Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1189, Sentencing a Criminal.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1189.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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This episode is a dialogue between Nancy and Geraldo about sentencing a criminal, giving someone who has broken the law a punishment.
Let's get started.
Hey, where have you been?
Which murderer?
The one who failed to get the charges reduced through a plea agreement.
During the trial, her attorneys tried to show that there were mitigating circumstances, but the judge didn't buy it.
That's right.
Will she serve them consecutively or concurrently?
She'll be serving them consecutively.
So even with time off for good behavior, she'll be spending the next 50 years or so in prison.
So her only hope now is an appeal, right?
That's right.
I'll be following this case for a long time to come.
And getting lots of good copy.
Of course.
What would we crime reporters do without juicy murders?
Nancy asks Geraldo, Hey, where have you been?
Geraldo says, A courtroom, C-O-U-R-T-R-O-O-M, is a large room. where what are called trials, T-R-I-A-L-S, and other legal procedures or processes take place.
A courtroom is a place typically where you will go if you commit a crime and the police find you and arrest you.
You will have to appear in front of a judge, J-U-D-G-E.
A judge is a person who works for the government, who is in charge of or who runs legal trials and processes that are involved in carrying out the law.
A courtroom is typically found in a place called a courthouse, C-O-U-R-T-H-O-U-S-E.
A courthouse isn't an actual house that you live in, but it is rather a building that is used for housing, if you will, courtrooms and judges and lawyers who work for the government.
Geraldo was in a courtroom watching the sentencing of that murderer, he says.
To sentence S-E-N-T-E-N-C-E as a verb means to give someone a punishment, usually for the government to assign or give a punishment to someone who has done something wrong.
A murderer.
M-U-R-D-E-R-E-R is a person who murders, that is, kills someone unlawfully, someone who has broken the law by killing another person.
Interestingly just because you kill another person, you end another person's life, doesn't mean that you will be arrested.
If the other person, for example, was trying to kill you and you were defending yourself, we wouldn't call you a murderer in that case, even though you did kill the person who tried to kill you.
Anyway, Nancy asks Geraldo, which murderer, meaning which murderer is he talking about?
Geraldo answers the one, meaning the murderer who failed to get the charges reduced through a plea agreement.
There are several expressions there we need to explain.
Let's start with the verb to fail to get something.
To fail, F-A-I-L, to get something, means you don't get something.
You are not successful at obtaining something.
The word charges, C-H-A-R-G-E-S, refers to the things that the government accuses you of.
For example, if you steal something, you will be charged with a crime of theft.
The charge is what the government says you did wrong.
Now, sometimes you can commit a crime, you can break the law and the government will not accuse you of doing exactly what you did.
They may charge you with a lesser crime, perhaps because they don't have evidence to prove that you committed the crime the more serious crime that they could charge you with or there may be some other reason why the government decides it isn't going to charge you with a more serious crime and charges you with a lesser crime.
So the word charge can be used as a verb referring to when the government accuses you of something, as well as a noun referring to what it is that the government accused you of.
I hope that makes sense.
In this case, Geraldo is talking about a murderer who failed, who wasn't successful to get the charges reduced.
To reduce R-E-D-U-C-E can mean to make something smaller, to make something less than what it was.
To have your charges reduced means to have the government accuse you of a less serious crime.
Murder is a very serious crime.
The government may say, well, we're not going to charge you with murder.
We're going to charge you with something less serious.
Now, Geraldo is talking about a murderer who failed to get his charges reduced.
That is, the government did not reduce his charges.
They did not say that he committed a lesser crime.
Many times the government will charge you with a lesser crime through a particular kind of agreement called a plea P-L-E-A agreement.
The verb to plea is used to refer to what you say to the government when the government accuses you of a crime.
You can either say, yes, I did it, or you can say, no, I'm innocent.
Most people, of course, say they're innocent.
When the government charges you with something, you have to say, I am innocent or I am guilty.
That statement is your plea.
It's what you are saying in response to the government's accusation or charge against you.
A plea agreement, then is when usually you say to the government okay, I will say that I am guilty of this crime, usually a crime that is less serious than the one that you actually committed.
The government does this often so that it doesn't have to go through an entire trial.
It doesn't have to prove that you are guilty.
That can take a long time and be very expensive.
So instead the government says okay, we know you committed murder, but instead of saying that you committed murder, you say that you committed a lesser crime crime, a less serious crime.
For example, there's a crime called manslaughter, M-A-N-S-L-A-U-G-H-T-E-R.
Manslaughter is when you say that you killed someone but you didn't mean to kill them or you didn't do it on purpose.
That would be an example of a plea agreement.
Let's continue with our story.
Geraldo says during the trial...
Her attorneys tried to show that there were mitigating circumstances, but the judge didn't buy it.
So I guess we're talking about a woman who murdered someone, not a man.
I think I referred to this person as a man earlier.
In any case, Geraldo refers to the trial, T-R-I-A-L.
The trial is the series of meetings in a courtroom during which the government tries to prove that you committed a crime usually, and you try to convince the judge that you didn't commit a crime.
Often in U.S. trials, it's not the judge who makes the final decision, but the jury, J-U-R-Y.
The jury is a group of people, usually 12 in number, who decide if you are guilty or innocent of a crime.
