Seeking “review” of sentence imposed on mom who battered sex offender

This ABC News account of the state sentence given to a mom who battered a sex offender with a baseball bat has me thinking hard about what kind of sentence I might have given to the defendant in the case.  The ABC News story is headlined ” Mother Who Beat Sex Offender: ‘I’d Do It Again’: Tacoma Woman Sentenced to Three Months in Jail for the Attack,” and here are the details of the crime and punishment that got me to thinking:

Was Tammy Gibson protecting her young daughter or just beating up a neighbor, unprovoked?  Either way, she will now spend three months behind bars for taking a baseball bat to a sex offender last summer who was talking with her daughter.

Gibson said she has no remorse for the June 19 assault but pleaded no contest Friday to assault charges. She could have received as much as eight months in jail, but the judge sentenced her to three. “No, I’d do it again if not better,” she told ABC News Seattle affiliate KOMO-TV. “I don’t care if it hurts me, I don’t regret it. It got him away from my kids and all the other kids in the neighborhood.”

According to police documents, Level-3 sex offender William A. Baldwin had moved into his uncle’s home in Tacoma in early June. Following his move, county deputies distributed flyers around the neighborhood to alert residents of his presence. On June 19, Gibson went to the house in the trailer park and asked for Baldwin.  When Baldwin stepped outside, she claimed she was going to kill him because Baldwin had molested her children. Gibson then proceeded to hit Baldwin repeatedly with her bat, the document said, leaving him with an injured arm. “I kept swingin’ and swingin’, and swingin’,” Gibson told investigators.

Contrary to what she had said to Baldwin, Gibson later told investigators Baldwin had not molested her children. But she did say that she recognized Baldwin from the flyer as the man who had chatted up her then-10-year-old daughter during the previous summer.  Baldwin is the memorable height of 7 feet, 3 inches tall. “For him to be right there, in front of my house and talking to my child — made me crazy,” she told KOMO. “And I told him I thought he was a piece of crap and I smacked him,” she added. “I just didn’t stop hitting him. I just told him that ‘if it were up to me, I’d kill ya.”‘… 

The daughter she was protecting was in tears during the sentencing on Friday. “He tried to give me fireworks and I wouldn’t take it,” the girl, Renee Maria Perez, said of Baldwin. Gibson’s other daughter, Rachael Porter, added, “I think it’s crap; that she was protecting her kids like she should have been. They locked her up for way too long.”

Gibson said she hoped that the attention created by her case would lead to a change in the laws regarding released sex offenders. “I would hope that me doing this and going to jail would change something, change some kind of law, change something where people like him can’t be standing around little kids you know what I mean?”  Gibson said in her interview with KOMO-TV. “It’s not right, it’s not fair to the kids at all.”

Because the defendant here shows no remorse for her vigilantism and seem eager to champion the right of this kind of violent behavior, I am more than a bit concerned that a three-month jail term is not a truly effective or sensible sentence.  In my view, this case calls out for some kind of alternative sentencing/shaming scheme in which the defendant can be educated more fully about the reality of sex offending and existing sex offender laws and also have an opportunity to reflect on the risks to society if every individual citizen feels justified to act on their fears in violent ways.

I am very sympathetic to the concerns of parents who are eager to protect their kids from serious threats (this is why, for example, I am a vocal advocate for tougher drunk-driving sentences and a big supporter of the work of groups like MADD).  But there is every reason to think that modern sex offender laws (including national registration and notification requirements) already do a pretty good job empowering parents to deal with real risks in responsible law-abiding ways.  And, especially since I surely make my students crazy all the time in class, I am worried about a world in which persons feel justified violently attacking anyone who “makes them crazy” without first seeking to employ more socially valuable ways to express their concerns and fears.

UPDATE:  Scott over at Simple Justice has lots of deep thoughts about this case in this long post.