Former Washington Times reporter and current blogger Robert Stacy McCain has another article up about the foolish decisions some people take, decisions which can send them unexpectedly to their eternal rewards:

Violence Against Women Update

by Robert Stacy McCain | August 7, 2021

In the comments on Friday morning’s post (“The Dangerous Clichés of ‘Empowerment’”), someone mentioned the phrase “rationalization hamster” as a description of the way women justify bad decisions such as getting a tattoo on your cleavage or dating a convicted felon.

Mr McCain’s focus is a bit different than mine. He focuses on the utter stupidity of women who choose to ‘date’, and have babies with, convicted felons and obvious criminals, along with the failure of feminist organizations to call out ‘violence against women’ when the (alleged) perpetrators are not evil white men. Much further down, he gets to the case at hand:

So, having made that 1,000-word digression, we now return to the main topic, Joana Peca of St. Petersburg, Florida.

The tattoo on her (remarkably abundant) cleavage could be cited as evidence of Joana Peca’s defective judgment. The “rationalization hamster” must have run itself silly attempting to justify such a choice. And I’m sure that David Futrelle and Laura Bates would accuse me of misogyny merely for calling attention to this, because any criticism of any woman for any reason is always misogyny, according to feminist logic. “Equality” seems to require that women go through life without ever encountering negative feedback, no matter how foolish or harmful their actions may be, so the effect of feminism in public discourse is to make women off-limits to criticism (unless they vote Republican).

The problem with this, you see, is that without feedback — including the kind of feedback that might persuade a woman not to get tattoos on her breasts — all sorts of foolish behavior are likely to proliferate because, without critical feedback, bad judgment tends to become generalized.

Say hello to Benjamin Robert “Bambi” Williams, age 38:

Williams has a Pinellas County arrest record that spans about 20 years. He has been arrested in cases ranging from grand theft auto, possession of drugs with intent to sell, robbery and fleeing police. He was most recently arrested on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm in January 2020. The state attorney’s office did not seek a prosecution.

In 2007, Williams was arrested on charges of principle to attempted murder and strong-arm robbery, but those charges were dismissed, court records show.

Now, if you had a daughter, wouldn’t you advise her to avoid associating with anyone who had such an extensive criminal record? Yes, but then again, if she’s got already tattoos on her cleavage . . .

Detectives have identified Benjamin Robert Williams aka “Bambi” (DOB 12/31/1982) as the suspect in Saturday’s (July 31, 2021) shooting death of Joana Peca.

Williams and Peca were involved in a romantic relationship and had a baby together. Peca was holding the infant when Williams shot her multiple times in the face. Her older child was sitting in the backseat during the shooting.

A warrant has been issued for William’s arrest and SPPD is actively searching for him. Crime Stoppers is offering up to $5000 for information that leads to an arrest.

Benjamin Williams is deemed to be armed and dangerous.

He is linked to several open homicide investigations.

The part onto which I focused was different.

He was most recently arrested on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm in January 2020. The state attorney’s office did not seek a prosecution.
The obvious question is: why didn’t the state’s attorney seek a prosecution?

Convicted felons in possession of a firearm are about the simplest cases around:

1. The suspect is a convicted felon, a matter of record; and
2. The suspect was arrested in possession of a firearm.

Just how much more open-and-shut does it get?

If Mr Williams is actually the one who murdered Miss Peca, then is not the state’s attorney who declined to prosecute Mr Williams, leaving him out on the streets, just as responsible for Miss Peca’s death?

How many murders could have been prevented if prosecutors and parole boards did their f(ornicating) jobs and locked up these criminals for the maximum allowable time under the law?

Look at the record:

Williams has a Pinellas County arrest record that spans about 20 years. He has been arrested in cases ranging from grand theft auto, possession of drugs with intent to sell, robbery and fleeing police.

Why would any, any! prosecutor decline to prosecute someone like Mr Williams for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon? Someone like Mr Williams is not just some misunderstood young lad, drawn into bad decisions by older boys; he’s 38 years old, and has been ‘involved’ in the criminal justice system for two decades. This is the kind of case that any responsible prosecutor ought to pursue as hard as he could, to get this man male off the streets.

Sadly, none of the media accounts I have been able to find have told us why the unnamed state’s attorney declined to prosecute Mr Williams 19 months ago, nor do we know why some other previous charges were dropped.

Miss Peca was, in part, the victim of her own poor decisions, but she did not somehow deserve to die. If Mr Williams is the person who killed her, then it has to be asked: why do the prosecutors who declined to pursue felony charges against Mr Williams in January of 2020 not bear some responsibility for Miss Peca’s murder?

Under Florida statute Title XLVI Chapter 790 §790.23, someone in illegal possession of a firearm commits a felony of the second degree, punishable as provided in §775.082, for which the punishment is incarceration in the state penitentiary for up to 15 years.

