Slee
I thought the reason for a statute of limitations was that after time had passed prosecution of a crime doesn’t really serve the interest of justice. If you broke my nose in a drunken bar brawl in 1997, does it really serve any purpose to take it to trial in 2016, when we are both very different people?
Of course there are some crimes, like murder, where the passage of time becomes irrelevant. i would have thought child molestation would be one of those crimes, but here we are.
Considering his health I’m not certain he’ll survive 15months in prison.
His health care costs are only going to increase. I don’t see a real benifit to society keeping him locked up longer. If he survives to release he’ll end up in confined to a nursing home anyway, let him pay for that.
I believe prison should be used to remove threats from our society. Unless someone can argue he’s going to continue his criminal ways if/when he gets out I’d be willing to hear it. Keep in mind his crime was avoiding banking laws. Now that he’s been caught I doubt that will ever happen again.
Um, what? I mentioned the race of the woman…because that was the race of the woman. I was simply stating factual information about the case. It wasn’t meaning to imply any sort of importance. If you notice, I also mentioned the victim was black. Again, that’s just a fact.
Also, here’s a cite to a news article about the story… http://articles.latimes.com/1991-11-16/news/mn-1402_1_straight-probation
Thank you!
I’ll second this. My feelings exactly.
I admit I am not overly fond of adults who were sexually assaulted claiming rape 10-20 years after the crime happened but I can absolutely see the reason why a child would need to wait till they are an adult.
Granted there are problems with proof after so long but I see no reason why there should be a SoL on child molestation. Let the courts figure it out.
Has there ever been a higher ranking government official sentenced to jail time, formerly held office or incarcerated while in office?
Spiro Agnew-VP to Richard Nixon.
He resigned and plead no contest to tax evasion. $10,000 fine a 3 years probation.
The history is a factor because that’s what led to the illegal transactions. Having the statute of limitations means that he can’t be charged and prosecuted for the sexual abuse, nothing more. It doesn’t mean that it never happened, especially after he admitted it.
It does relate to the specific offense, directly and incontrovertibly, a fact that was never in dispute.
How do you make the judgment that “a fair trial is impossible” and who gets the power to make that judgment? The problem is that an accuser may have what purports to be strong evidence, while the defense may have to rely on evidence like an alibi that is impossible to corroborate after a long period of time. IOW, the viability of the two sides of a case may become asymmetrical after a long period of time.
Seems to me the DA decides whether there is a case worth making.
But the DA’s only concern is whether there’s enough evidence to prosecute. The DA has no interest in any problems the defense might have. Except that the weaker the case for the defense, the better the DA likes it. This is the last guy on earth that you’d want to entrust with the decision as to whether a fair trial is possible.
At best, you might have a preliminary hearing in which a judge makes that decision. Which is an awful lot of discretionary power to give a judge, and would potentially lead to the odd ruling that “case is dismissed because the defendant doesn’t have a hope of establishing his innocence”.
The solution to all that is a statute of limitations.
Gee, wouldn’t that be a sad thing.
Establishing innocence is not something the defendant has to do. He is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The defense’s job is to show that the prosecution’s case is not good enough to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
That time makes evidence harder to establish or obtain should only make conviction less likely, not more. I do not buy this as a valid reason for the statute of limitations.
Sucks to be him.
Being old and/or feeble is not and should not be a get out of jail free card.
There are plenty of old, even dying, men in prison. Why should he be treated differently?
What’s the goal of keeping old feeble men in prison?
I’m don’t think he should be treated differently. He’s been sentenced for a duration appropriate for the crime he was convicted of.
The purpose isn’t to keep old feeble people in prison.
The purpose is to have people serve out their sentences. If they get old and feeble along the way that’s just too bad. As I said, being old and feeble is not and should not be a get out of jail free card.
I’m afraid my view might seem like excessive line-drawing, but “relate” will need to be defined. In a broad sense, any event in a criminal’s life “relates” to any other event - if only because they involved the same person. But in a narrower sense, I’m not certain (tho I will readily be persuaded otherwise by someone with experience and expertise) that the motivation for moving money illegally is a necessary element of the charged and proven offense. Does that make sense? And I don’t know what the law says ought to be considered.
