Posted by Benjamin on: 08.29.2007 /
Been pondering the whole Michael Vick story quite a bit. I find I have lots of questions and few answers.
Did you know that the name of Vick’s dogfighting operation, Bad Newz Kennels, is taken from a slang name for the very poor neighborhood in east Newport News where Vick grew up? Reporter David Ress decribed the area in 2007 for the Richmond Times Dispatch this way
950-plus units of public-housing projects crammed into an area of about a dozen blocks. Row after row of aging two-story apartment buildings, pressed close to the Interstate 664 bridge and looming black piles of coal. Close enough to the water for a whiff from the seafood packing plants but not for a fresh breeze. Just enough space for a walkway and clotheslines between the buildings, but not for a basketball court…not a dog in sight.
- Do you think that the public outcry and negativity toward the “brutal killing of dogs” by means of eletrocution, hanging, drowning and shooting is … reasonable?
- How else would they kill the dogs? I mean it sounds to me like the point was to kill the dogs.
- Why is dog fighting a felony?
- Why is human cage fighting not a felony?
- Why is it not okay for Michael Vick and his friends to kill their own dogs in the United States, but it is okay for us here in the United States to execute people?
- Is it right that Michael Vick and his friends will probably be getting prison sentences similar in length to the sentences handed down to those who carried out the torture and abuse of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib scandal?
- What exactly is the point of sending Michael Vick to prison? Is is for punishment? Is it for him to “be reformed”? Does sending him to prison seem like a good idea to you? Why?
- If Mr. Vick were white, how would the public response and the legal repercussions differ?
If I were George Bush, I would pardon Mr. Vick today.
10 Responses to "Michael Vick, compassion, and the efficacy of prison"
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Comment by: cw
1 08/29/07 8:13 AM | Comment Link |First of all, I feel sorry for Michael. Before you get upset, he was wrong. He was very very wrong, but not to the point where his whole life should be ruined. His NFL career is over, and now they want to place him in jail for 5 years or so. That is extreme, and over a dog? Yes, what he did to those dogs is horrible. But think about it, we kill how many babies a year in abortion? We killed how many people in the aftermath of Katrina? We killed how many people in Iraq? What do we have to say about that? It is excusable of course, because we make it excusable. We kill thousand of Americans, born and unborn a day, and we still have our careers, our freedom, and our life. America is a hypocrite.
Also, dog fighting was a misdemeanor up until 3 month before Vick was busted. Don’t you think the government was investigating him at the time they decided to up the crime to a felony? Does this not seem like a trap? He is one of the four only black quarterbacks in the NFL. Don’t you think good ol’ America, the same America that killed thousands of blacks from New Orleans and the same America that has six boys locked up in a Louisiana jail facing 15+ years in prison for a school fight involving a white student (Jena Six), the same America whose prison population is about 80% black, knew this when they decided to arrest him, and ruin his career and place him in prison…in good ol’ Georgia!
How many white NFL players get into trouble, but it is brushed off, and played down? This isn’t only a case of the dogs; this is a case of good ol’ America getting rid of someone that frankly they didn’t want there anyway! They won fair and square though. They sat and they waited and they watched, and then they finally got what they wanted, the little black quarterback boy out!
Again, he was wrong, he should be punished. But the punishment is way too harsh for the crime, and we know it. If we took the case out of the media, and let the courts handle it, then it would have never blown up to be this big, or harsh.
Comment by: Rachel
2 08/29/07 8:16 AM | Comment Link |Welcome to Justice and Compassion, CW! Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Comment by: Rachel
3 08/29/07 9:06 AM | Comment Link |Yes, I do!
Benjamin, I’m not sure I understand your question. There are humane means of euthanizing dogs who are suffering from a painful or fatal injury or illness. But these “fighting” dogs were not victims of old age, disease, or accidents. Their suffering was deliberately caused for sport. I certainly would not have expected people who caused dogs to severely wound each other for human amusement to then turn around and give them painless injections to hasten their deaths. The various means of killing the dogs was just further brutality for entertainment.
