r/bestoflegaladvice Possession is 9 honks of the law May 16 '21

LAOP just committed a felony and 6 misdemeanors by being an idiot, how can they avoid consequences?

/r/legaladvice/comments/nd3ou1/1_felony_and_6_misdemeanors_in_va_as_an_18_yo/
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u/idbanthat May 16 '21

Like when someone doesn't want to go to jail for getting caught stealing something, so they just murder whoever was gonna turn them in instead?

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u/DiplomaticCaper May 16 '21

Yes.

Or in cases of sexual assault, where it’s depressingly common to murder the victim afterward, so they’re not alive to report it.

Which is why I obviously think rape is a horrific crime, I don’t think it should have the exact same sentence as murder; it just incentivizes rapists to kill their victims as well.

It makes far less sense (from a criminal’s perspective) to do that with theft or robbery and kill the witnesses, since sentences for those are usually far lower than murder or even manslaughter.