A Springfield man was sentenced to serve three to seven years for drug possession as part of a plea agreement in which the state dropped a charge of assault and robbery.
http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20130411/NEWS02/704119921
Drug charges admitted in plea deal
By ERIC FRANCIS
CORRESPONDENT | April 11,2013
Rutland Herald
William “Tree” Manson, 24, a painter from Springfield, was sentenced Tuesday to serve three-to-seven years for drug possession in a plea deal that saw the state drop assault and robbery charges from earlier this year.
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A Springfield man was sentenced to serve three to seven years for drug possession as part of a plea agreement in which the state dropped a charge of assault and robbery.
William “Tree” Manson, 24, pleaded guilty in White River Junction criminal court Tuesday to felony counts of possessing heroin and cocaine. He also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts of unlawful mischief, driving with a suspended license and violating conditions of release.
Manson accumulated the charges in a series of incidents in Weathersfield, Windsor and Springfield dating back to the fall of 2011.
He had been arrested most recently in connection with the alleged beating of a man Jan. 29 in a public parking lot on Factory Street in Springfield.
A 21-year-old Windsor resident told police that he and a female friend had driven to Springfield with Manson that afternoon, and that Manson attacked him and stole his backpack containing a combat-style knife.
Prosecutors said the backpack also contained just-purchased drugs, which they said were Manson’s real target. But the assault and robbery charge was dropped, prosecutors said, in part because of concerns as to whether some of the witnesses would testify truthfully about their own activities.
As part of Tuesday’s sentencing, Judge Robert Gerety recommended that Manson, who moved to Vermont in 2008 and has a 1-year-old son in the Springfield area, be allowed to serve his time at the state Department of Corrections’ work camp, which gives inmates a chance to earn an earlier release date.
Ahhh.. welcome to Springfield. What was once a nice quaint New England town is nothing more then a ghetto now, in looks and in spirit.
ReplyDeleteChuck will bail him out because it wasnt his fault that he was a low weight baby and got in trouble.
ReplyDeleteLet's see... I'm pretty sure that with "punishments" like this, there is little incentive for anyone to not sell drugs/ be involved in criminal activity.
ReplyDeleteI get that there is overcrowding. I get that there are questionable witnesses.
I don't understand what we are doing to make sure it's not more beneficial for people to do the crime and the time than to change their lives.
(Isn't this the same reason big banks and Wall Street commit fraud and other outrageous behavior- they know it's just way more profitable than any punishment they'll get)
...sigh...
You mention Wall Street but you forgot to mention Government Chuck.
DeleteWe can piss and moan about guys like him, but we can actually do something about the kids who are likely to grow up to be like him. We can spend $29,000 a year on each of the 600 perps on the hill, or we could spend $15,000 (instead of $5,000) a year on the kids in school and give them an opportunity not to choose to be stupid.
DeleteWe can make the difference.
What's our choice going to be?
We already give these kids "chances" at a very high cost to the taxpayers. What you're looking for Chuck is a Socialist Utopia which will not exist nor should it.
DeleteHigh cost? You're saying we're already spending more than $29,000 per child on education??????
DeleteWith everything the children receive at school and subsidies their parents receive then yes, the tax payers ARE paying enough. It's not just education Chuck, it's the rest of the subsidies these parents get as well.
DeleteSo, let's try something different-- every kid costs about $280,000 to be raised to age 18, and more of them than in any other country in the world wind up costing $29,000 a year because they go to prison. So the kids whose parents really didn't want to raise them are really costing us about, say $350,000 when you add in the jail time for the first felony.
DeleteSo, how can we do it more cheaply? How about paying females not to be pregnant from the onset of menarche to age 24, at which time they will have had enough experience in choices about sexuality to make their own decision about having a child rather than having an extra $100 a month. (This was tried at $20 a month and resulted in a significant drop in teen pregnancy.) What are the benefits?
1. The highest risk kids-- children born to children-- become scarce. Their would-be moms will for the most part, treasure their allowance more than a pregnancy.
2. Mature women-- by age 24, if ever-- make better parents, period. All of a sudden, a lot of the school-failure kids disappear.
3. Assuming 600 women in Springfield in this category, there'd be an influx of $60,000 more spending money per month in town. That would be $1,000 a month more income for each of the 60 downtown businesses (okay, so there aren't sixty, but you get the drift.)
4. And, "Where," you ask, "is the money coming from?" That depends on how much you want to have better parenting of Springfield kids.
All this "education" you speak of should start at home.
