[Guvante]

He committed a minor misdemeanor offense (tagging the building), but used his own attorney and only went to court to avoid jail time.

Sure there was a minor expense in dealing with the misdemeanor but the vast majority was not his fault.

[EpicEng]

I think you misunderstood my point. I was not defending the decision. What I'm saying is, if you commit a crime with the sole intent of being taken in to write an article which portrays these people in a bad light (right or wrong), then expect for them to be harsh on you. If you're surprised that they would punish you harshly then you're just naive.

[Guvante]

Isn't the entire purpose of the justice department to give out fair unbiased rulings?

The cops being pricks is understandable, if a waste of everyones time, the judge being a prick is not. It is his only job to consider only the crime and the motives, and while his motives did warrant a stiffer penalty, they probably did not warrant that harsh of one.

[EpicEng]

I'm not sure what world you live in, but it certainly isn't this one. Judges are human. You go into court and decide to be a jerk to the judge? Guess what; you're walking away with a bigger penalty then you would have if you were nice. The judge did not go outside his authority as far as I am aware. He has discretion to go either way, and there are very good reasons for it(which is one reason that I hate mandatory minimums, but that's neither here nor there).

I'd be careful about assuming bias here. If a judge thinks that you deserve a larger penalty as a deterrent then that's not bias, he's doing his job. If he hands you the maximum penalty because you're his noisy neighbor then that's bias. I can't tell you what his motivations were.

[Guvante]

> If a judge thinks that you deserve a larger penalty as a deterrent then that's not bias, he's doing his job.

There is no un-biased method of determining that the OP is likely to tag a building. Every single factor pointed to this being a one time event.

The only factor that you can pin a maximum sentence on is being indignant towards the process. He believes the process needs to be improved, and put himself in there intentionally to observe.

Doing it intentionally points to a harsher sentence, but going beyond the initial arraignment already put him into harsher sentence. The prosecutor asked for several times the typical punishment as well.

Although it is always possible we are missing something, typically it is the case the most obvious truth is the correct one. The judge thought that purposefully tagging a building was an afront to the justice system and punishable to the full extent of his power.

Not exactly acting like a judge is it?