However, many times, the jury only decides if you are guilty or innocent.
The judge...
A man or a woman who works for the government decides how you will be punished, how you will be sentenced.
In this case, during the trial, the attorneys the lawyers who worked for this woman accused of murder tried to show that there were mitigating circumstances.
Mitigating, M-I-T-I-G-A-T-I-N-G, circumstances refer to situations that may make your crime worse.
Less serious or at least your guilt less serious.
For example, you may be hungry and have no food and no job and no place to live.
And because of this, you steal some food.
Well, stealing food is a crime, but the judge might decide there were mitigating circumstances, things that, even though you did commit the crime, mean that you shouldn't be punished as severely or as heavily.
But in this case the judge didn't agree in the case of the murderer, that there were mitigating circumstances for her crime.
The judge didn't, according to Geraldo, buy it.
To buy B-U-Y.
It means to believe what someone said, to accept the truth of what someone has told you.
Nancy asks Geraldo, didn't she commit two murders?
Geraldo says, that's right.
The judge sentenced her to 35 years to life in prison for each crime.
35 years to life means the person has to go to jail, to prison, for at least 35 years, but maybe as long as the person lives.
In other words, until the person dies.
Nancy says, will she serve them consecutively or concurrently?
Because the murderer committed two murders, the judge gave her two punishments.
The punishment for each murder was 35 years to life.
Now, the question Nancy asks is, does the murderer have to serve these sentences, that is, undergo these punishments consecutively, C-O-N-S-E-C-U-T-I-V-E-L-Y, or concurrently, C-O-N-C-U-R-R-E-N-T-L-Y?
Consecutively means one after the other, meaning first you serve 35 years for this murder, then you serve 35 years for the next murder.
In other words, 70 years in total.
Concurrently means that you are doing two things at the same time, so the two sentences of 35 years are served at the same time, not one after the other.
If you commit multiple crimes, you may be sentenced to serve the punishments consecutively or concurrently.
Obviously, if you serve them consecutively, you will be in prison for a lot longer than if you serve them concurrently.
Geraldo says she'll be serving them consecutively, meaning one after the other.
So even with time off for good behavior... she'll be spending the next 50 years or so in prison.
Okay, so what does all this mean?
Well, sometimes you are given a punishment, but if you don't cause any problems in prison...
You can be released from prison.
You can be let out of prison a little earlier than you would have otherwise if you had served or stayed in prison for the entire time of your punishment.
This is called getting time off for good behavior.
Time off means that the number of years that you have to spend in prison is reduced, because you didn't cause any problems, any more problems when you were actually in prison.
So in this case, the murderer will have to spend at least 50 years in prison, even if she behaves herself, even if she gets those 35-year sentences reduced due to good behavior.
Nancy says, so her only hope now is an appeal, right?
In the US court system.
Even when the judge says that you did something wrong and sentences you to prison, you can appeal the decision to a higher court.
You can only do that if you think that the judge made a mistake or that there was some problem with your trial.
An appeal, A-P-P-E-A-L, then, is an attempt to get a higher court, a more powerful court, if you will, to decide that there was something wrong with your original trial or that the judge made a mistake.
And this happens quite a bit.
It happens quite often.
Geraldo says, yes, that's right.
Her only hope now, that is her only hope not to spend the next 50 years in prison, is an appeal.
Geraldo says, I'll be following this case for a long time to come, meaning for a long time.
Nancy says, and getting lots of good copy.
Copy, C-O-P-Y, here refers to text that will be published or shared with readers.
Usually we refer to copy when we're talking about a news story.
It's the actual writing that you read when you read a newspaper.
We also use the word copy when referring to writing in an advertisement or a commercial.
Geraldo says, of course, what would we crime reporters do without juicy murders?
A crime reporter is a journalist whose job it is to report on or to tell people about crimes.
Juicy, J-U-I-C-Y, here means very interesting, but interesting because it is also scandalous.
Something that is scandalous.
S-C-A-N-D-A-L-O-U-S is something that will cause you to be upset, or angry, or shocked.
So a juicy murder would be a murder that is surrounded by circumstances that might also cause you to be shocked or upset.
Something terrible happened.
Of course, murder is terrible in and of itself.
By itself, it's terrible.
But it might be a murder that is connected to some sort of sex scandal or some sort of crazy behavior.
Something that might happen, say, here in Hollywood.
Now let's listen to this dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I've been in the other courtroom watching the sentencing of that murderer.
The one that failed to get the charges reduced through a plea agreement.
During the trial, her attorneys tried to show that there were mitigating circumstances, but the judge didn't buy it.
Didn't she commit two murders?
That's right.
The judge sentenced her to 35 years to life in prison for each crime.
Will she serve them consecutively or concurrently?
She'll be serving them consecutively.
So, even with time off for good behavior, she'll be spending the next 50 years or so in prison.
So her only hope now is an appeal, right?
That's right.
I'll be following this case for a long time to come.
And getting lots of good copy.
Of course.
What would we crime reporters do without juicy murders?
Our scriptwriters' dialogues may not always be juicy, but we think they're interesting.
Thanks to Dr. Lucy Say for writing them.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening, if you are still listening.
Why not come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2016 by the Center for Educational Development.
Thank you.