I think that cage fighting is brutal and barbaric and it SHOULD be a felony. But the fact that cage fighting is currently allowed is a separate issue. That doesn’t make abuse and torture of dogs acceptable. One distinction I would draw between dog fighting and cage fighting is that at least the human cage fighter knowingly consents to participate. The dogs do not. And at least in cage fighting there are a bare minimum of prohibitions, such as no biting and no eye gouging. The dogs do not even have those protections.
Benjamin, I completely see your point here. And I agree with CW that there is a tremendous amount of hypocrisy here, in a nation that embraces war, the death penalty, abortion, and the torture of detainees. We need a consistent ethic of life. But I still believe that animal abuse is immoral and should be illegal. The dogs did not belong to Mr. Vick and his friends to do with whatever they wished.
I would rather see Mr. Vick sentenced to pay fines and do extensive community service rather than sent to jail. I think he should be mandated to donate significant time and money to the Humane Society. As far as Mr. Vick losing his football career that is determined by the free market. If the public no longer respects Mr. Vick and does not want to watch him play or to purchase items he has endorsed, then the marketplace has spoken.
Comment by: Kathleen
4 08/29/07 9:56 AM | Comment Link |Yes. If your point is that there are worse things going on that don’t attract the same outcry/media attention, you’re right - and that’s the part that’s unreasonable.
I’m not sure that dogfighting necessarily deserves to be a felony. When you say “human cage fighting,” are you talking about things like the UFC? I wasn’t sure, so I wikipedia’d “cage fighting” and got a page on Mixed Martial Arts. Human fights that involve two consenting adults who have been trained to protect themselves and each other, with trained referees who can stop the match if something looks dangerous or someone is injured, are sports and should be regulated by the appropriate athletic commissions, not prosecuted.
Theoretically, I suppose, because the dogs are innocent. IMO, though, it’s not okay for us to execute people.
No, that’s not right at all.
I’d imagine it’s for punishment rather than reformation. I don’t think some prison time would be undeserved, but I think that the sort of extended sentence he’s facing is unreasonable.
I’m not sure they would. At least, I had no idea that Michael Vick was black until I read this post. I’m not much of a football fan, so I didn’t know who he was before all this came out, and while I’ve read the occasional article, I guess none of them had pictures, because I had no idea about his race until about 5 minutes ago.
Comment by: David H
5 08/29/07 10:51 AM | Comment Link |Clearly the US legal system is racist in many respects. There is a massive disparity of black inmates to those of any other kind. Moreover, minority inmates make up most of the inmates on death row. However, many legal observes of the past few decades have noted that is a peculiar kind of color blindness to our system that often trumps even issues of black & white. The US system sees green more than anything else.
While green has helped some Americans (regardless of their skin color) to escape conviction, green has another peculiar affect on American public opinion. Many Americans love nothing more than seeing the rich and famous fall. The press coverage and public humiliations harken back to the old days of punishments in the town square.
Another trend that seems able to trump racial issues has to do with the political nature of most prosecutors in the US. As was shown with the Duke lacrosse case — and I have witnessed it in cases I have covered as a reporter — prosecutors love celebrity cases because they bring publicity. Publicity is almost always helpful for prosecutors intent on winning re-election or climbing the political ladder to more prominent positions. Prosecutors will often pursue high-profile defendants accused of lesser crimes with far more zeal than your average run of the mill murderer because no pays attention to average run of the mill murderers any more.
It isn’t clear how any of these played a role in Vick’s arrest and plea — accept, clearly, the amount of media attention.
As for the negativity toward dog killing, it is odd that many seem to react more virulently to the treatment of dogs than they do to the treatment of human beings. I’m not sure as many people paid attention to the public fight over civilian casualties in Iraq that appeared and then slipped out of newspapers earlier this year. Likewise, I didn’t hear a lot of sympathetic noises about the torture and murder of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib — even though some of them were innocent. For some it may be easier to humanize a pit-bull than an enemy combatant.
