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- October 12, 2006
Ice Ice baby
A guy here in Canberra got sentenced to 37 years jail for a series of rapes with a 25 year non-parole period. This is most unusual for Canberra’s court system, as normally you’d expect him to have got a good behaviour bond or something … well maybe I’m exaggerating the courts’ leniency, but you get the picture.
Shaun Michael Burke was the so-called “North Canberra rapist”. He had previously admitted to raping 5 women in their homes over a 4 year period. On most occasions, a knife was used to force victims into succumbing, after Burke had already worked out what he was going to steal from the house and had planned an escape route.
Of course it goes without saying that Burke was not responsible for his crimes. The judge was told he was a regular user of methamphetamine and ecstasy, with a habit which cost him $200-$300 a day, and sometimes as much as $500. Also, he was born as a result of his mother being raped and when he was 12, his girlfriend was raped and murdered. (sob, sob ….). Burke had also claimed not to remember the attacks - as he was under the effects of the ice he was using.
Burke’s attempt to use his drug abuse to mitigate his crimes brings to mind a case in Sydney where a man (Canan Eken) tried to claim he was
“In deliberately choosing to abuse illegal substances, the prisoner must be treated as choosing the consequences of his behaviour and be held responsible for his behaviour,”
Exactly right! You choose to get off your face on drugs, or pissed out of your brain, you should be responsible for the consequences. You chose to lose control. Likewise, it shits me when people claim their bad environment drove them to crime …plenty of people succeed in being decent members of society despite all sorts of difficulties in their life. Committing crimes is a deliberate choice and a sign of character weakness - it is never an inevitable consequence of one’s upbringing, environment or circumstances.
Technorati Tags: North Canberra rapist, Shaun Michael Burke, methamphetamine, ice, ecstasy, rape, criminal responsibility, Canan Eken
2 Responses to “Ice Ice baby”
Hey I’m all for mitigation for a crap life. But well he chose to take the drugs, a drug whose side effect is delusions of granduer and paranoia.
The length of the sentence is pretty huge for non murder. I only worry as there’s always the danger that a rapist is better off killing a victim to thwart some of the evidence trail.
By Mikey_Capital on Oct 13, 2006
“Committing crimes is a deliberate choice and a sign of character weakness - it is never an inevitable consequence of one’s upbringing, environment or circumstances.”
And yet the rate of crime is much higher amongst those born into economically/socially disadvantaged circumstances. So in reverse, you could be accused of suggesting that being born poor means also being more likely than the rest of the population to be born with a character weakness. Perhaps people that succeed in the face of being dealt a crappy hand are just significantly stronger than average.
By Don Quixote on Oct 15, 2006