I mentioned above things like prosecutorial discretion, which means that a prosecutor has the virtually unfettered power of deciding whether or not to prosecute a given case, and the vast majority of prosecutors are not Diogenes and would not choose to go forward on facts that establish strict liability but make clear that the accused did everything reasonable to avoid violating the law.
I also mentioned jury nullification, which is a real possibility in cases like that, assuming we have the one-in-a-million guy who did act prudently paired with the one-in-a-million prosecutor who went to Diogenes the Cynic Academy. And I mentioned judicial leniency, which might apply to a person convicted under egregious facts like these. Even given a merciless jury and a relentless prosecutor, a judge might well enter a deferred judgment, or impose only a slight penalty.
All of these are part and parcel of the legal system, and mitigate the dangers of strict liability crimes.
I have a hard time relying on elected people who are worried about looking “soft on child rape” or something. I do understand that this is part of the legal process, and would work most of the time, but it’s not justification for putting options in the hands of the jury. Otherwise you could make every crime a strict liability crime and then trust the prosecutor to only give them the right cases.
I agree that jury nullification is an option here, but isn’t that sort of a forbidden concept in our legal system? I was under the impression that judges specifically gave juries instructions that they are not to engage in jury nullification, but only consider the facts of the case.
Another question - if it’s a strict liability crime, can the guy even bring up in his defense that he checked 3 forms of ID and had her parents sign off on the sex, or would that be considered irrelevant to the facts at hand? If not, then how is the jury going to nullify or the judge go easy?
The position being argued against is that the defendant should not be permitted to introduce this fact situation as a defense. Thus, one must also depend on the court officers being so public-spirited as to remain on the job despite being millionaires.
The basic problem with relying on discretion (and the reason we do not make every crime strict liability and trust the people in the system to filter out bad cases) is that the de facto result is to replace the rule of law with a popularity contest. (Admittedly, that sometimes happens anyway, but the system is supposed to be designed to minimize, not exacerbate, that effect.)
Again? I honestly don’t mean to be short, but your “example” is nearly identical to all the other “examples” posted in this thread. I think I’ve dealt with this repeatedly. My take on it is the same as it was for the other dozens of examples, even if you had had sexual contact with her, I don’t think you should be convicted and sent to prison. I’ve said as much over and over. But just because there exists examples where a person should not be charged and convicted of a crime, doesn’t negate the need for the crime or the non-existance of an affirmative defense.
Personally, I’d rather have more reasonable LAWS than just hope somebody has the balls to buck the system in order to make sure justice is done to some total stranger they have never meet and will probably never meet again.
Then you agree with the rest of us, not Dio. Guess you didn’t read the original threads as well as you thought you did.
Except for all the parts where you said that people shouldn’t have casual sex and should have to know each other well before they sleep together.
He actually did that a bit, in the original thread on this subject, when he admitted that he might be influenced by having daughters. If he would have just shut up then, things would have been fine. Unfortunately, the moment of clarity seems to have passed quickly.
Again, whether the consequence is a “natural” risk or a “construct”, to me, doesn’t change my point.
Again, I think you’re arguing with Dio, not me. I accept that ID’s are a good indicator of age and would be a part of a determination of whether or not the belief is “reasonable”.
If it helps, think of it as the difference between guilt and punishment. I think, here in reality, prosecutorial discretion, defense work, judicial determinations, jury consideration, and all the statutes do a very good job of making sure that our poor victimized men do not suffer serious consequences for being misled by the underaged Jezebels. The fact that there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of “examples” in this thread alone and I haven’t seen a single one I’ve read has resulted in a prison sentence, bears that out.
I don’t know if this will help. Codified laws deal with generalities; they set policies on a broad scale, that apply to everyone. The criminal justice system, taken as a whole, deals with specific cases. Those two things have different roles, different meanings, and different outcomes. So I support not having an affirmative defense of “she said she was old enough” in the codified law (maybe in very limited situations to be honest, but thats a bucket of worms not worth opening), but think the criminal justice system should not treat those with a very reasonable defense as they would an intentional violator. Hope it helps.
It doesn’t help at all, unless you explain how the officers of the court are supposed to know and act upon facts that are legally excluded from the case as irrelevant. Faith in public-spirited millionaires staying on the job is widespread, it seems…
When you’re done arguing with yourself, you might want to reread one of my replies to you:
"God your really are dumb. Like “Let’s put this poor … thing … in a helmet before he hurts himself” dumb. Really… Fucking … Dumb.
It is entirely possible, and actual reality in this case, for someone to think that sexual assault of a minor should be a strict liability crime, without agreeing with Dio’s arguments."
I think it does. There’s no reason having sex with someone you reasonably conclude to be of age should still have a 1 in a million chance (or whatever number you want to assign to it) of making you a felon, serve prison time, register as a sex offender, and in Dio’s world, get chemically castrated.
Then quite frankly I don’t understand your stance. You’re advocating for strict liability, right? Then whether or not the guy saw ID, whether or not his assessment of her age is reasonable does not matter. That’s the whole point of strict liability. Your argument seems contradictory to me, so perhaps I’ve misunderstood you somewhere.
You may be right in that rarely is anyone punished for this. These anecdotes are for cases that never ended up in court though - if for some reason they were the ones that ended up in court, would they have ended happily?
I just don’t understand how this would work. If the guy isn’t allowed an affirmative defense, he doesn’t have the chance to make the case that his mistake was reasonable, and even if he did, the jury would be instructed to convict him anyway, right?
Hasn’t prosecutorial discretion resulted in things like teenagers being charged with possession of child pornography for taking pictures of themselves with their cell phones?
Uh, Dio? We can all read the other thread. And every thread you’ve posted in. Your assertions don’t make this so any more than they do in any other case where you get locked into The **Dio **Zone.
I think you might be officially worse than Starving Artist: at least ol’ **SA **readily admits that the evidence he prefers is anecdotal.
Then the first statement from that post still needs to be applies:
I honestly don’t understand the difference between having this de-facto stance with a strict liability law and just having the law have statutory affirmative defenses.
(Note: This is in the context of knowing someone well enough to ascertain their age even if the usual methods of personal appearance and identity documentation prove insufficiently reliable in a particular case.)
The difference is that the former involves a logical contradiction (in that it requires officers of the court to ascertain, consider, and act upon facts that the law has deemed irrelevant and that the defendant is therefore not permitted to introduce into evidence) and the latter does not.
Exactly. I was saying don’t fuck them if you don’t know they’re of age. That’s not a statement about casual sex in general, which I don’t give a shit about.