However, everyone should also be clear that Vick and his partners didn’t quietly “put down” dogs. They tortured them to death in many instances. That is not — I repeat — NOT the moral equivalent of torturing a human being. But from a psychological point of view it does evidence a disturbing moral flexibility. Having read quite a bit on the subject, I am aware that such brutal treatment of animals is an almost universal youthful activity for serial killers in the making. I am not suggesting the Vick or his partners are anything like that. They are adults and unlikely to graduate from sadistic treatment of animals to anything more serious. Yet psychologists find such casual mistreatment of animals a cause of great concern because it could be evidence of a view that one need not accord the same type of treatment to “inferior creatures” as one would expect for oneself. Should that make dog-fighting or even dog killing a felony? I’m not sure, but it does seem out of balance that Vick could receive a sentence similar to what would be given for certain types of man slaughter. That is why our usually refer to the legal system in the US as opposed to the Justice system, because justice often has little to do with legal proceedings in this country.
Why is human cage fighting not a felony? Probably because people love blood sports and in some twisted way it seems better to watch two human beings beat each other bloody than to watch dogs do that.
Is it right or fair that Vick should receive a stiff sentence? There is talk at the moment that the judge may not issue any jail time in the case. That won’t be known until December. But it is hard to know how “just” the sentence will be when quite a bit about the case is not known and may not ever be known because of the plea deal.
Sending Vick to prison would probably serve different purposes in the minds of many. Some might see it as a way of driving home the consequences of his activities. Others may see it as purely punitive. Prison does appear to wake some people up, but from having covered a prison riot and interviewed people inside state and federal prisons I don’t find them particularly constructive in terms of fostering internal growth or reform. If you come out of prison a better person than you went in it probably isn’t because that is what the system is designed to cause happen.
There is one salient point not mentioned by any of the above. Whether Vick goes to prison or not has little to do with the likely permanent loss of his livelihood in the NFL. While the football officials are certainly dismayed by the negative publicity surrounding this, it is just part of a spate of bad publicity involving many players (some of whom have been accused of far worse crimes). Still, while this may not be gun or knife play at a night-spot, there is concern about the organized nature of the crime and the likely involvement of many other NFL players. What’s more, Vick being one of the highest profile players in the NFL does make his indiscretion a little more troubling on the PR front. But the biggest cause for concern in the NFL is apparently Vick’s involvement with gambling and direct association with big-money illegal gamblers. Killing dogs may be stomach-turning to some in the league commissioners office, but they are more likely to make an example of Vick by banning him from football for life because of the gambling association.
Is it fair or right? Opinions vary on the legal and moral issues. But it does seem far less likely that Pres. Bush will take an interest in this case than that of his crony Scooter Libby if for no other reason than Vick — if a registered voter — is probably a Democrat.
Comment by: Rachel
6 08/29/07 1:28 PM | Comment Link |Here is one dog lover’s response to the scandal: Chewed up Michael Vick cards sell for $7400 online, proceeds to go to Humane Society
Comment by: benjamin ady
7 08/30/07 6:47 AM | Comment Link |CW, Rachel, Kathleen, David,
wanted to say thankyou each greatly for your responses. You have given me further food for thought. Rachel–I had the same thoughts you did about sentencing. Why send Vick to jail and deprive his wife and child (children?) of his presence? It does seem a lot more fitting to require him to donate his time and money to the humane society for some specific number of hours and dollars. In thinking about this case, I’ve considered the whole scooter libby thing, and I’m thinking if I were president, I would probably pardon rather a large number of people.
Comment by: Julie Clawson
8 08/30/07 9:10 AM | Comment Link |I do think the dog fighting/killing thing is horrible, but I was frustrated at how the public cares so much about this crap happening to dogs but not to other animals. The horrors of cages, of abuse, and inhumane killings occur everyday on a massive scale in our factory farms. Just because cows, pigs, and chickens are not commonly kept as cherished pets does not mean that they are less intelligent or less capable of emotion than dogs. Just because we eat them and want to do so cheaply we are okay with torturing them?
Comment by: Rachel
9 09/2/07 4:32 PM | Comment Link |That is a great question, Julie! I will post a new discussion topic on Tuesday, so we can explore this issue further.
Comment by: Justice and Compassion
10 09/2/07 4:49 PM | Comment Link |[...] the Michael Vick discussion thread, Julie Clawson posted this comment: I do think the dog fighting/killing thing is [...]