Sportscaster's killer goes to jail ... but not for murder

Paranoid schizophrenia got him off for murder but assaulting a border patrol officer gets him six years:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/05/23/ot-arenburg-080523.html?ref=rss

A man who killed an Ottawa sportscaster in 1995 and spent most of the next decade in a psychiatric hospital has been found guilty of assaulting a U.S. border guard.

Jeffrey Arenburg, 51, of Barrie, Ont., was convicted Wednesday in Buffalo, N.Y., of felony assault causing bodily harm in connection with an incident at the Peace Bridge on Nov. 29. He is expected to be sentenced in September and faces as much as six years in prison.

Arenburg punched a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer who tried to search him as he was trying to enter the United States. He was arrested on a commercial bus shortly afterward.

The officer was treated in hospital for a cut lip.

Arenburg, who fired his lawyer, claimed during the trial that his thoughts were being read and controlled by others, several media outlets reported.

Arenburg shot to death Brian Smith, a sportscaster for the Ottawa television station CJOH, outside the parking lot of Smith's workplace on Aug. 1, 1995. The station is now known as CTV.

Arenburg was found not criminally responsible in the slaying because he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

He was sent to a psychiatric hospital in Penetanguishene, Ont., but the Ontario Review Board granted him unconditional discharge in 2006.

 

It's funny. I was talking about this with a Cumby's store clerk the other night after work.

How people get harsher penalties for doing the same or less to a person of supposed superiority to a normal citizen. Like we are less valuable to society than a cop or city official.
The same thing with hate crimes. The last I checked every crime that causes physical injury to a victim comes from hate deep down. I understand it's a legal term thrown on a crime of racism, but why should a white man who harms a Cambodian receive a harsher term than if it was the same crime on another white guy?

Sometimes the law, and especially the judges - who get to decide why someone deserves a second or 15th chance - drive me batshit crazy.

 

Whatever you do, don't get into an accident with a cop or a firefighter, you will probably die at the scene no matter whose fault it is. Had a neighbor that was a state trooper and he was laughing it up about how every department in the area responded to check on the cop but the truck driver who rearended his cruiser was in the truck for five, 10 minutes before anyone gave him a look.

I guess we're all second-class citizens.