NY woman who fatally shoved singing coach, age 87, is sentenced to more time in prison than expected

8 years!

No!!

8 years, 6 months!

Sold!!!

Defense lawyer here, though not in New York so take this all with a grain of salt, I just felt I should put my 2 cents in based on the vibes in this comment thread.

It is weird for a judge to go against a joint recommendation, which seems to have happened here. It takes something extraordinary. The article indicates that the judge felt she didn't truly feel remorse for her actions, which could do it, but doesn't always do it. But, to me, just the fact that the judge went against a joint recommendation will always raise an eyebrow. Usually, if the sentence isn't harsh enough, the prosecutor won't agree to it, and if it's too harsh, the defense won't agree to it. So joint recommendations are almost always followed.

Yes, it's "only" 6 more months, but that's really not insignificant.

Now, to all the people screaming about how it's not enough (and especially to the one person saying she should have her citizenship revoked (????)), I wonder, how many of you are also against the prison industrial complex we have here in America? I challenge you to think beyond your initial emotions. Is this death tragic? Yes, absolutely it is. It was senseless violence for no good reason. So I agree, it deserves a harsh punishment.

But everyone keeps calling it murder. Not every killing is a murder. I also want to challenge people to watch their language. Murder carries with it an intent to kill. A shove does not intend death, regardless of who is being shoved. No, it shouldn't have happened, yes, it's tragic, but it was not a murder.

Now, all of you calling for 20+ years, really think about what you're saying. Do you think this person has no chance of rehabilitation? Those are the people we put away for life. I don't think that's the case here. She fucked up. Obviously. She deserves to be punished harshly, and make no mistake, she is. 8.5 years is a LONG time. Think back to where you were 8.5 years ago. Were you the same person? I doubt it. Now, do you think she might better herself in those 8.5 years? I think it's very likely, though again, the prison industrial complex makes that less guaranteed.

Sentences have many goals. Some of the primary goals are punishment, protection of the public, and rehabilitation of the defendant. Does this sentence punish her? Yes, a lot. Does this sentence give her a chance for rehabilitation? I'm not sure on that one, but that's because it may, if anything, be too long, and cause her to get too used to life in prison, and increase her likelihood of recidivism. But that's not her fault, that's the fault of the prison industry. Does this sentence protect the public? I say yes. She lost her temper once and it's now going to cost her 9 years of her life (if you include the duration of the case). That's a hell of an incentive not to repeat.

Alright, I think that's all I really want to say. But please, everyone, in the future, try to think about how our prison system really works, and how much you support it, when you're discussing individual crimes, not just when you're talking about the system as a whole. I think most people on this site lean left, and therefore should support reducing the prison populations, but this comment section has me worried with everyone here frothing at the mouth to give MORE prison time, when the sentenced amount should be enough to satisfy our sentencing goals.
- It was first degree manslaughter- the article says she was facing "up to 25 years." She threw a tantrum about being asked to leave a park that was closing, threw her dinner on her fiance, "stormed down the street" then saw a little (100lbs vs her 175) old lady across the street, crossed the street while calling her a removed, then shoved her onto her head. I don't think 9 years is too long for society to be protected from her.
  
  The court ruled "not a murder" because it was just a shove, but anyone could have seen than a shove like that would likely kill a small 87 year old woman and it certainly wasn't an accident. The woman wasn't just in her way while she was angry walking down the street. She went out of her way to attack the woman.
  
  Then there's the part where she evaded police for weeks, hiding her phone at a separate location, changing locations multiple times. I don't think the longer end of her sentencing options would have been unreasonable at all.
- Well said. This should be the top comment. You helped me calm down with this.
- Well said. Lemmy, like Reddit, and probably every other social media platform, is quick to grab up those torches and pitch forks.
- Well put.
- We're reaching a French revolution type point in American history. There are people who are the product of absurd privilege, and there is everyone else.
  
  This is tipping the scales a little bit back out of the favor of privilege. In the grand scheme, it's effectively misguided and miniscule. But it's a sign of progress nonetheless.
  
  Our legal system sucks ass. There's no reason why so much of our population should be imprisoned for relatively minor reason... but we're also used to money being more important than culpability. Affluenza, rapists getting off because it would be detrimental to their future to be held accountable, or generally rich people being able to pay for their crimes financially instead of punitively.
  
  So when someone from a perceived place of privilege is actually held to the same standards as one of us serfs, it's usually celebrated. It sucks, but it's true.
  
  This thread more of an indictment of our shitty legal system than of the defendant.

This story is weird. Who shoves an old woman for no apparent reason?

👮‍♂️
- But also people with no impulse control…… nvm
- That cane looked like a fully semi automatic assault rifle I swear.
- You mean people who are perpetually in fear for their lives and prone to panic?
The abhorrent details from another article:

Lauren Pazienza spent the night of March 10 gallery-hopping with her fiancé in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood in celebration of 100 days until their wedding, her fiancé told authorities, according to a court document.

