Bullshit. If there is evidence that Mahoney covered up the abuse, then that evidence would certainly be sufficient to establish that he had the specific intent that the priests avoid arrest and/or prosecution. If the evidence was sufficient to establish he committed the offense, there is no appellate court in the US that would overturn his conviction because of lack of evidence of intent. And you know that, so you try to cover your ass with your “there would be a sufficient factual record upon which to rest a jury verdict of guilty” on appeal, totally ignoring that you are contradicting yourself.
See, the problem is you are still clinging to the misinformation you tried to spread earlier that somehow his motive to save the church means he couldn’t form the intent that the priests not be arrested or convicted. That is simply not true and completely unsupported by any caselaw. You staked out ground based on falsities and now find yourself trying to reach for some kind of moral high ground by claiming that you stand for the rule of law and those who believe there would be evidence of intent based on the Cardinal’s actions (and your own appellate court that would uphold the conviction) are the ones who are doing the disservice to the criminal justice system. It’s complete, and utterly unsurprisingly coming from you, bullshit.
Excuse me, but exactly how are posts 258 and 259, both by Bricker, not in contradiction?
Bricker says in 258 that “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” but in 259 he says “That said… There would be a sufficient factual record upon which to rest a jury verdict of guilty.” Since intent is deduced from facts, rather than obtained by a brain scan of the defendant, that seems to imply a concession that there IS a sufficient factual record to base a finding of criminal intent on.
So in 258, is he saying that the prosecutor is able to prove criminal intent, but the jury would have convicted, with or without such a finding, out of a desire to punish the defendant? So the problem here is that the jury is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons? (T.S. Eliot, anyone?) I’m trying to thread the needle here, and that’s the best I can come up with.
From my understanding of Brickerlogic, any prosecutor charging Cardinal Mahoney (putting aside the statute of limitations problem), would be violating their ethics because there isn’t sufficient evidence to prove his intent. Then, if it went to jury, the jury would be violating their oaths by convicting Mahoney not based on the evidence of his intent, but rather because they didn’t like him. Then, both those unethical actions would be given the green light by the appellate court, which would uphold the hypothetical conviction as having sufficient basis in the evidence, despite there being no evidence that the Cardinal Mahoney intended the priests not to be arrested or charged when he took his actions. So the prosecutor, the jury, and the appellate court are not only wrong, but unethical also.
And who, then, you might ask is the shining beacon of hope whilst the criminal justice system is rife with unethical prosecutors, stupid and prejudiced juries, and corrupt appellate courts? Why Bricker is, of course.
I was hoping for more explanation as to why it is not considered ‘intent’ when it is in furtherance of a separate goal.
It seems to me that you are saying that if I wanted my brother’s stamp collection so I plotted and executed his murder in order to receive that stamp collection then it could not be said that I had the intention of murdering him. This seems ridiculous on its face as I obviously had the intention of murdering my brother as a method of furthering my intention to gain possession of the stamp collection.
This seems to line up directly with the Cardinal’s intention to protect priests from prosecution my moving them around and counselling them to stay away from therapists which furthers his intention to protect the church.
His goal was to protect the church. His actions with regards to priests show intent to shield them from prosecution in furtherance of that goal.
To a non-lawyer (and apparently to a few lawyers) this seems to be a slam dunk that the intent was to shield priests (otherwise how was moving them protecting the church?). You’ve said you disagree and really offered nothing but assertion. I’d like to see a chain of reasoning that supports your contention that there was no intent to shield the priests.
Bricker seems to be making an argument with parallels to Catholic arguments about a certain controversial issue concerning conception and childbirth and so on.
Should I do this? Okay I will.
Catholic teaching is that if there is an ectopic pregnancy, you still may not do anything to intentionally kill the fetus. A fetus is a human and its life must be protected.
BUT.
In order to save the life of the mother, you are permitted to simply remove the whole fallopian tube (which along the way renders the mother half-infertile, in the sense that if you have to remove the other tube ever, she can no longer make babies). It is recognized that this is very, very likely to kill the fetus. But you’re not trying to kill the fetus. Rather, you’re trying to save the mother. You still need to do everything you can to save the fetus as well, but if the fetus dies, well, you didn’t kill it. It simply didn’t survive.
Well, the parallel argument is probably pretty clear.
You intend to save the mother, and this means you can do something you know full well will kill the fetus, because killing the fetus is not your intention. Instead it’s simply an unfortunate secondary effect.
Similarly, it seems Bricker is arguing, the Cardinal intended to protect the church, and this means he could do something he knew full well would protect criminals from prosecution and allow them to go on molesting etc, because doing that wasn’t his intention. Instead it was simply an unfortunate secondary effect.
I am looking for an explanation as to how that is different than saying that I didn’t have the intention to kill my brother, I just really wanted his stamps.
Yeah, I was unaware that the legal system bought into that bit of inane sophistry that is the Doctrine of Double Effect. When an action has a foreseeable outcome, if you intentionally do the action you intend the effect. Even if you also intend a second effect at the same time.
Its simple, if somewhat twisted. There aren’t enough priests. Which means that some Catholics aren’t getting what they need to get their ticket stamped. Therefore, the good that a priest does in the salvation of souls far outweighs the harm they do. Protecting the church is a similar thing, without the Church, everybody goes to Hell. That is a bad thing. Hence, protecting the Church is of paramount importance, and more important than mere secular laws.
