentenced to 4 years in prison and a $10,000 fine, according to the Austin American-Statesman, May 2, 2004
  • On December 25, 2003, a grandmother in Bexar County, Texas, was sentenced for 10 years for the starvation of her four-year-old grandson.
  • A Texas woman who claimed God ordered her to bash in the heads of her sons was acquitted of all charges by reason of insanity and was committed to a maximum security state hospital.  Medical evaluations dictate when she will be released.
  • In 1996, a 37-year-old Travis County, Texas man was charged with punching his 6-year-old daughter in the face.  In 1997, he was charged with tying up, beating and raping his estranged wife.  In 1998, he was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 10 years for that rape.  While free on bail, awaiting that trial, he was charged with attempting to run three bicyclists off the road, including world cycling champion Lance Armstrong.  When the judge lowered his bail from $300,000 to $30,000, he went free, according to the Austin American-Statesman, December 15, 1998.
  • In June, 2000, a 34-year-old Travis County, Texas man was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of his stepson in 1990, and sentenced to 10 years, according to the Austin American-Statesman, June 9, 2000.
  • A 26-year-old Travis County, Texas man pleaded guilty to three counts of theft and a count each of burglary, aggravated robbery with serious bodily injury and robbery with bodily injury in 1994 after snatching a woman's purse in a mall parking lot and running over her 16-month-old son with a car while fleeing, and was sentenced to 22 years in prison, according to the Austin American-Statesman, July 16, 1994.
  • In 2000, a Delaware man was was sentenced to five years in prison for beating his eight-year-old son so severely that he ruptured his son's intestinal tract and fractured four of his ribs.
  • A Cibola County, NM man who shoved a bottle down the throat of his infant son was sentenced to 23-1/2 years in prison for child abuse resulting in death, possession of drugs, for escape from jail, and for being a habitual offender.
  • A 32-year-old Williamson County, Texas man who was convicted of reckless injury to a child got off with six years probation and $2,791.  Further, his plea bargain included deferred adjudication, meaning he will have no record of a conviction if he completes his probation, according to the Austin American-Statesman, February 23, 2000.
  • A New Braunfels, Texas couple who was charged with endangering a child and reckless injury to a child in the starvation of their daughter were sentenced to 2 years in state jail and fined $10,000 each, according to the Austin American-Statesman, May 10, 2001.
  • Recently, U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum gave Martha Stewart the minimum sentence allowed because she had no prior criminal record and had done a lot of good.  Additionally, Cedarbaum said she believed that Stewart "had suffered and will suffer enough", according to an article in the Austin American-Statesman, July 17, 2004.
  • A 23-year-old Austin, Texas man was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years in prison in the stabbing death of a 37-year-old Austin man, according to the Austin American-Statesman.  He would be eligible for parole after 2 and a half years.
  • A San Antonio man received 9 years in prison for strangling his wife because of excessive phone bills she racked up by calling relatives in China, according to the Austin American-Statesman, May 21, 2004.