In other words, on the day that Mr Williams allegedly murdered Miss Peca, he could have been behind bars, looking at not getting out until 2035!

It is at least possible that the arresting officers somehow fouled up, making the charge non-prosecutable, but someone, somewhere in law enforcement, needs to be held accountable.

We have previously noted how the Lexington Herald-Leader hid the available mugshot of accused murderer Brandon Dockery, even when he was on the loose and considered to be “armed and dangerous.” Mr Dockery was a previously convicted felon — that’s how the Lexington Police Department had a mugshot of him in the first place — and the Herald-Leader has not been at all afraid to post the photos of convicted felons, even after the implementation of the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, at least not as long as the accused criminals or convicted felons were white.

Robert Stacy McCain noted that it took a name like Leif Halvorsen to get the newspaper to publish his mugshot! 🙂

The Herald-Leader’s Karla Ward did some actual journalism in ferreting out Mr Dockery’s name, after police did not release it during the Kentucky State Police’s investigation of the officer-involved shooting which led to Mr Dockery’s capture, so the paper has to be congratulated for that. And now, reporter Jeremy Chisenhall has done so more investigative work, for which he deserves credit. Hey, I’ve criticized the journolism^[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term … Continue reading of the paper often enough that it behooves me to give credit when credit is due!

Lexington homicide suspect was on parole after setting an apartment building ablaze

By Jeremy Chisenhall | August 4, 2021 4:34 PM

A Lexington man sentenced in 2012 to 45 years in state prison has been charged in a homicide that occurred earlier this year, not long after he was released on parole, according to court records.

Brandon Dockery, 32, was sentenced in 2012 to 45 years in prison after he admitted to lighting a Lexington apartment building on fire. The fire was set after he got into a fight with people in one of the apartments. He destroyed several apartments, killed pets and forced residents to flee the building. One jumped off a third-floor balcony.

Now Dockery has been charged with murder in a 2021 shooting after getting into a standoff with law enforcement that ended with him being shot, according to police and court records. He pleaded not guilty to the homicide, which happened about eight months after Dockery was released on parole.

Now I would add my usual “There’s more at the original” blurb, but, Alas! you cannot access it unless you are a Herald-Leader subscriber! Briefly, Mr Chisenhall’s article describes how Mr Dockery had his sexual advances toward a woman in an apartment building rebuffed, and was thrown out by her two brothers after he became aggressive; Mr Dockery, they stated, appeared to be intoxicated. Mr Dockery then threatened to kill them and burn down their building. He later returned with 95¢ worth of gasoline in a can, and set the building alight. An overhead photo in the Herald-Leader story shows the building as completely destroyed. Though Mr Dockery wrote a whining letter to Judge Pamela Goodwine, telling her that he had gone nuts temporarily insane when he torched the building, she was apparently unmoved, and sentenced him to 45 years in the state penitentiary.

And this is where things went bad. In the Bluegrass State, a felon becomes eligible for parole after serving only 20% of his sentence.

Mr Dockery, who should have been locked up until November 19, 2055, was turned loose after serving just 10 years, 8 months. He was, according to the Herald-Leader, released on October 23, 2020, which was a week before his parole eligibility date, as stated in the parole information I screen captured.

I will ask the question I have been asking all along: why shouldn’t the state Parole Board, which released Mr Dockery after serving just 23.7% of his sentence, be held accountable for Mr Dockery’s (alleged) murder of 30-year-old Raymar Webb? If the Parole Board had the option of keeping Mr Dockery locked up — an option they exercised following his first parole hearing — they should have done so. Because they did not, and if Mr Dockery really is Mr Webb’s killer, the Parole Board is in part responsible for Mr Webb being dead, stone-cold graveyard dead. If Mr Dockery is the actual killer, then Mr Webb would (probably) still be alive, if only the Parole Board had kept the accused behind bars, where he belonged.

The very title of “Judge” implies that we expect the holder of such a title to actually have good judgement, but there are times it seems that such an expectation is silly. We have recently reported on Delaware’s Superior Court Judge Vivian L. Medinilla, the utterly idiotic distinguished jurist who turned Keith Gibson loose on a probation violation which could have put him away for 6½ years, even though she was aware that he was a suspect in a murder investigation in Philadelphia, but would not consider that in her deliberations. Mr Gibson is now accused of having committed several additional murders after he was released, when he could have been safely behind bars.

Judge Medinilla didn’t even do Mr Gibson a favor. Instead of looking forward to being released after 6½ more years behind bars, Mr Gibson is now going to, if convicted, spend the rest of his miserable life in prison.

Now we come to Cobb County, Georgia, Magistrate Judge Michael McLaughlin.

