Bricker: can I expect a response to my recent posts or are you just going to ignore them and instead go after low hanging fruit of “debating” the “rule of law”?
Guess he’ll have to find a priest willing to absolve him. I think he may have a name or two in mind.
"Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
Jesus to the disciples, after resurrection.
So Bricker, do you honestly think Mahony hasn’t found a priest anywhere in the church willing to grant him absolution, or are you simply a heretic?
The show is over. Done. Finished. I did not see any requests for curtain call nor a re-iteration of the same old shit. Thanks for coming by, we all get the point. There is not a legal basis for charging the pedophile enabling old fucker with a crime.
Thanks. Point taken. Move along.
Not for the reasons that Bricker made up out of whole cloth, but rather because of the statute of limitations and a lack of mandatory reporting laws when the crimes were committed. The sum total of Bricker’s contribution to this thread is semantic, legalistic nitpicking about the use of the word “criminal”, misinformation on the requirements of “specific intent”, a lot of dodging issues, and the old standby “I stand for the rule of law!” martyrdom.
Seriously.
I mean, “how does he possibly remember to breathe? I’m picturing he has a little alarm to remind himself.”
ETA: Oh, I’m sorry, was that to harsh a critique? Well, maybe you can pray for me, Bricker.
Well, SURE they could.
Look, there is no way of really proving anyone’s intent, until such a day when we can take a scan of someone’s brain and find his motivations encoded in his neural pathways. And while in some instances, the defendant may have spilled his guts about his motivations to someone, that’s a pretty hit-and-miss business.
This is why our legal system uses the defendant’s knowledge and actions as a stand-in for intent, as you fully well know. If you know that doing X will cause Y, and you do X, then one can infer that you meant to cause Y.
For instance, if I point a gun at someone and pull the trigger, excavating a hole through their guts, no amount of evidence that my motivation was to conduct a statistical test of how often, when a gun was aimed at someone and the trigger pulled, the gun would misfire, could or should be expected to exonerate me.
No, because he committed a series of heinous acts, resulting in child molesters getting away with their crimes and going on to victimize more children - and he couldn’t help but know that that would be the effect of his actions. And damned straight, he should pay a serious penalty for those actions. It doesn’t matter if he somehow meant well. If room in the law can be found for it to match up with common sense and bring a great evildoer to justice, then it damned well should.
In your bullshit argument about intent, the idea is to convict someone for the things he’s done, by drawing the obvious conclusions about his brain cell activity from his actions.
Your argument is the sort of thing that disgusts me when defense lawyers do it: that somehow the right state of mind will free someone from the consequences of having knowingly committed a vile and harmful act.
No, I can’t. It’s saying, “let’s see if there’s a statute on the books that does match up with his horrendous acts.” Why should the Bricker-approved statutes be the only ones a defendant can be charged with?
I know we say we’re a government of laws, not men, but in reality, there’s always been a lot of discretion in how the law is applied. In the end, some sense of justice, some sense of proportion, of judgment, has to be the true test.
Guy did very bad things that ruined many people’s lives, throw the book at him. If you have to dig through the book a bit deeper than usual, do it. Don’t go throwing the book at someone who committed inconsequential offenses, even if the laws are there that allow you to threaten them with decades in prison.
Until the laws are perfect, and all acts of knowingly inflicting serious harm always get major prison time, nobody can be threatened with decades in jail for trivialities, what other standard can one use?
Oh, he’ll say something vaguely nice about a Democrat and people will fall all over themselves to say how they don’t always agree with him but he’s super terrific anyway.
Fortunately for our species, the conscience that exists for many of us between our ears has no Statute of Limitations.
You misspelled “vacuum.”
If the rule of the law can’t protect the innocents, then it’s hardly a noble cause to want to uphold it; particularly to the conduct and actions of Mahony which enabled pedophiles. I’m not convinced present laws won’t eventually come through although the statute of limitations is certainly getting in the way of many child abuse cases. I’ve read enough to know Mahony’s actions led to many more victims that could have easily been avoided had he turned in the known pedophiles early, and if he wasn’t so concerned about protecting his own precious church against litigation and probably worrying about his own sorry ass being demoted.
Law is often a gray area; it’s not like mathematics where we have known absolutes to work with, and everybody will have the same answer that gets it correct. Even the Supreme Court sways one way or the other with it sometimes depending on how many conservatives, moderates or liberals are making the decision at a particular time.
Unlike you, I don’t think Mahony is going to burn in hell for this, which is why I feel like he needs to be dealt with in this lifetime.
If you can see it, it is not a good game.
Its about in the middle of the chest, a little to the left.
Ok, I stand corrected.
Um, kinda wondering if this guy could be brought in front of congress and put to the question. Specifically , what would the people want to know. Seems like the legal system working in concert with local politicians, dont seem to have the motivation.
At the moment, he seems to be that guy that we always refer to when we state that our system is set up to let a hundred nefarious types go free, so that one innocent is not convicted.
Declan
No. That’s good reason to change the law, as California did when confronted with the Sherrice Iverson case.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts regarding Hamlet’s posts regarding intent.
I disagree with Hamlet. And I think Hamlet himself knows that even if he got a jury to convict Mahoney, it would not be because the jury cared about the nuance of intent, but because they wanted to punish him and this was a way to do it.
That said… There would be a sufficient factual record upon which to rest a jury verdict of guilty.
There is no evidentiary record at all yet. He is entitled to a presumption of innocence. Is there probable cause to prepare an indictment? Yes.