DeleteWell, it SHOULD start at home-- but often it doesn't, so we encourage it by doing something differently. In America, people listen to money, and what teenager wouldn't (even in these days) go for an allowance of $100 a month? What parent wouldn't be humiliated to find his was the only kid who wasn't getting that money? Parents would be a lot more attuned to the behavior of their kids if that sort of dough was at stake. Think about it-- do you want things to keep on going the way they are?
DeleteHow much is his illegitimate child costing us tax payers each month? The longer he is kept in jail, the fewer spawn he'll be burdening the community with.
ReplyDeleteThis element is nothing but a liability to everyone and everything unfortunate enough to encounter it. Time to embrace the final solution.
Someone needs to figure out what happened in 2008 (other than the economy) that brought these people here. He has been here since the one who allegedly did the shooting. I can't imagine that is a coincidence. Something must have happened to make someone realize that we were weak and prime targets or they would not have come up here and continue to come up here for the sole purpose of taking over the area and terrorizing good people because they were not brought up with any morals and were taught that the life they saw was okay.
ReplyDeleteIn Rutland it all started when the first pusher arrived and found out the market was all his; my guess is that Springfield came to the attention of the anything-for-a-buck crowd back around 1982.
DeleteWhat year was Obama elected again?
DeleteHahaha, that was good. Keep blaming Obama for your town's lack of leadership, that should solve all of Springfield's problems.
DeleteHe goes by "Tree" hahaha. Now that's funny. How is it possible to think your cool when that is what you go by, hilarious! Go away little urchin!
ReplyDeleteLook guys here is the problem. It isn't as simple as one single thing. First, statistically when the economy is bad crime increases. BUT we have a greater problem in Vermont and that is we don't have a check and balance system of equal democrat and republicans. Now I never in a million years would have believed in that theory but over the last 10 years have seen what can happen when that balance really gets tipped.
ReplyDeleteFor example we just got a new State's Attorney who many would hope would be tough on these types of crime but I think you may see many of these plea deals or soft deals moving forward. Until you talk with your vote and your wallet then these types of criminals are going to continue to walk your streets. You voted the law makers in, you don't make your voice heard loudly then you deal with your higher taxes and the crime and criminals. Pretty plain and simple.
The new State's Attorney for Windsor County happens to have been a former Republican representative in the Statehouse; he also partnered for a couple of years with the Woodstock Republican who was the treasurer for Ollie North's Contragate defense fund. I don't think you can get much more Republican than that. He was one of two candidates who applied for the appointment, and the other one had no political history to speak of.
DeleteI didn't mean to connect the two thoughts, I apologize (that is what I get for not proof reading and defining the thought, so late at night). I think that the State's attorney will continue the practice of easy punishments. I hope not. And given his past party affiliation I hope not, but feel the political push in Vermont is not for stiffer penalty but rather rehabilitation which is a joke.
DeleteRehabilitation is not a joke; the last time I looked at the figures, 85% of Court Diversion clients had not re-offended in five years, which is a far better outcome for society than the rate for recidivism among prisoners.
DeletePrison is not about rehabilitation, it's about punishment.
DeletePunishment is not as effective as rehabilitation-- except for the lifers, sooner or later the prisoner is back out on the street, and if he's not rehabilitated, there's a far greater than average chance he's going to re-offend.
DeleteWe can't continue to do the same thing and expect different results (Einstein had a name for that expectation). If you want crime to decrease, you have to develop a different approach, period.
Prisons were not meant to rehabilitate. If the person gets out of prison and re-offends, put him right back in. Prisons were meant only to segregate the criminals from society.
DeleteBoss Hogwash......You're up!
ReplyDeleteRe: 'Rehabilitation is not a joke; the last time I looked at the figures, 85% of Court Diversion clients had not re-offended in five years, which is a far better outcome for society than the rate for recidivism among prisoners."
ReplyDeleteWell, duh! You're cherry picking the relatively small population of "diversion" clients, so you'd expect the outcome to be different than the much larger general population of prisoners.
Thanks for giving credence to the old adage that figures lie and liars figure!
Well, 11:16, all you have to do is come up with a prison system that releases convicts who have a significantly lower-than-average rate of recidivism. Try your research skills. The catch is "significantly."
DeleteThe problem is, imprisonment does not, by and large, rehabilitate. It protects the population from continued depredation, but once the offender is released, he/she will more likely than not re-offend. Clearly, the only answer to this problem, if you don't believe in rehabilitation, is universally applied capital punishment. Problem solved!
Look as far as Singapore,Low crime rate but a heck of a deterrent to do a crime also.
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