One lawyer doth not a legal community make.
So you’re saying that a judge should be able to arbitrarily tell someone who has made no agreements of confidentiality or in any other way consented to remain silent on an issue, to not talk about something?
I did a little looking - nothing comprehensive - but in my searches I found that gag orders are meant to preserve the judicial process so that a fair trial can be had. This was after the trial. I see no basis in my looking through the basic information that suggests that a gag order to remain silent after the trial has been concluded and there is no chance of unfairly influencing the judicial process to be a reasonable or constitutional thing.
The defendants made a deal with the state, so that the state would not release information about them. Fair enough. But the victim agreed to no such deal, and there is no justification for allowing the state the power to compel the victim to remain silent after the trial has been concluded and all judicial processes have been fairly executed.
The victim filed complaint at the city Police and they began investigations. Despite the fact that the first party (where everything started) was at the home of an assistant coach (yes, it included beer and alcohol); the fact that there is a 12min video with at least six people talking about the nights events; and the fact that one of the parties the girl was dragged to was the home of the County Prosecuting Attorney, the Police Chief claims that he is having trouble coming up with witnesses or evidence of crimes.
The county Sheriff is bestest bestie with the head football coach and they’ve have weekly breakfast meetings for a very long time. The Sheriff aided the police department by going to the football players’ homes to collect cell phones, etc. It is claimed that the coach and the Sheriff forewarned the kids that their phones were about to be picked up as evidence and that they should delete everything. The deleted images could not be recovered from most of the newer phones --But it is known that they were there because they were either posted (via tweets, etc under their names) or the device owner claimed to have taken the images and later deleted them.
One of the stops where the victim was taken was the home of County Prosecuting Attorney Jane Hanlin (who’s son is a member of the football team).
The Head Football coach is a paid mediator in the juvenile court and his sister is the secretary for the juvenile court judge. The two boys who were charged as adults and have managed to get their cases sent back to juvenile court and the kidnapping charges were dropped (despite clear evidence that the girl was taken to several locations).
The defense has made the statement “Because she was silent doesn’t mean she was objecting,” --likely with a straight face-- to argue that the victim’s silence was not a lack of consent. – Remember, there are images of her completely unconcious and witness statements that she could not move or talk and a 12 min video of a guy making jokes that "she is so dead that… " and tweets like “you don’t sleep through a wang up the butt hole”
So, I think it is a bit more than just one attorney involved in this event.
All anonymous did was hack the email account and web site of an adult associated to the school who they claim had a special relationship to the football team. Anon claims the team members (specifically the members of this “rape crew”) sent him illicit pictures of the girls that they were banging. I pulled down his emails and was surprised that there actually are pictures in them that look like they were taken without the girls’ knowledge (e.g. like bathroom pics) – Normally, when someone makes those sorts of claims, the pics aren’t that illicit and there aren’t that many.
So, while that guy may loose his job, he is not a factor in the victim’s case and I’m sure… despite all this Internet stuff… they can still find a jury to hear the case. If they can seat a jury, there is no reason to believe that they cannot have a fair trial.
All other information posted on that LocalLeaks site is the result of local bloggers and students at the school and not the results of activity by Anon (unless they were the ones to forward the stuff to LocalLeaks). The bloggers became aggressive about the case because the local TV stations were not covering it and so far, very few people (and no adults) have been held accountable for their actions that night.
Some things that haven’t been addressed so far:
- Alcohol for underage minors at three residences
- Failure to report a crime (in Ohio, you must report crimes like rape, assault and kidnapping)
- Publication of child pornography
- The victim’s prior boyfriend (Saltsman) is believed to have set this entire thing up to get back at the girl for breaking up with him… I’m not sure what you would call planning, coordinating and enabling a gang rape that rolls around the county live streaming with things like “Never seen anything this sloppy” and “I have no sympathy for whores”
Yes, the fact that the judge feels that protecting the reputations of football players is worth putting a rape victim in jail is, indeed, the reason that the legal community in Steubenville is a piece of shit. Do you not get this or are you just pro-rape?
He might just think it’s wrong to reveal the identities of minors in criminal proceedings. You know, like everyone else.
Considering that the minors in question were bragging about their actions on the internet, I’d argue that they had no more expectation of privacy.
Again, if there had been any legitimate criminal proceedings against them, we wouldn’t have heard anything about this case. The whole issue is that the extrajudicial avenues of justice are needed because the system completely failed here.
You appear to be conflating the two cases.
No sympathy for the rapists. Our system is woefully not up to speed to deal with some aspects of today’s technology, including social media. Its not just that the crime of rape here is horrible, but the lingering shame and humiliation perpetuated by pictures that will be up on the internet forever, will cause the victim decades of suffering long after most people forget who the rapists were. The rape victim should not come out the worst in this situation. So ruin the boys’ lives, post their pictures, their names online for everyone to see and know they are rapists. Everyone, future employers, acquaintances, potential girlfriends, relatives, fucking babysitters and gardeners should be able to google these kids’ names and see what they have done. And if they still want to associate with them after that, that’s on them
They haven’t actually been convicted yet.
Presumably the victim is not too worried about implicating an innocent party.
The thing is, we’ve already seen in the previous case that the law will not do its job, so we have to shame them into it by getting involved. Anonymous wishes they could have gotten involved in the previous case, but they couldn’t, so they are making up for lost time.
I think that posting pics and bragging about it online sort of takes care of the question of whether or not they are guilty.
They did it. They BRAGGED about doing it, they posted pics. They wanted to be famous for this, at least in their own circle. Guess what? They ARE famous, or rather notorious now.
Yup. Don’t care, fuck them. Bragging, posting pics, multiple sources. They are guilty. Hell if I care if they haven’t been convicted or are never convicted. Whatever Anonymous does to them to ruin their lives will be too good for them.
I’ve been on record saying that if a good friend of mine committed a major crime like murder, I’d probably give him a second chance. Truth is, there are a lot of fucking people out there who deserve to be murdered. But not raped. If I knew someone who raped someone else, I’d assume he was guilty first. And if he bragged about it and posted pictures? I’d probably beat the crap out of him if I could
As for me, I’m uncomfortable with this line of reasoning because it appears to discard due process.
Okay, sure, and I look forward to their conviction. And I’d very much like to see the authorities who tampered with and destroyed evidence face some pretty severe consequences.
I’m a little bit lost, though. Did Anonymous release information only about the guys in Ohio who got their wrists slapped, or was it about the guys in Kentucky whose case is still pending?
That may be the case here but in general that is not a valid presumption.
If they are not guilty of the assault, they are guilty of being extremely stupid for bragging about having done so publicly. I think they would still deserve a hefty chunk of stigma for that.
Tough nuts. It’s the case here. I might care about establishing harmful legal precedent if I were the appeals judge, but I ain’t, so I don’t.