Because I refuse to call them parents.
Thanks.
And the irony here is that the state is going to feed and house the fucking parents for the rest of their pathetic lives. :rolleyes:
I agree - the victims should be provided for at least as well as the criminals.
Yeah. Why couldn’t they have got caught in Texas?
bumped
The Turpins pleaded guilty to 14 felonies in court today. They will be sentenced in April.
The guilty plea means the children won’t have to testify.
Don’t you mean the children won’t GET to testify?
I hope the judge lets the children make statements before these “parents” are sentenced.
Having to testify in open court against their own parents could add to their trauma. They’d have to describe in detail the terrible things that happened to them, and would have to face cross-examination.
Why would you hope that? Over here, being found not responsible for reason of insanity is extremely difficult, and from everything I read, it seems it’s even worst in the USA. You have had several cases of people who were deemed too insane to be executed, and whose execution had been delayed indefinitely, because they couldn’t understand that they would be and/or why, but somehow they had been found not insane enough to avoid a death sentence, for instance. There are vastly more demented people who end up in a jail where they don’t belong than the other way around. If they do get off for this reason, you can be pretty certain that they’re indeed so crazy that they can’t be held responsible for their actions in any way, shape or form.
The only reason to express such an opinion would be the desire to have them punished even if they’re inaccessible to reason, and unfortunately this so common feeling is the reason why the bar is put so high that demented people still get thrown in jail, or if you’re under the delusion that people can escape justice nowadays by just pretending to be a little sick in their head, and this couldn’t be further from the truth.
It’s not really testifying, I don’t think. Victims can give impact statements (remember the woman who lost it at Jeffrey Dahmer? NSFW) and the judge can use that as a factor in deciding sentencing.
clairobscur, I am saying that I hope people who do evil do not get away with it by claiming to be mentally ill. I’m glad they pled guilty and hopefully their children are getting the help they need.
I wasn’t talking about the penalty phase of the trial. I was talking about the guilt/innocence phase, which would have happened without a guilty plea. The prosecution would have to introduce evidence of the crimes, which would almost certainly mean the victims would testify and be subject to cross-examination.
If any of those kids wants the world to know exactly what happened to them, there are a thousand media outlets who would happily pay them big money for an interview. Some of those kids are adults now, so they wouldn’t even need permission from a guardian to engage in such an interview. It’s rather telling that no such interview has yet happened. Verbalizing an account of a terribly traumatic experience is terribly traumatic for a lot of people: if you’re going to speak the details of an event, you have to recall in your mind all those details, and that can be very painful to do. Also, telling your story in front of a courtroom full of strangers and spectators is far different than explaining what happened privately to one or two investigators who have earned your trust by working with you for an extended period.
Is there an update on the children? Where are they living, are they getting the mental therapy and physical help they need?