It is fairly common for one of us to pit an abusive or aggressive parent. So common in fact, that I tend to find myself muttering, “OK, OK, give it a break . . . do we really need yet another thead lambasting some asshole of a father?”
So it is with a bit of trepidation and ‘double-think’ that I am starting this thread. My main purpose in doing so is in the hope that if enough of us wish for this bastard’s death or disability or dismemberment, it might actually happen.
I am referring to the low-life who, notwithstanding his HIV positive status, had sexual relations with his five-year-old daughter. Yes, you read it right. HIV positive. With his five-years-old. His daughter. By the grace of God, the little girl is not HIV positive (at this time). But, her fucker of a father did manage to give her gonorrhea. The clap! To his five-year-old! :mad:
Now, what would you expect the punishment to be for this vile creature? Life imprisonment? Ten to twenty? Would you believe three years?! Three fucking years for destroying the life his own little girl. :mad:
As an aside, I know that the job of a good defense attorney is to do all you can for your client. Still, when I see that this cockroach’s lawyer suggested a sentence of “two years less a day, to be served in the community”, I almost vomited. How would he have lived with himself if the judge had agreed with his suggestion.
Sometime the world stinks.
If you can stomach any more information about this, here’s the link.
That wasn’t my suggestion or plan (and I think you knew it). My point was that IF the defense attorney had been successful in convincing the judge to follow his suggestion for the light sentence, then he (the defense attorney) should have taken satisfaction in knowing that he had done quite well in discharging his duties as a lawyer. On the other hand, I would bet that, at some secret, inner level, he’d have trouble looking in the mirror. Thank goodness, though, that he wouldn’t have had to worry about his client’s possible recidivism during the latter’s two year stay in the community.
Is that like wishing for a purple spotted pony? If you wish real hard you might get one? And if lots of people wish real hard, you might get two?
The only way that someone could be killed or disabled or dismembered outside of the justice system is if someone else commits a crime. Are you wishing for more crime?
No, I’m hoping that a force might be generated by the focused outrage of a sufficient number of souls such that he dies, etc. After all, it’s a scientific fact that if enough people pray for someone’s recovery from an illness, he will. What I’m talking about is something similar.
You know, between you and Bricker, you’ve achieved one a hell of good hijacking. Could you not spare a moment of your time, or just the tiniest bit of your vast intellect, or an even lesser measure of your heart, for that little girl? I guess not.
Should we be considering recidivism when sentencing any criminal? Because by that standard, child molesters are pretty safe; they have the lowest reoffending rate among all felony offenders. If you want to protect more people from repeat offenders, you would do better to release all the child molesters and fill their cells with longer sentences for killers, muggers and thieves.
That’s very interesting and I take your point. Thanks for the edification (although, I could say with tonge firmly planted in cheek, that your post is a bit like ‘damning with faint praise’ - “your honour, my client is no murderer or mugger. He’s not even a thief. Just a child molestor, your honour” ).
I’m far from Bricker’s biggest fan on these boards. (Heffalump, I don’t know you from Adam, sorry.) Nevertheless, I’m still going to go out on a limb here, make a wild-ass assumption, and say that yes, of course he has sympathy for the girl.
You are overreacting to his comment. Put the keyboard down and walk away if you haven’t done so already, because you are not reacting in a rational manner. Rather, you are escalating to vicious insults over a hijack of a message board thread about a crime victim that, quite frankly, you have never met.
Well, in the linked article, it did state that the guy was in a wheelchair. Yeah, I’m not satisfied with that either. I don’t know what I’d consider suitable punishment for infecting a 5 YO with an STD, and exposing the kid to AIDS as well. And then he kept denying that he’d had sex with her.
Bricker’s post was in direct response to your OP, in which you strongly implied that the lawyer should somehow have felt guilty or morally ambivalent about defending his client. It never ceases to amaze me how many Americans agree with generalized concepts like “innocent until proven guilty,” “justice for all,” and “the right to a fair trial,” yet constantly call into question the motives and morals of defense attorneys who make the system possible.
Maybe we need a new system of justice, where defense lawyers can poll the local community in order to determine how vigorously they should defend their client, just to make idiots like you happy.
I don’t blame the defense attorney but the sentencing guidelines. Once convicted, the rape of a child should carry a mandatory life sentence. I can’t understand why these kinds of crimes against children are not treated as equivalent to murder. We have idiotically exorbitant sentences for selling cocaine but raping a five-year old (HIV or no HIV) gets a slap on the wrist? What. The. Fuck?
If you feel that the sentence is not just and fair, could you explain how that’s the responsibility of the defense attorney rather than the judge? Once the defendant is found guilty, the matter of sentencing is up to the judge, not the attorneys.
Even in the case of a plea bargain, the prosecutor has to agree to the plea and the judge still decides the sentence.
If the sentence isn’t just and fair, the blame for that doesn’t fall on the defense attorney. It’s his job to provide the best possible defense. He doesn’t set the sentencing guidelines, nor does he make the final decision about what sentence to impose within those guidelines.
We can’t know that without asking the judge.
But your implication seems to be that it’s wrong for the defense attorney to try and get his client a lighter sentence. It’s not. The defense attorney is obligated to do everything possible for his client, and i believe that this obligation extends to the sentencing phase of the trial.
