We have previously discussed the sentencing difference between the United States and the United Kingdom and other countries. While we clearly have a problem with lengthening sentences in this country, there are cases abroad that shock the conscience in the imposition of relatively light sentences. The difference is evident in the Australian case of Alfio Anthony Granata, 47, who pleaded guilty to nine counts of rape and charges of theft, threats to kill and intentionally causing serious injury that left his victim with 54 injuries. He also kept the 21-year-old Dutch backpacker for months while threatening to kill her. For all of those crimes, Granata was given only 17 years. He could be released in 13 years.
Grant held the woman in a Melbourne hotel while repeatedly raping her and beating her, even carving a cross into her forehead. He whipped her savagely and assaulted her with household items.
Granata, a father of three, could be out before his 50th birthday. His defense counsel insisted that the rapes and torture were entirely the result of Granata’s drug addiction to ice. However, the crimes occurred over a very long period and Granata was clearly lucid and sober for parts of that period. The court rejected the addiction claim and called Granata’s stated remorse “very slight indeed.”
Given those findings and the horrific acts committed over such a long period, it is astonishing to consider Granata released after as little as 13 years. After all, these were multiple rapes and assaults.
Source: Guardian
The suggestion that a sentence in _Victoria_ implies that the Federal US case Coker v. Georgia needs to be revisited very amply typifies a certain kind of American myopia.
In many countries outside the United States, we succeed in having relatively low serious crime rates while not cramming our prisons to bursting and willfully brutalising prison inmates. That American legal scholars want to lecture _us_ about criminal justice is most amusing. Clean up your own stable!
The story is a little more convoluted than was posted. However, the guy should be eliminated, never to be allowed in society again.
A DUTCH backpacker held captive by a Melbourne man who brutally raped and assaulted her pleaded to be allowed to die on the last day of her ordeal.
As the 21-year-old victim cut herself in the hotel room she felt she could not leave, Alfio Anthony Granata panicked and called an ambulance, bringing to an end six weeks of violent abuse.
The victim sustained 54 separate injuries as a result of the prolonged attack in November and December 2012.
Her nose was fractured after Granata gabbed her by the hair and smashed her head into his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Mary Peaston’s head.
Granata, 47, had told the victim, who cannot be named, he had killed many times before, and she and his girlfriend would be next. In the Victorian County Court on Monday, Judge Frank Gucciardo sentenced Granata to 17 years in prison, telling the father of three his behaviour was vile and repulsive, and had dehumanised his victim.
“Yours was a brutality which transgressed all community standards of behaviour,” Judge Gucciardo told Granata.
The backpacker had met Granata and Peaston in October 2012 and agreed to go back to their hotel room in Bell Street, Preston, for consensual sex.
Over the following week, she returned to the room frequently, where the three smoked ice together.
The girlfriend of Hotel Hell torturer Alfio Granata, Jennifer Peaston was herself a victim. Source: News Corp Australia
Early in November, Granata began to suspect the two women were having an affair behind his back and assaulted the victim with a knife.
He scratched an “X” into her forehead and told her she was “marked for death” for betraying him.
In the subsequent weeks, he repeatedly beat her, raped her, stomped on her, and told her she would die.
He threatened to kill her family and said he had connections with security guards at the hotel, and she felt she could not leave.
He forced the two women to lie in a lover’s embrace, photographed them, and told them that was how they would be placed in their grave.
He told them he would take them to a quiet place, like a park, to kill them and they would never be found.
Later, he performed a ritual on the backpacker, putting her photograph in an envelope along with her hair, nail clippings and blood, telling her the act symbolised her being no more.
He said all that would be left of the victim was what was in the envelope.
He forced her to perform oral sex on him and at one point beat her so badly she couldn’t see or eat for days.
The ordeal came to an end on Christmas Day, 2012 when Granata and Peaston fell asleep and the victim stabbed Granata in the shoulder before turning the knife on herself.
After paramedics were called and the victim was in an ambulance, she said to the paramedics: “I am safe, thank you for saving me.” When Granata was interviewed by police, he said the victim was a troublemaker and he had been drugged by her.
Granata pleaded guilty to nine counts of rape, two counts of threatening to kill, one count of threatening to inflict serious injury, one count of inflicting serious injury, and one count of theft, which relates to items he stole from the victim’s hostel room.
Judge Gucciardo sentenced Granata to a non-parole period of 13 years.
Granata has already served 836 days of pre-sentence detention.
issac –
This means there is a certain amount of brutality that fall within the community standard.
Speaking of failed policy, does anyone know if Hillary has finally gotten the courage to face a tough interview? Or does she still count buying a burrito and releasing a video of one of her staff members as talking to the press? I’ve seen Huckabee asked about minimum wage, Fiorini and Rubio asked about abortion, all of them asked about immigration, but all I’ve seen of Hillary is her buying food. Have I missed Her Highness granting access to her adoring press since deciding to run, let alone anyone with tough questions?
Trooper – yes, you are right. There is an epidemic of violence in Baltimore, which politicians are desperately trying to pin on the cops instead of decades of failed policy.