Pazienza had "several glasses of wine" during the evening before the pair stopped at a food cart for something to eat, according to the document filed by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

The pair went to Chelsea Park to eat their meal, but before they were done, an employee told them they would have to leave because the park was closing, the document said. Chelsea Park closes at 11 p.m.

"The defendant became angry, started shouting and cursing at the park employee, threw her food onto her fiancé, and stormed out of the park," according to prosecutors.

Meanwhile, Pazienza "stormed" down the street and spotted Barbara Maier Gustern, prosecutors said.

Gustern, "in what turned out to be her dying words" before she lost consciousness, told a friend that a woman with dark hair “ran across the straight,” directly toward her, called her a b---- and pushed her as hard she "had ever been hit in her life" toward a metal fence, prosecutors said.

Gustern, according to a witness, "fell in an arc, falling directly on her head," according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

Pazienza "turned around and walked away, leaving Ms. Gustern prone on the sidewalk, bleeding from the head," prosecutors said.

Pazienza called her fiancé after the assault, he told authorities. When they reconnected, she picked a physical fight with him, accusing him of ruining her night, prosecutors said. He insisted the two head home, but security video from the area showed that Pazienza stayed in the area long enough to watch the ambulance arrive for Gustern.

She later told her fiancé what she had done, he told authorities. When he asked her why she would do such a thing, she said the woman "might have said something” to her.
- Sure prison is nice, but this lady is seriously unhinged and time behind bars won't fix that.
- Damn, he dodged a bullet there! (tell me he didn't marry her after that).
- Her fiance dodged a bullet
- Christ these stories Blackpill me really badly
- Lauren Pazienza spent the night of March 10 gallery-hopping with her fiancé in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood in celebration of 100 days until their wedding
  
  honestly, this is just piece of shit person, living off someone else's money, running around contributing nothing to society. fuck her
- Rich, white entitlement everyone.
  
  I've seen it before. Lots of these girls pretend to care about those they see as lesser until you get a few drinks in them.
  
  Then their real character shows, and this is it.
  
  Disgusting.
According to prosecutors, Pazienza attacked Gustern after storming out of a nearby park, where she and her fiance had been eating meals from a food cart.

This is speculation, but sounds like maybe she got in an argument or was angry about something and was storming off somewhere. NYC is crowded and if you're angry, trying to get somewhere, and not composed (getting into the mindset here, not what I really think) then "this old removed in my way fuckin' move arrrggg!" shove

Obviously, there's nothing right about it and most of the time people behave themselves, even when they're angry. Sometimes, though, they don't. This isn't a justification in any sense - more of a speculation in furtherance of an attempt at comprehension.
- The costs of the actions you commit while angry often far outweigh the initial cause of the anger.
- Her fiance perspective is that there was an argument and the suspect storms off and murders someone. Like, maybe now is a good time to see you're engaged to a monster.
Guessing you haven't spent much time in NYC?

In such a dense environment, even the very small proportion of the general population that's deeply mentally ill and violent can be very visible and do a lot of damage, and we don't really have any good tools to deal with them except for waiting for them to attack someone.
- I live in NJ, been to NYC quite a bit. I saw “event planner from Long Island” and was confused as that doesn’t sound like the kind of NYC crazy person I’ve come to expect (at least the physically violent kind) but once someone mentioned she was intoxicated it clicked for me.
You've never encountered a rich, white woman in NYC, have you?
She was drunk and got angry that the kicked her out of the park, so assaulted an old woman. removed deserves more than just 8.5 years. I prefer that her citizenship is revoked as well.
- Revoking citizenship is illegal under the Geneva convention and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Signatory countries aren’t allowed to intentionally make a person stateless. It is actually a big problem that has been abused several times throughout history. Nazi’s revoking Jewish citizenship is a prime example. More recently, we have the Uyghur Muslims in China.
  
  The issue with revoking citizenship as a punishment is that it only pushes the burden of citizenship onto another country. It also removes any kinds of legal protections that a citizen may have had. Imagine if a country only allows citizens a right to an attorney. All that country would need to do to remove your legal council is strip your citizenship. Even if you later manage to get the citizenship back, you’ve still lost your original court case because you were forced to go through it without a lawyer.
- Well that’s gross. I’m not comfortable with giving the government the power to revoke a person’s citizenship; sounds ripe for abuse, but I get the outrage

I'm sorry but normal people don't shove elderly people when they are drunk.

She is a fucking sociopath

I was an alcoholic for a solid 3 years and been shitfaced many a times. Never have I tries to physically hurt people or engage in fights, despite my anger issues.

