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Before one can even begin to answer this question, one must first decide what is the objective of jail time? Is it to punish the offender? Is it to make others realize that crime has consequences? Is it to satisfy the victim - to bring closure? Is it to rehabilitate? Is it a principal from which we must not deviate (the right wing extremist viewpoint)? Is it something we should decide from a pragmatic viewpoint based only upon current feelings by today's standards (the left wing extremist liberal viewpoint)?
Without first determining this fundamental objective, then your opinion is simply based upon emotion - making your conclusion from the worst of perspectives. First make a decision only based upon facts such as what the objectives of prision time is for. Only after you have made all those hard and brutally logical decisions - only then do you ask if this is emotinally viable. If not viable, then go back and restart all the brutally logical thinking process all over again.
Five years for highjacking 20 years ago? That is the sentence for possessing mariguana with possession to distribute - or for 2nd degree murder. Again - perspective. Which is it? The rediculous crime equivalent to selling mariguana or the so destructive and never forgotten crime of murder?
One should first define reasons for jail before even asking what the man's sentence should be - in order to make those decisions logically. Why should this man go to jail? To satisfy vengance? To compensate the agony of the victims - agony as experienced then, or from today's perspective?
Many find the decision process too difficult and instead resort to an emotional conclusion.
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