My thoughts and prayers are for his victim. I hope she finds the inner strength to overcome this ordeal and thrive.
As for sentence duration, my father has an interesting take on that. He believes sentences should be shorter, but the time should be harder. There should be no rec rooms or TV, just breaking big rocks into little rocks, or some other grueling manual labor. The inmates would be too tired to assault each other. Inmates would be really motivated to stay out of jail once they were released, and maybe young people would not be in such a hurry to get in.
Personally, I disagree with parole. Your sentence should be your sentence. Who cares if you behave in prison with guards watching your every move? What does it matter if a rapist behaves himself there? There are no women for him to abuse. Good behavior should earn you privileges in prison to ease your time there, but not early release. The sentence should be just in the first place. That way you wouldn’t have this nonsense about having to sentence the worst offenders to consecutive life terms just to ensure they don’t get out too soon on parole.
In the scheme of things I guess the people of Balitmore are really not all that important.
Or those of NYC. You are 45% more likely to be murdered in Manhattan under Mayor Bill De Blasio’s administration.
Heck of a job there Comrade.
Not here anyway.
Or policemen.
Then it wouldn’t be worth mentioning.
Nevermind.
I hear there is an epidemic of people ripping those tags off of mattresses in Norway.
trooperyork – if you read the tag, if you are the buyer you may rip the tag off. The retailer may not.
I guess we have to go to Australia to get our important crime news.
There were 29 shootings and 9 murders in Baltimore over the Memorial Day weekend. Why do we not know any of the names of the people who were shot? Why doesn’t the President and the Attorney General speak out about this genocidal level of violence against minority communities in Baltimore? Where are the protestors and the social justice warriors demanding answers about this level of violence? Where is the Mayors cries of righteous indignation? Where is the wall to wall press coverage? Where is MSNBC and CNN and Geraldo Rivera and the white haired guy with the mom who sold blue jeans? Where is the mention of this on this blog?
I thought “Black Lives Matter?”
trooperyork – it may be that only whites are being killed in Baltimore.
Paul C. Schulte wrote: “it may be that only whites are being killed in Baltimore.”
Or Blacks killing Blacks. That gets no attention either.
Pogo Hears a Who
It was an acquaintance rape / abduction.
Not unlike what happened to 4-year-old Gina DeJesus, who disappeared after school after being offered a ride by former school bus driver and the father of one of DeJesus’s friends, Ariel Castro he kpt her for 9 years, with 2 other women.
I think Granata is quite unlike Castro. Gina wasn’t 4, she was 14. Being underage was quite a difference between the crimes. But the biggest difference is that Castro was not having voluntary sex with her before the abduction and rapes began. So he made a conscious choice to seek out a victim based entirely on his own circumstances. Someone like that is always going to be a high risk.
Because Granata was in a relationship there’s a chance he acted as he did because of circumstances unique to that relationship.
We as a society make judgement calls in many cases causing the deaths of many. Whether these calls are focused on a specific person or persons or the by product of how we wish to organize our priorities, we take the responsibility and live with the results. What is so different in the case of eliminating this sort of ‘broken’ being, this threat to innocents, this however you want to call it? Some how those who are against the death penalty equate their position with some aspect of humanity that simply does not exist. We are the guardians of our society and kill when necessary. Some one who tortures and rapes someone repeatedly for months and mutilates her is no different than the Islamic extremists who through their own perverse perspective of the wold murder, rape, and mutilate innocents. Terrorism is terrorism.
“drug induced paranoia
I don’t believe him.
“This wasn’t a stranger rape / abduction. ”
It was an acquaintance rape / abduction.
Not unlike what happened to 4-year-old Gina DeJesus, who disappeared after school after being offered a ride by former school bus driver and the father of one of DeJesus’s friends, Ariel Castro he kpt her for 9 years, with 2 other women.
Not sure of all the facts, but based upon what is said, I would support a MUCH SHORTER sentence: Execution.
Our state has a civil commitment procedure where predatory sex offenders who pose a significant risk of re-offense can be committed to a mental institution after release from prison.
The tone of the comments suggests people don’t understand the circumstances. This wasn’t a stranger rape / abduction. The victim was in a voluntary relationship with both Granata and his long-term girlfriend. In drug induced paranoia he came to believe the two women were planning on leaving him and in response escalated into torture and rape. I’m not sure exactly how this impacts his likelihood to re-offend but it does seem less likely than someone willing to abduct someone off the street.
I think 25 years a more appropriate sentence.
Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? The Relevance of Life‐Life Tradeoffs
Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule
THE LAW SCHOOL
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
March 2005
He potentially destroyed the psyche of an innocent person, for the rest of her life. It demands a punishment greater than a whisper above a decade.
Darren, As hard as I am on sex offenders, I find these civil commitments troubling. I know an attorney who is quite conservative. But, he has taken some civil commitment cases pro bono, thinking as do I, that is not a righteous solution.
Our state has a civil commitment procedure where predatory sex offenders who pose a significant risk of re-offense can be committed to a mental institution after release from prison.