Another example: I deal with cases every day, in which some folk seem very nice, and others are complete assholes. But the individual’s personality ought not dictate how I decide their case, if that is not directly relevant to the determinative issues. Does that make sense?
I haven’t read the statute under which Hastert was convicted. In my ignorance, I imagine it says, “Moving money in this certain way is punishable by a sentence of x-z.” I do not know that it says “Punishment will be greater depending on the motivation for moving the money.”
Re: sick old men in jail: It kinda bothers me that the gov’t will have to pay to keep him. I would wish that other penalties existed. Maybe public shaming! 
Yeah, folk will say his reputation is permanently tarnished, but I hope to see a lot more published a lot more widely of his hypocrisy as a child molestor, having sheltered other sexual predators while Speaker of the House. And I’d like to se him hit REALLY HARD financially, instead of having profited greatly from his years in government. Was he able to keep his campaign contributions when he retired? Or had they changed that by then? And I understand he made a very profitable living afterwards as a lobbyist, trading on his influence. I’d rather see him impoverished, uncomfortable, and humiliated than incarcerated, but sometimes incarceration is all the law provides for, so I have to be satisfied with it.
Not sure if this is mentioned upthread, but part of Hastert’s sentencing is the requirement that he must be registered as a sex offender. How does that fit with the sentencing guidelines for financial crimes?
Sorry Kimstu,
Again, the original post pitted an evil capitalist Korean woman with a delicate flower Black girl when the your citation says the Black girl placed the overpriced orange juice in her backpack before paying for it. An altercation occurred, and shots were fired. I suspect Latasha was most likely coming back with her friends and the Korean woman was fearful for her life. The Black girl viciously struck the Korean woman three times and yet that seems okay with you.
What happened was far more complex and not a cold blooded murderer as the Arrogantly Ignorant’s post suggests. No, the races of the people were involved were mentioned to further the narrative of how unfair the legal system is to African Americans. I find the phenomenon of self hating Asians easily citing Latasha’s story and never mention all of the Asian store owners who are killed and assaulted by other people of color.:dubious:
You’re playing with semantics. Showing that there is reasonable doubt is precisely how you “establish innocence”, and to do that you present evidence. The presumption of innocence doesn’t make the defense job a cakewalk if the prosecution has a good case.
You cannot say that time making evidence harder to obtain “should only make conviction less likely, not more” because as I previously said, time can and does act on different kinds of evidence in ways that may affect the two sides asymmetrically. For example, if a number of different people happen to find out (or to believe) that they were all victimized by the same person a long time ago, then their combined and corroborating testimony based solely on their recollections has a high level of credibility. Meanwhile the defendant may have a hard time demonstrating specific facts and circumstances that occurred very long ago, such as the fact that he wasn’t even there at the alleged times.
Some might say to hell with such niceties, especially if the crime was particularly heinous, but the idea is to safeguard against a wrongful conviction. Presumption of innocence, remember?
No expertise here, I’m just arguing what I think would be the right and just course of action. In general I think the justice system usually provides fairly wide discretion precisely to deal with such variables. And I’ll say again that I think the relationship was absolutely direct, since he if he had not committed these shameful acts he wouldn’t be moving money in secret and illegally to try to hide it.
It makes sense in that personality shouldn’t be a determinant of a verdict, though in borderline cases a person’s behavioral background may well sway a jury. But personality and background and past behavior is frequently and justly a factor in sentencing. Two different questions.
That again ties in to the discretion factor. If there is no statute or case law prohibiting such consideration, then ISTM that it’s appropriate if it serves the cause of justice.
It is an answer, to save time, not an attempt at a just solution. An innocent defendant within the statute may still have such trouble. A guilty one beyond it may have a strong case against him.
The ruling you describe as “odd” is the one you are effectively advocating be applied to all cases past an arbitrary age, regardless of severity and the actual evidence involved.