Rolf Kaestel turns 70 this week. He’s 40 years into a life sentence in prison. In 1981 he robbed a taco shop of $264 by showing the manager the butt of a water pistol. Even manager Dennis Schluterman has pleaded with the Arkansas governor to grant clemency. Will Gov. Asa Hutchinson change his mind about releasing Kaestel this time?
BACKGROUND RESOURCE: Arkansas man, 70, who is serving LIFE in prison for robbing a taco shop of $264 with a toy water gun in 1981 awaits decision of his fourth application for clemency [Daily Mail, May 31, 2021]
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24 replies on “40 Years a Prisoner: Will Governor Grant Clemency This Time for 1981 Water Pistol Robbery?”
Justice is hiding in our land, so very sad.
just a little help please…https://gofund.me/163628ea
the problem as i see it: this could open up a pandora’s box. blacks will scream bloody murder and hispanics too for that matter. that will create a deluge of sympathy for incarcerated felons (and we’re not talking pot smokers here) seeking and getting early release. to me it’s pretty obvious why he has been turned down in the past.
if hutchinson keeps the door locked one more time i predict that would be his reasoning even if NOT publicly stated (as the governor will be labeled a racist the day kaestel becomes a free man). our prison system isn’t just punitive looking for rehab and contrition but also example driven as in the death penalty and multiple life sentences.
sometimes you’re the one who gets the hammer when others are just as deserving or even more so. i am just two years older than the perp. when i was thirty i was busting my buns trying to get promoted from store manager to zone director. he was robbing businesses. we all make choices.
so he’s in prison for 40 years and counting because he lied.
well…he’s white and he’s a male so those are two strikes from the jump.
he’ll probably die in prison unless huckabee gets elected.
With the implied presence of a firearm, presented for the purpose of coercing a victim in some way to comply with illegal demands to deprive a victim of his property, the felon took into his hands the responsibility for any desperate actions that the victim or any bystanders might have taken to minimize or neutralize the threat.
I have lost three family members to murder. I take seriously the threat of lethal violence. Perhaps this informs my opinion that a man taking lives into his hands in order to steal cannot get much sympathy.
Unless they were giving rapists and murderers 700 year sentences at the time, I’d say life imprisonment is a bit harsh. I’ll go further and say that imprisonment is NOT scriptural (despite the acknowledgement of debtors’ prisons at the time). Scripturally speaking, restitution is the proper punishment for most non-violent crimes. This particular crime did involve the implied threat of violence, so that should factor in, and perhaps some imprisonment would be appropriate. Restitution has its limits too. A teenager steals and wrecks a Corvette. How can he hope to make restitution until much later in life? IMO, he should have to forfeit a good chunk of what he earns until the debt IS paid, but then we are faced with a disincentive for him to work at all. We pay people to not work, so we could take a large chunk of his don’t-work pay, but that’s putting aside the fact that we shouldn’t be paying people to not work in the first place. If all we take from him is what working taxpayers were relieved of, then working taxpayers are paying the debt rather than the guy who wrecked the Corvette.
A worse scenario is the idiot who burns down the courthouse or other major facility that would cost MILLIONS of dollars to rebuild. Even if he were to work 80 hours a week for 40 years he probably could never pay the debt. I don’t know what the answer is, but we seem to be getting farther away from it rather than closer.
always follow the politics.
Bill I agree if, in addition to apologizing to his victim, he offers to and does, pay him back. Then I believe we are REQUIRED to forgive him in the name of justice. Jesus commanded us to do that, and I feel it should be put in our Justice system.
123456
For similar situations as this, look no further than Kamala Harris.
As a retired police chief, I must disagree with your assessment on these scenarios.
Robbery generally is defined as the use or threatened use of physical force to commit any form of larceny.
The perception of the use or threatened use of deadly physical force while committing a theft is in the eye of the victim not the perpetrator. Those victims reasonably believed they would be subjected to deadly physical force for failure to comply with the instructions given, therefor the robbery charges are appropriate.
I do agree with you that clemency is appropriate based on this inmate’s decades of of cooperative behavior, however.
That’s what I thought, for at least some areas… that even if you did not have a weapon but claimed to, or even did as Scott (I think) mentioned back stage about putting your hand in your coat pocket and pointing out, if the victim thinks you are armed with a deadly weapon due to your actions or claims, that is how you are charged.
Point 1: The law follows this rule, “Any attempt to commit the offense is the same as the offense”. So just by appearing to commit a gun robbery is the same as the actual offense.
Point 2: That said, chances are with this length of sentence there is more to it. Likely this person was sentenced for every single person in the area. There are many times that ridiculous sentencing does happen. Criminal sentencing has been used as political power, and should never have been turned into a political grandstand instead of the action of societal justice.
This seems like a serious miscarriage of justice and punitive abuse of power. Even before we saw his picture, the likelihood of this person being “white” and likely a Christian were very high. White, Christian, men are the most unprotected, unsupported, discriminated against person in our governmental cultural justice systems. So our society is allowed to fully express all their frustrated, injustices from protected others (minorities) and instead over punish the unprotected white Christian male.
The justice system needs heavy reforms. From top to bottom, police, DA, judges/courts, legislative, prison, and social reform. Our society needs to re-evaluate the need to “lock” people up. Prison is to be utilized as a temporary removal of a person from the society in order to change the behavior. The question becomes two fold.
First was the offense serious enough to warrant prison sentence enacted. In other words was the offense worth possible destroying this persons life and or their families lives? Our society tends to think “Out of sight, Out of mind” fixes the issues and allows a clear conscience.