Judge saw through the crocodile tears, and sentenced her appropriately. I see a lot of pearl clutching in this thread, would you be so empathic towards this sociopath if the victim were your mother or grandmother?

I don't know anything about this case, but revenge is not a solution. Our penal system is totally fucked, and part of the issue is people have been told that revenge is justice. It isn't. We will all be paying for this woman to be locked up and she won't be able to contribute to society. If we tried to rehabilitate, that'd be one thing. We just try to punish though, and people like you act like a harsher punishment is good somehow. What good does it do?
- Oh no, who could have ever predicted that actions might have consequences. She killed someone, completely unprovoked to boot. It’s not revenge to lock her ass up, it’s the consequence of her killing someone.
- We get some of that sweet sweet ~~slave~~ free labor!
- This fella....just 4 years for killing someone and you still want to white knight here?
- I get your position but killing is where I draw the line.
- Rehabilitation and revenge are two out of the four aims of sentencing. There's also deterrence and prevention: sending a message to everyone else that this is not okay, and simply keeping the convict away from the public so they can't hurt anyone else.
- Lmao I can want prison to be a place of rehabilitation and still want a criminal to spend time locked up, away from society.
- Sigh.
"If you were unable to think rationally about the case, you would have a different opinion" isn't the slam dunk argument you seem to think it is.

What's actually being punished? Would she have been sentenced to 8.5 years in prison if she pushed an 87 year old who was slightly less frail and instead of dying sustained major injuries? Would she have been sentenced if she pushed an extraordinarily healthy 87 year old who knew how to gracefully fall and sustained no serious injuries?

It seems that the act of pushing alone isn't enough to sentence a person to nearly a decade in prison. There was likely no intention to kill, though that was the outcome. What if she sneezed on the 87 year old, and in a fit of panic the 87 year old fell over and died? Again, no intention to kill, though that would still be the outcome.

I think it's clear this should be punished more intensely than sneezing, pushing an old person would very commonly result in serious injury, so this is definitely assault.

For cases where injury was sustained there is legal doctrine know as the Eggshell skull rule

The rule states that, in a tort case, the unexpected frailty of the injured person is not a valid defense to the seriousness of any injury caused to them.
- What an odd rule! Thank you for the explanation.
- This wasn't a tort case.
  
  This is a simple case of assault in which someone unintentionally died. It's textbook manslaughter.
- Sure sure, but 87 year olds are expected to be frail. It's what they normally do.
Again, no intention to kill, though that would still be the outcome

No it wouldn't, you have to prove intention to kill for a murder charge. This is manslaughter, a lesser but still very serious charge. Killing someone on accident is still a crime, shocker, I know.
- Killing someone on accident is still a crime, shocker, I know.
  
  Unless you do it with a car. Then you have a 90% chance of getting off Scott free.
pushing an old person would very commonly result in serious injury.

This is why she's being punished. You cannot assault an 87 year old without expecting serious injury or death. Just like you can grab a 20 year old and shake them by the shoulders and they'll be fine, but if you do the same to an infant they're probably going to die.
I direct you to comments below, detailing the circumstances. She got drunk, became increasingly belligerent and violent... then took out her rage on this random old woman viciously. She showed no remorse, to the point of sociopathy.

https://feddit.uk/comment/3105205

Edit: In hindsight, I'm unclear if you're suggesting she should see a longer or shorter sentence.
- She was out celebrating 100 days until she got married, why does every mundane thing have to be celebrated? Just go out and have a good time with your fiancé. You don’t need an excuse.
- Holy fuck, what an unhinged person. Bad person right from reacting to "we close at 11" with aggression, but then just escalates it irrationally from there. Throws her food on her fiance (I'm guessing maybe he had the gall to tell her to chill out, or maybe he was just there and she thought he was a safe target), and then goes out and attacks an elderly woman because she "thought she might say something". Then later meets up with her fiance again and blames him for "ruining the night" when it was all her own insane reaction to being told a place was closing and they'd have to hurry up.
  
  Is she the avatar of the shitty entitled aggressive consumer who blames everyone else for their problems? Fuck her and everything about her.
  
  Her sentence might only be 8.5 years but with her anger management skills, it'll probably get increased. Though she'll be locked up with a bunch of people who aren't on their 80s, so she might not survive her next tantrum.
This is the problem of moral luck. We often want to punish people more because factors outside of the perpetrator's control turned out badly. Either we should punish everybody harshly when they push an elderly person, whether or not it injures them, or someone like this should get a pretty light sentence. Yet we have an irrational pull to treat the cases differently.
So you're saying that you don't understand what manslaughter is. You ask a lot of questions, but I get the feeling that you're not the type of person that is actually looking for answers
- you're saying that you don't understand what manslaughter is
  
  No, they’re just saying that instead of manslaughter being a more severe charge than assault, maybe it should be lessened to be equivalent. Similarly, maybe attempted murder should carry a charge equivalent to actual murder.
Muder is murder. Manslaughter is manslaughter. Intention, knowledge, negligence, does not matter for manslaughter, unless the intention was to kill, which upgrades it to muder instead.
Sneezing on someone? No crime.

