Dio the ballbag

coffpreviouspostcoff

Nope. No such sentiments expressed in those quotes. Want to try again?

Describe how one acquires this knowledge, if personal appearance and identity documents are not sufficient to meet the usual “reasonable and prudent person” standard.

Well, if you’ve known someone at least 18 years, that means they’re at least 18 years old. Anyone else is off limits.

Not this again. I answered this in detail in the other thread. I also said that it was perfectly possible for random stranger pickups to carry no reasonable suspicions about age. If they look like they might be underage, you’re assuming the risk, though, and saying you checked her ID card is a fatuous defense.

BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW?! You don’t accept ANYTHING as evidence of age OTHER THAN KNOWING THE PERSON VERY, VERY WELL. IDs don’t count. Having college classes with them doesn’t count. Them drinking in a bar doesn’t count. Them working in a bar doesn’t count.

“You can have casual sex with anyone you’ve known since childhood” is pretty much what your FUCKING RETARDED position boils down to.

Sure.

But I would venture the opinion that while the vast majority of people (at least, the vast majority of people whose online handles don’t rhyme with Piogenes the Mimic) would agree that there’s a manifest injustice in prison time for a guy who carefully checked ID before doin’ the deed, opinions are much less calcified when it comes to the practice of sexting or the best ways to discourage it.

In other words, yes, but that’s not an issue that enjoys such unanimity of belief as this one does.

Bah. Even if he’s not permitted to offer those facts as a defense, he can certainly find a way to get them in as part of the res gestae.

Using all caps just makes you look like a shrill, hysterical moron. You lied about what I said. I’m done responding to you.

Cite?

Fuck if I’m going to go searching. Presumably you’ve read the thread.

At which point the ship on “prosecutorial discretion” has sailed*, so there goes one of the proferred subsitutes for fixing the law so that it ceases to depend on popularity contests.

*Theoretically, charges could be dropped after being brought, but realistically this is unlikely for this sort of emotionally-charged case.

It would be difficult for me to take note of the various fallacies in your arguments if I had not.

If I thought that the criminal justice system was populated solely by people like Dio, I would add my voice to your chorus calling for an affirmative defense. But your point about the 1 in a million chance has little or nothing to do with the issue of “natural” or “construct” consequences of sexual activity. It strikes me much more as an argument with my position that the pros of not having it as a codified affirmative defense outweigh the cons.

Whether or not a persons belief that the minor is above the age of consent is reasonable (which would include the entire ID issue) is seperate from whether or not a reasonable belief should be a codified affirmative defense. They are two different things. I, unlike Dio, accept that someone can reasonably believe the person they are having sex with is above the age of consent when, in fact, they aren’t.

I woudn’t call any eventuality “happy”, but in my experience, it is extremely rare that any of these examples ever lead to criminal convictions and prison time.

Again, I am speaking not just for the time from when jury selection starts to when they reach a verdict, I am talking about the entire criminal justice system. All the things I (and Bricker) have listed all work to greatly limit the number of these these outlandish “examples” ever resulting in a prison sentence for those poor men. Again, it’s the difference between the the codified law and the workings of the criminal justice system.

I must admit the “fucking” ticket (ticket for fucking) amused me. Congratulations on, at the very least, understanding one of m points. But the punishment (whether a fine, or deferred judgment, or jailtime, or prison sentence) for the action would depend, as it always does, on the facts of the individual case.

Ah, yes, latch onto an irrelevance to weasel away. It’s like declaring victory because the other person made a typo.

Because, as I’ve said, having a statutory affirmative defense would result in more people getting away with having sex with children than would ever be convicted and suffering jailtime for the extreme fanciful examples listed here.

Lying about what an opponent has said during a debate is not an “irrelevance.” I’m willing to take all the fire in the world for what I actually have said, but I’m not going waste time talking to people who are lying about what I’ve said.

I think this has sidetracked way beyond my original point, so I’m not sure how to defend it from here. Originally I was responding to the notion that pregnancy, STD transfer, and getting sent to jail because you picked up a teenager from a bar who had a really good fake ID and looked of age were all somehow natural and inherent consequences of having sex. I’m saying that last case doesn’t have to be - the first two cases can result from the failure of a condom and are simply the nature of how biology works, whereas the latter case can have thinking humans in the mix to decide the circumstances and does not inherently have to be a consequence. IOW, I was trying to say it doesn’t strike me as a reasonable to consider becoming a felon by accidentally fucking a fake-ID’s teenager in good faith is grouped in with inherent biological issues like pregnancy and STDs.

So you seem to be cognizant that there are edge cases where a miscarriage of justice can happen, and that we should take a stance that allows us to dismiss them in order to prevent that miscarriage of justice. So we’re more or less fundamentally in agreement. But you want it to be done through judicial leniency and prosecutorial discretion. But let me ask this - what’s the harm in allowing it to be used as a defense in the court room? Overzealous prosecutors often fail to live up to their end of the bargain in all of this, and the judge presumably can only act on information that’s available in the trial. If the guy can’t bring up the reasonableness of his actions as a defense, how does the judge know to be lenient?

Plus, can a judge even be that lenient to, as you said, just give the guy a ticket or something? It seems like most laws have a minimum and maximum sentence - I would suspect that in most jurisdictions, any convinction is going to be a felony, lead to being registered as a sex offender, and even the minimum sentence includes prison time.

What I’m not seeing is that we’re pretty much in agreement that it’s possible to fuck up here without really having any criminal intent and for taking reasonable precautions not to have commited a crime, and that it would be inappropriate to punish those people - but what I don’t understand is the insistence that this not be a defense in court. What’s the societal harm in having the jury determine whether or not the person commited a criminal act, as almost all other laws do?

Well, that’s good - I really don’t know. I’m just saying that anecdotes where no one was ever up for prosecution don’t necesarily serve as examples of the justice system working if we don’t also know how the cases go down when they indeed are prosecuted.

Ok, I get that. But we have the same stuff working in all other cases too - why does this law need a special exemption from allowing the defendant to make his case? What benefits are we getting from strict liability, and what harm would we suffer without it?

The natural consequence in the latter case is not that you might go to jail, but that you have damaged a child by raping her. The risk you are assuming is the potential to damage a child. Legal consequences are incidental. The relevant risk is in the possibility of hurting a child.