Rare Book Monthly
A Stiff Prison Sentence for Book Theft: Equal Justice for All?
The Amazing Spider-Man was not able to prevent himself from being stolen.
Is this equal justice? That's difficult to answer. No two cases are ever exactly alike, and the differences in circumstances may account for the disparity in sentencing. Meherg was a repeat offender, with at least one other theft on his record, along with an attempt to escape from custody. Of course, one could argue that the others, whose thefts ranged from the hundreds to the thousands, were also repeat offenders. They simply had avoided being caught before. There are benefits to doing a better job of covering your tracks. It also needs to be noted that this was a different venue and different courts employ different standards. Chicago may be particularly tough on crime (that's meant to be a laugh line).
Naturally, one may wonder if the nature of the defendants explains the variations in sentencing. Meherg was a marginal character with a drug problem, the others upstanding individuals, even part of the upper echelons of society. Would Mr. Meherg have received a sentence stiffer than 3 1/2 years had he stolen and defaced books from major libraries around the world? Would Mr. Smiley have received a sentence of less than 7 years had he stolen a comic book from a store? Would Mr. Meherg have received more than one year for stealing over $1 million worth of books from British libraries, more than 2 1/2 years for stealing 10,000-plus items from 100 libraries? Was he just very unlucky or is justice not quite as blind as we would like to think? These are questions I cannot answer. But I can wonder.
