I am all for locking up criminals. I believe that people who do wrong should pay the price. However, I think we need to have the rules applied evenly and fairly to everyone. If person A gets 5 years for throwing the rock, then person B should get 5 years for throwing the rock. I think there is a serious problem if person A gets 5 years and person B gets life in prison for the same crime. I just don’t think that is right.

Now we have the case of Alex Castro. Alex Castro is a 48 year old man. He lives in Milpitas, Washington. Well he USED to live in Milpitas. Now he will be living in prison somewhere. His crime? He killed his girlfriend’s cocker spaniel with a hammer. His sentence? He got 25 years to life for this crime. He has to serve at least 33 years before he would even be eligible for parole. WTF?????

This heavy sentence was handed down to Alex by the jury because, according to the prosecutor, this is Alex Castro’s third strike. Now I understand the 3 strike law, but my problem is that this isn’t evenly applied. Again, if person A gets 5 years and person B does the same crime shouldn’t person B get the same time? Obviously not. Here is a run down of Alex Castro’s history.

First, I said it before but I will add it again - he is 48 years old.

  • 15 years ago, in 1994, Alex Castro and a friend went to pick up a refrigerator at his estranged wife’s house and got into a fight with her then-current boyfriend. Alex and his friend reportedly went into the home without knocking and tag teamed the new boyfriend. His friend stood on the boyfriend’s legs while Castro choked him. According to the probation report filed with the judge, Alex Castro choked the man until he turned blue. OK. That’s not good, but that was 15 years ago.
  • 27 years ago, in 1982, Alex Castro’s father was getting beat up and Alex grabbed a tire iron from his truck and hit the two men beating on his dad multiple times.

Alex Castro also has 20 misdemeanor convictions, including driving under the influence and driving with a suspended license. Now for those of you who don’t know, you can get multiple charges from one incident. I haven’t reviewed Alex Castro’s record, but when you do things like drive under the influence you can be charged with additional things connected with the same charge or the same occurrence. Still, what happens in a traffic case shouldn’t influence what happens in a totally unrelated criminal case. We also don’t know how old those misdemeanor cases are.

The prosecutor in this case, Deputy District Attorney Kevin Smith, successfully sought to have the dog incident count as a third strike for Alex Castro. Personally, I think that the prosecutor is ridiculous and the jury is too. I know that this guy did a horrible thing when he killed the dog, but his prior convictions are 15 and 27 years old. Had Alex Castro committed this dog crime somewhere else in this country, he wouldn’t be getting 25 years to life with parole eligibility in 33 years. Is that fair? I’m not saying Alex Castro is a saint, but come on - 25 years to life? If I was a man, I could rape a woman and get less time in some states! How does that work? The maximum time allowed for felony animal cruelty is three years and that is what Alex Castro should have received.

Our criminal justice system is so screwed up. We have no uniformity from state to state. Someone committing a horrible crime against another human can get less time than someone killing a dog. Committing a crime in one state can get you a slap on the wrist while committing the same crime in another state can get you locked up for a long time. Some get locked away for three strikes while others continue to commit the same crimes over and over. If you kill someone in one state you might get life in prison, yet if you kill someone in Texas you might die. Yet, even with all of the crime and unequal punishment, America still has one of the worst crime rates of any country. The whole system is screwed up. 

When I initially saw the article about Alex Castro I had to laugh. Reporters have this uncanny ability to word an article in a way that tries to make you feel completely unsympathetic toward the person being written about. It’s funny to see the manipulation. Instead of just stating the facts, they interject and arrange things to make you see a particular point of view. The writer of the article that I linked to below completely did that with Alex Castro’s story. However, no matter how you phrase it or dress it up to make it seem acceptable, Alex Castro received too much time for this crime. The article talks about how he lives in a trailer park. So what? Does that make giving him 25 to life for killing a dog OK? In my opinion it doesn’t. This man is almost 50. He did some stupid things many, many years ago. He hasn’t lived a life of crime. He has a job - had a job rather. He wasn’t some freeloader.

Alex Castro’s crime and his sentence are very stupid. When will we ever get our system together? Maybe never…

Here is the article. Do you see how the reporter tries to make you sympathetic to the prosecutor’s case? Very, very stupid!