Used to get drunk every once in a while with a Jesuit priest. Its amazing what you can learn about logic by seeing it twisted into creative forms.
One of the many reasons that women should utterly loathe the Catholic church. As someone who had an ectopic, I remain eternally grateful I was treated by doctors and not priests. Thank god I was given methotrexate rather than told to undergo surgery merely to satisfy the teachings of stupid, sexist misogynists.
The notion of the Catholic church leadership claiming any moral authority while espousing such idiotic views is utterly laughable. That they should come up with such naval gazing nonsense to deny a living woman the right to the best medical treatment for a medical emergency is simply evil.
I recognize that you disagree, but the church’s stance is absolutely concerned with the living female - or male - human being who is also involved in the medical emergency.
Well then that’s fucking retarded. It’s one big ball of “I Don’t Give A Shit About Other People” rationalization.
He could do something he knew full well he was protecting criminals from prosecution, allowing them to go on molesting children, if he was really only just trying to protect the church? Like the two aren’t entwined together like Father Pederast and little Billy the alter boy?
Fuck that noise. But for the statute of limitations, Mahoney is a fucking criminal - there’ ain’t two ways about it, and if Bricker’s interpretation of his motives and intent are true, it just makes him doubly the asshole.
Ok, I could almost see that rationalization if the Cardinal had taken action to move these men into the hinterlands somewhere away from any contact with other people so they could pray on their sins for the rest of their lives. That would be an action that it could be argued was taken with the best interests of the priests and the church in mind that had the unfortunate side effect of shielding these men from secular justice (I still think it is sophistry but could see someone arguing it).
In the case where the Cardinal moves the men to another jurisdiction and lets them go on to offend again it seems to me that his intent can be read by looking at how this furthers his goal of protecting the church.
Can you give a reason why this move would protect the church, other than the attempt to hinder prosecution, which would show the hindrance is a mere unfortunate side effect? If not I submit that the hindrance is the intent behind moving these men and/or counselling them to avoid therapy.
Good Lord, that’s morally monstrous. Apparently “the nuance[s] of intent,” in your eyes, are a way to legally AND morally evade responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions that were clearly obvious in advance.
If this is the Roman Catholic Church’s moral reasoning as well - and I gather you’re agreeing that’s where you’ve drawn it from - then anything left of the Church after it sells its worldly assets and divides the money between the poor and its direct victims should be razed to the ground and the organizational structure disbanded, so y’all can start over with a clean slate.
Jesus said: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea.”
You (and apparently the RCC) say: “Well, if he knowingly causes it, but it wasn’t his intent, then he’s off the hook.”
I know it’s always hard to get a church - Protestant or Catholic - to pay attention to the words of Jesus rather than their own beliefs, traditions, and prejudices when the two are in conflict, but give it a try, okay? It might knock an eon or two off your time in Purgatory, assuming your Church got that part right (which I doubt, but that’s another story).
Agreed. You’re responsible, I believe, for the foreseeable outcomes of your decisions. Saying that one relatively innocuous outcome is the one you intended, and another horrifying one is just a side-effect, is an absurd sophistry.
If Mahoney had just shot the molester-priests, he could have defended the Church and the children. Clearly, that would have been the most moral course of action. Oh, it would have the unfortunate side effect of killing the molester-priests, but as long as Mahoney’s intent was to protect the Church (and the children) - it’s all good, right? Maybe if he had just aimed at their nuts. Then he could say that he was trying to Defend The Church (and the children) by removing the molester-priests ungovernable organs and it’s oh so unfortunate that they bled to death, but that wasn’t his intent. He was just trying to protect the Church. And the children.
Okay, I’m putting this together with your reiterations in this thread that you think what Mahoney did was a very bad thing, and my next question is, why do you think that this fact about the structure of his intentions has legal significance? In other words, you seem to be saying that, since hiding the priests’ crimes was only a secondary effect and not his primary intention, this clears him legally. (Since you’re clear that it doesn’t clear him morally elsewhere in this thread.) But why should we think that? Can I look up somewhere a statement of legal principles or some case law or something which indicates that a secondary effect not primarily intended can be non-criminal even if it was entirely foreseeable and would have been criminal if primarily intended?
Regarding secondary effects, there’s an interesting thought experiment:
Alex, seeing that there is a man standing next to a cliff and also seeing that the man is standing on a check for a million dollars, pushes the man off the cliff in order to gain the million dollars. He knew pushing the man off the cliff would kill him, but did not intend to kill him–he simply understood this to be the only way to get at the million dollars. Is he responsible for the man’s death?
Bernard, seeing someone he hates standing next to a cliff, pushes him off the cliff in order to kill him. It just so happens that the man he pushed was about to accidentally trip and fall, thereby pushing a little girl off the cliff. (Bernard knew this at the time, but did not care.) So the girl’s life has been saved. Is Bernard responsible for saving her life?
Most of us hold Alex responsible, but do not hold Bernard responsible. Yet it seems like we should either hold both or neither responsible–in both cases, their pursuit of a certain goal led to certain unintended side effects. In the first case, we hold the person responsible for the side effect. In the second case, we don’t. What seems to make the difference is whether the unintended side effect was a good one or a bad one. We typically hold people responsible for the bad ones but not for the good ones. This is a little puzzling.