Sublight didn’t really answer the question, though.
Providing the best possible defense doesn’t affect sentencing? Then on what basis does the judge determine whether to impose a lenient or maximum sentence, by rolling 8-sided dice?
Well, I’m sure that’s a comforting sentiment for a defense attorney to cling to, but it’s difficult to sympathize with someone who thinks: “Man, I really hope this convicted child molester gets the lightest possible sentence, or it’ll reflect poorly on my job performance.”
So, yeah, I think that defense attorneys ought to feel a certain sense of guilt about things like that. I remember a case some time ago where an accused rapist spontaneously confessed to his attorney, who knowingly allowed his client to take the stand and lie his ass off, and eventually got a verdict of “not guilty.” Was he doing his job? Sure, technically. Should he feel proud of himself for doing such a great job in the service of justice? I don’t think so.
I think even Christians don’t pray for bad things to happen to other people, although I’m not a Christian, so I wouldn’t know.
One can only hope. I’m trying to follow Giraffe’s suggestion here regarding RO threads. I’m not myself convinced that mod. intervention is not a better solution.
Well, you seemed to spare very little time for the little girl in your OP. Your main concern seemed to be in wishing harm to her father.
Since you seem to have a big heart, perhaps you can spare some time to care about female infanticide in China and India Although they say that officially this is no longer practiced, this group believes that hundreds of thousands of infant girls are killed every year in favor of boys in China and India due to the increase in status of having boys. Or how about the 800 million starving or malnourished living in the world today, many of whom are assuredly little girls. Or how about the 60 children raped every day in South Africa (as of 2002) generally by men with HIV/AIDS because they think that having sex with a virgin will cure them of the disease. There’s debate about whether the virgin myth is the cause but the rate of violence against women and children is not debated here.
Now, this is not to denigrate the magnitude of damage to this little girl, but if this girl is not related to you or known by you, then why pick this one girl out of the at least 60 per day that experience horrendous circumstances?
Wow! This is the first time anyone in my memory has said this to me in either real life (and I would have remembered in real life) or on a message board (of course, I could be blanking this out on a message board). Of course, I’ll have to share the honor with Bricker, but wait. . . let me bask in the moment. Ah!
Well, there are two phases to the process—the trial itself, and then the sentencing phase.
The trial is about determining guilt or innocence. The idea of providing the best possible defense in this scenario is that, for better or worse, the American justice system is an adversarial one, in which the prosecution does its best to prove guilt, and the defense does its best to either prove innocence, or to at least argue that the prosecution has not met the burden of proof for a “beyond reasonable doubt” verdict. The idea is that this adversarial system will, when properly run, result in a just verdict regarding the defendant’s guilt, or otherwise.
Now, there are quite a few people who believe that the adversarial system has fundamental flaws, and that a non-adversarial system can actually lead to better justice. I’ve heard some compelling arguments to that effect, although i’m not enough of a legal scholar to be able to offer a definitive summary of the benefits and drawbacks of each system.
But the fact is that we have an adversarial system, and under such a system it is not the defense attorney’s role to second-guess whether the defendant should or should not be found guilty. It is their job to defend the client vigorously, and with all legal means at their disposal.
Providing the best possible defense gives the defendant the best possible chance of being found “not guilty.” This is the defense attorney’s role. If the defendant is found guilty, then what the defense attorney did during the trial phase need have no effect at all upon sentencing, except to the extent that the defense proffered might have led to guilty verdicts for some charges, and not guilty verdicts for other. For example, if you’re charged with murder and manslaughter, the range of possible sentences if probably going to be different if you’re found guilty of murder than if you’re found guilty of manslaughter.
Once the sentencing phase begins, the defense attorney, in some cases at least, still might have a further duties to perform, such as arguing for a lighter sentencing, perhaps by arguing extenuating circumstances. I’m not sure what proportion of criminal cases where this actually occurs. If the defense attorney does have this job, then obviously his or her arguments might affect sentencing, but again, that’s part of the duty they have as an officer of the court within our judicial system. And if the sentencing phase does not involve the defense attorney making an argument about sentencing, then obviously the judge will consider things like the crime committed, prior criminal history, etc., etc.
While it might be convenient for you to paint this as some narrow professional selfishness and careerism, it’s actually a matter of justice, and of professional ethics. Defense attorneys are obliged by the law, and by the canon of ethics of their profession, to mount the most vigorous defense possible.
If their client is found guilty and sentenced to a long prison term, there’s nothing to stop the attorney from feeling “Well, he probably got the sentence he deserved.” I’m sure many defense attorneys feel some moral ambivalence about many of the people they defend. But feeling such moral ambivalence is not incompatible with fulfilling their ethical obligations to the client, and to our system of justice. If they don’t do this, then we can’t really call it a system of justice.
Well, admittedly some of my “knowledge” about the criminal justice system is a product of too many Law and Order episodes, but i’ve always been under the impression that a defense attorney is not allowed to put a defendant on the stand knowing that the defendant is going to lie. If this is, in fact, the case (help me out here, lawyers), it would make your little anecdote completely irrelevant to the issue.
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