Do people who commit suicide abstain from sex beforehand?
Inaccurate. Its without consent because of the age. Under a certain age a minor can not legally give consent even if their actions are consensual. That’s why its called the age of consent.
It was three years after. Without knowing more about the victim its hard to say which came first. Was she traumatized by the crime which eventually led to her suicide? Or was she a screwed up kid that a predator recognized as an easy target? There is no indication from anything I read that implies there was any force. Just the opposite. But he is still a monster and the sentence is laughable. I can make some guesses as to why it happened but that’s all it would be.
This is horrifying and unsurprising. Add this to the reasons why victims don’t bother to tell authorities.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc?
If I believed the judge’s claim that “the victim was ‘older than her chronological age’ and ‘as much in control of the situation’ as the teacher,” I might suspect that the girl was seriously messed up long before the rape occurred, and that this messed-upness was a contributor to both the sexual encounter and the suicide.
However, look at what else the judge said:
:dubious:
Me, personally? No, I’m too busy with the victory lap.
But plenty of people do commit suicide at some point in their lives, lives which at some point in the past included consensual sex.
The victim in this case committed suicide three years after the sex in question, so if you’re claiming the sex was the proximate cause of the suicide, and that the suicide proves the sex from three years ago wasn’t consensual, then you better have some additional facts beyond those adduced so far.
Hopefully you can see how utterly bereft of any logic your question was.
Yes, the “without consent,” refers to lack of legal consent, as opposed to a finding about force or coercion (apart from the kind of coercion we as a society presume exists when any fourteen-year-old has sex with any adult.)
A major problem – not insurmountable, but major – for the prosecution is that the man had not been tried, and the witness who could testify to the sex was now dead.
They were apparently able to find him guilty without that witness, since that’s exactly what happened. This was a deferred prosecution deal, not a plea bargain. I don’t see how the lack of a star witness would affect the judge’s sentencing decision if it didn’t affect the verdict.
To clear up confusion: what happened is that when the crime occured, he cut a deal with the prosecutor’s office where they deferred prosecution (i.e. just shelved the case) so long as he fulfilled certain conditions. This is different from a plea bargain, where you agree to plead guilty in exchange for lenient sentencing. If you fail to comply with the terms of the deferred prosecution agreement, you go to trial. That’s what happened here, and apparently there was enough evidence to convict the guy even with the victim dead. But then the judge gave the ridiculously light sentence, contrary to the prosecutor’s recommendation, and that’s what everyone is angry about now.
It seems like deferred sentences are preferred to plea bargains in Montana as compared to other states. It’s how I get out of all my speeding tickets here, whereas usually in other states you actually have to plead guilty when you make a deal with the prosecutor. The fact that the same tactic I use to keep my driving record clean also works for rape is a little disturbing, though.
The only way they could find him guilty without the witness is via his own admission, which his deferred prosecution agreement purportedly secured. The following is from paragraphs four and five of the accused’s “Deferred Prosecution Agreement,” filed in the Montana 13th Judicial District Court, Yellowstone County, in the matter of State of Montana v. Stacey Dean Rambold, Cause DC-08-0628, in July 2010:
C.M.'s suicide was in February 2010.
So the reason they reached this lenient deal with Rambold in July 2010 is that the complaining witness died by her own hand in February 2010, thus permitting Rambold great leverage in holding out for a good deal.
With all due respect to the mother’s feelings, it’s not typically legally sufficient to accept a parent’s psychiatric assessment of the reasons for a child’s suicide.
So, while I suppose that is an “additional fact,” it’s not a strong one. And even if it were beyond question, that still doesn’t address the consent question. So let’s say I grant you that the mother is right on the money: the sex was the reason for the suicide. How does that show the sex was not consensual? (Again understanding that no person fourteen years old can legally consent; we’re talking about a willing sexual act as opposed to force or coercion beyond the fact of age).
Okay, that makes sense as to why the deal was cut in the first place, but there was nothing stopping the judge from throwing the book at the guy once he violated the terms of the agreement. If the reason for the light sentence was the weakness of the original case, the judge should have said so instead of blaming the victim.
Bricker, it’s my understanding that the Judge had the legal authority to require that Rambold serve the full ten years of his sentence. It seems to me that this was a unilateral action on the Judges part. Am I wrong about this?
There were two violations:
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He was present at a family event with nieces and nephews, with other adults also present.
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He had romantic relationships with adult women that he didn’t tell his counselors about.
The judge found that while those amounted to violations, they were not the kind of violations that typically would warrant termination and imprisonment.
Can you explain where or how you reached the conclusion that he had “unsupervised” visits with minors?
ETA: Found the “unsupervised” allegation in the Gawker article, but the judge’s findings do not credit it.
Actually, there was.
Not every violation of such a program is material. In this case, the judge’s findings were that:
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He was present at a family event with nieces and nephews, with other adults also present.
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He had romantic relationships with adult women that he didn’t tell his counselors about.
Those are typically de minimis violations for this kind of offense. If pressed, he could argue that violating him for those reasons was not in good faith, and it’s conceivable that the entire deferred prosecution agreement – to include his admissions – could be thrown out.
It’s also very possible that the agreement would be enforced.
Well, the weakness of the original case derived from the victim’s subsequent suicide, so in a sense, any comment on that would also be blaming the victim.
If that was his real reasoning, why did he bring up the stuff about the victim being “mature for her age” and such? He made it pretty damn clear that the reason for the light sentence was that he didn’t think the original crime was very serious.
Okay, if you want to be pedantic about it. But obviously what people are angry about is saying that the rape was largely the rape victim’s fault. Nobody would have cared if he said “the reason for the light sentence is the weakness of the case due to the tragic death of the victim.”
one story said the offense in the first treatment program was that he had family members who were female and under 16, and that after being booted from that one, he got into another one and was in one when the new charges were filed, that he had a part in the girl’s suicide 3 years after the incident (s). Not making excuses for him, only trying to show what the judge had to work with.
True, indeed, and I’m not trying to justify the judge’s comments – but a case is rarely just one thing. The judge made a lot of comments; the one that has people excised is truly idiotic, to be sure, but it’s also not the only thing that was said.
I see you met Bricker.
Isn’t that what lawyers do: be pedantic about it?