Second if the offense is serious enough to warrant societal removal, should it be permanent or permanently damaging? If the society determines that someone “needs” to be removed from society for multiple decades or even lifetime, doesn’t that mean the society doesn’t want them back at all? Why not just permanently remove them? This seems cold, but it is the reason that long mandatory sentences are acceptable and even encouraged in the current society. The idea that “we” are a humane society just because we don’t directly kill our significant societal violators is false. Anyone that has been inside the system can tell you its not humane but instead “death by a thousand cuts”.
So limited jobs, massive debt, damaged family relations, and societal outcast- no wonder recidivism is so high.
The over charging, plea deal, lying interrogation confessions, politicizing, social media convicting, mandatory sentencing, all combine to almost guarantee injustice both for the convicted and the society as a whole. Most people don’t envision how one sided the justice system is until they are at the receiving end of the stick. One reoccurring oxymoron situation is all to common.
Example:
Accused- “Why are you arresting me?”
Answer- “For resisting arrest.”
Accused- “Resisting arrest for what?”
Answer- “For resisting arrest.”
Yes, this type of effect – cause will stand up in court. They will also add some other charges like “assaulting an officer”, “interfering with officer in performance of duties”, “failure to cooperate in an investigation”, etc… This then adds pressure to the accused to admit defeat and accept some kind of pea deal, as the judicial system fully backs the police/DA and if fought will avail extended punishments as examples for others.
i.e.
Think plea deal of 2 years for “interfering”, but if fought in court may end up with 10 years for “interfering”, 20 years for “assault on officer”, 5 years for “failure to cooperate”, and yes this is really how it works. Courts (most) are tied to the same political governmental systems as the police and DAs. Its all about power, control, and the “end justifying the means” easiest route to conclusion. Plea deals are so much easier and less prone to appeals, because the deal “user agreement” the no-appeal into it.
Think about this are DA’s, judges, and legislators prosecuted criminally when false imprisonment scandals are brought to light. Not many, and even when falsely accused citizens are freed and paid reparation, the tax payer pays, not the people whom railroaded the cases.
Interesting fact in some states, courts cases can take years (2-5) to work through and all this time the accused may sit in jail. Now once found guilty and sentenced, this “time” that the accused was in jail DOES NOT have to be counted in the sentence. It is at the discretion of the judicial sentencing. In other words the accused may sit in jail for years, and then be sentences to even more years without regards for time served. This is also used as a bargaining tool for pleas. Sounds really fair doesn’t it?
Before you ask, yes personal experience in system, law enforcement side.
The Kyle Rittenhouse prosecution is heavy on my mind. From what I know about the event that caused him to be on trial, his appears to be a travesty in the making. Correction – travesty on-going. I am infuriated by the contrast in the treatment he has received vs the rioters in BLM and Antifa. Our justice system is not about justice.
Correct, its about popularity and power. Who cares about the plebes being uses and punished?
There’s a Paul Harvey here. I believe it was because he was reporting on the fact that the prison system was selling prisoner’s blood. Here’s a link to the article. My guess is, they are holding this against him. https://www.ibtimes.com/man-who-spent-40-years-prison-robbing-taco-shop-water-pistol-seeks-clemency-3215978
Wait a minute. We all know that white people get off easy, far easier than black people do. Cackling Kamala, Creepy Joe and all their ilk have told us this many times.
Especially in a redneck Southern state like Arkansas. Why, only Monday of this week (after running off the speaking platform and assaulting little girls) Joe was telling the nation and the world that there were “millions of Ku Klux Klan members”. This has not been true since the 1920’s, which is a century ago… Curiously the majority of those Klan members were in NORTHERN States.
Of course Creepy Joe forgot to mention that the Ku Klux Klan in all three of its iterations was to a man Democrat Party members and that white Republicans have been viewed and targeted by the Klan with the same zeal they went after black people.
Joe also omitted to mention that he was good buddies at one time with a Grand Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan and that he supported and voted for racist laws. I’m sure Creepy Joe wants his newfound Leftist friends to forget all that.
So what I want to know is did this Rolf Kaestel guy lose his white privilege card or is he just refusing to show it to his jailors?
We have a slew of Rolfs who’ve been sitting in the DC prison system since @ January 6th. We now officially have political prisoners in the US – let that sink in
Let’s hope that 40 years from now you’re not doing stories on them
I truly hope there is something from 1981 that would have led to a sentence of this length which certainly seems unreasonable. For context though, the late 70s and early 80s were a time when these types of crime were increasing. I seem to recall, though have no source, that in an effort to curtail crime it was deemed that crimes with the threat of violence were taken to be the same as if there was violence committed.
I remember the commercials in NYC under Ed Koch that basically were saying if you commit any crime with a “gun” you will spend a lot of time in jail. It was a major political talking point for pols.
That said, with prison overcrowding, this is exactly the type of “criminal” that should have been released years ago.
I’d say he was convicted of the crime he made the manager think he was committing. He was convicted under the law that he broke. He was sentenced under the law of that time. Now we are second-guessing that judge by our 40 year later morals. I would say the punishment absolutely fit the crime.
I could see Rolf being released now that the lion’s share of that time has been served.
For the other revolving door criminals, they should be facing these same punishments. Set the punishment by the law of the land at that time. Serve the time. Not get released because the dungeon is overcrowded. Boo-hoo. You did the crime knowing there would be consequences. As Barretta used to say, “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”
Doubt it. He’s white.
Arkansas? In 1980? Do you suppose he knows something about the Clintons?
No. He didn’t hang himself.