Judge Michael McLaughlin is the Dean of the Cobb County Magistrate Court bench. After first being appointed in 1985, he has served continuously with six different Chief Magistrates. Judge McLaughlin has heard every type of case filed in Magistrate Court and routinely handles the Court’s busy civil calendars.

In addition to his service on the bench, Judge McLaughlin ran a successful law firm for over 35 years. He has extensive experience in criminal law, and before taking the bench full-time, his practice most recently focused on family law and representing injured people. Judge McLaughlin is the co-author of Admissibility of Evidence in Civil Cases—a Manual for Georgia Trial Lawyers, which is updated and published annually. He has taught other judges through the Institute of Continuing Judicial Education and aspiring paralegals at Kennesaw State University.

Judge McLaughlin is a member of the Cobb County Bar Association and the Council of Magistrate Court Judges. He is a graduate of Florida State University and John Marshall Law School. He has resided in East Cobb with his wife Michelle for over 30 years. The McLaughlins have two adult children and attend Johnson Ferry Baptist Church and the Catholic Church of St. Ann.

Sounds like a very serious man, right? We turn to our good friend Robert Stacy McCain:

Austin William Lanz

Crazy people are dangerous

Robert Stacy McCain | August 4, 2021

This is a mugshot of Austin William Lanz, when he was arrested in April in Cobb County, Georgia, after breaking into a neighbor’s home. Lanz, who lived with his parents in Acworth, about 30 miles north of Atlanta, had spent months harassing the neighbor and the neighbor’s fiancée:

He was recorded on video by the security system roaming the house for 13 minutes and turned on all the lights, which police said indicated that he’d been “searching through the residence for something or someone.” He left without taking anything, according to arrest reports and court filings.

Lanz was arrested and booked on charges of burglary and trespassing charges. When informed he was being charged, Lanz objected, saying, “but I didn’t take anything,” the arrest report said. He then made statements to a police officer about how planes had been flying over the neighborhood and tracking his cellphone.

(What part of “crazy” do I need to explain here?)

While being processed at the county jail, Lanz . . . attacked two sheriff’s deputies in the intake area without provocation, including one who sustained a chipped bone and torn ligament in her knee. After he was restrained, Lanz reportedly accused the officers of being “gay” for teaming up on him and asked to be uncuffed so he could fight them one-on-one.

A judge reduced his bond in May to $30,000 and released him, imposing some conditions, including that he not take illegal drugs, that he undergo a mental health evaluation and that he not possess a firearm. . . .

(“Hey, this psycho attacked two deputies, but I’m going to turn him loose, on condition he get some help with his mental health.”)

There’s more at Mr McCain’s original, making his point that crazy people are dangerous. Mr McCain’s article title, Crazy People Are Dangerous is on its 27^th usage.

I look at it differently. Mr Lanz, you see, took a bus to our nation’s capitol and killed a police officer.

The man who killed a Pentagon police officer at a nearby transit center Tuesday got off a bus, immediately stabbed the officer and then shot himself with the officer’s gun, the FBI says.

Officer George Gonzalez was killed in the line of duty after a burst of violence on a bus platform outside the headquarters of the U.S. military. The Pentagon was temporarily locked down.

The FBI said in new information Wednesday that Austin William Lanz, 27, of Georgia, is the suspect. Lanz died at the scene. A “civilian bystander” was wounded and had non-life-threatening injuries.

According to the FBI, Lanz got off a bus at the Pentagon Transit Center in Arlington at about 10:40 a.m. Tuesday and “immediately, without provocation, attacked Officer George Gonzalez with a knife, severely wounding him.”

A “struggle ensued” and Lanz mortally wounded Gonzalez.

Lanz then shot himself with Gonzalez’ gun.

Which brings me back to Judge McLaughlin. He was the judge who looked at the evidence, evidence of an obviously crazy man, and turned him loose! As Mr McCain noted, he attacked two deputies, and had been threatening his previous victims with a firearm, but Judge Mclaughlin thought that telling him that he:

1. Could not possess a firearm;
2. Could not take illegal drugs; and
3. Must undergo a mental health examination

would persuade him to be a good little boy, would actually keep him from possession weapons or taking drugs.

Can anyone tell me why Cobb County Magistrate Court Judge Michael E. McLaughlin should not be held accountable for the crimes, for the murder, that an obviously crazy defendant that he released committed? Like Judge Medinilla, Judge McLaughlin did the defendant no favor. Instead of perhaps getting some mental health treatment, instead of perhaps spending a couple of years locked up, Mr Lanz is now stone-cold graveyard dead . . . and he took Officer Gonzalez with him.

If we held judges and parole boards accountable for the crimes of people they let go easily or early, that bovine feces would stop. Criminals would be sentenced to the maximum allowable time under the law, and parole boards wouldn’t release anyone before he had served every last day of his sentence. Keeping criminals off the streets might not be very sympathetic to them, but it would be a whole lot safer for the public.