Pushing someone? Crime.

This is why you're not a lawyer and should never have any say in legal proceedings.

Stay in your lemmy fantasy world with the rest of the mentally ill.
- You don't have to be a dick about it Bob.

All I have to say is good. Fuck this woman (not literally she doesn't need to get laid). I drink and have been drunk many a times, never in that stupid inebriated state have I EVER thought to murder someone or try and cause them harm. Do dumb shit? Absolutely I'm a drunk fool so you give me a bucket, a empty street and a fuel and lighter I'm likely gonna kick a flaming bucket down the street. But to hurt someone or seek a fight etc? No. I'm still able to keep my morality and decision-making under control over those things.

That's uh, pretty specific with the flaming bucket...
- That's because that's something I've done when I was 21 😆 we played flaming bucket soccer. It did NOT end in disaster luckily.
You could hurt someone with a flaming bucket though.
- Oh for sure I could. The difference between myself and my friends doing this drunkenly is it was a dead end street with only his house and no vehicle traffic. And while Matt did slightly catch fire, we wouldn't have purposely hurt someone. The lady in the article was said to get increasingly unruly and belligerent. Not how I operate.
  
  Now say we'd caused a house fire or any fire for that matter I'd have fully accepted any punishment for the severity of whatever had happened. Just who I am. I fuck up I own it. Even drunk me knows not to punch someone or harm someone unless I'm in danger.
So no judgement but for me: drunk fool doing dumb shit ≠ decision making under control. To each there own but shit can spiral out of control rapidly. Be safe out there.
- If you do dumb shit while drunk, you still chose to get drunk. Your fully-aware mind is perfectly capable of grasping that you getting drunk will make you do dumb shit, so imo you're fully responsible for your actions while drunk.
- I mean I suppose but when I drink now I rarely get to a state I cannot retain reason and think somewhat critical. This was mostly when I was in my 20s. But I would argue being drunk does NOT at all absolve me or anyone else from consequences of actions we made.. even impared. That's why I agree with this woman's sentences. She absolutely deserved what she got.

The judge didn’t believe the defendant was actually repentant.

She probably wasn't.

The story reads like a rich, entitled white girl getting trashed and then her real personality coming out.

Eight and a half years for the senseless murder of one of our society's most vulnerable citizens.

Legally speaking you'd have a hard time prosecuting that as murder. You'd have to prove that she was intending for the old lady to die when she shoved her. I'm guessing she was charged with some combination of second degree assault and manslaughter, maybe more. She was facing up to 25 years and took a plea deal for 8, which I assume included part of the charges being dropped.
Nearly 10 years is a long ass time to be in jail for a random angry act.
- A random angry act is knocking a sign over, kicking a garbage can, punching a wall. NOT killing someone
- I mean, it's kind of the risk you take being drunk in public, you have no idea what you are going to do other than be held accountable for it when you are sober afterwards. It's kind of insane that it is seen as "normal" to take that kind of risk, for alot of people it's a surprisingly common occurrence.
- Not as long as that person is going to be dead.
  
  If you can't control your anger and you attack random people on the street, you belong behind bars.
- "A random angry act" lmao fuck outta here downplaying homicide

While this woman is pure scum and I wish her the worst, is the legal system allowed to do that? Like is it constitutional for you to reach a plea deal and then have years added to it? Like isn't a plea deal like the final say?

Plea deals are between the prosecutor and the defendant. The judge can sentence you to anything. That's why, frequently, prosecutors will drop the most serious charges in a plea deal. That way the judge is limited to sentencing to only the lesser charges.
I believe the plea deal is between the defense and prosecutors. Judge has the last say.

As you can tell, I ain't a lawyer.

I found a different article that quoted her "former friends" and one said she was basic. Another said she's the poster child for white privilege and a third said she's nothing but trouble lol

Like damn wtf... How are you this hated?

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I think someone who pushes the elderly in fits of rage isn't very chill.

I don't really know what 6 months more or less is gonna do in this case, but ok I guess?

Honestly I think it just made the judge feel better to make it longer
- Seems kinda petty

Fuckin' Debbie..

I mean, 8 years for premeditated murder seems kinda low to begin with. 8 years and six months doesn't seem like much of a difference.

She was charged with manslaughter. I'm not sure of the degree though. Manslaughter basically means you didn't intend to kill someone but you did ~~someone~~ something reckless that resulted in someone's death. Premeditated murder is a completely different, and much more serious, charge.
"premeditated murder" is a bit of a stretch