Yup. And if you’re the poor schlub who’s been dragged into a child-custody case, because you happen to share a residence with the plaintiff, the defendant’s lawyer can drag your name through the mud, with unsupported allegations because the goddammed PD doesn’t give a shit about you because you’re not her fucking client. And the only fucking way I could have fought a goddamed thing was, as an unemployed, and disabled person, hire a fucking lawyer on my goddamn own, because no one would let me speak for myself or would represent my concerns.
Tell me again how lawyers don’t tell lies during arguments. I want to laugh some more.
Tell me again I have any fucking recourse to recover my good name, when a libel suit is so fucking expensive and I have no assets? I really could use a fucking laugh about all this.
You both express an almost identical naïve, base, ignorant, and vile sentiment about a class of professionals—a class of professionals that equally protect us from tyranny.
You do recognize that there’s a difference between arguing for the existence of lawyerly ethics, and stating that there’s no such thing as an unethical lawyer, right? Because I kind of get the opposite impression from your post.
You sound extraordinarily reasonable and I cannot for the life of me figure out why someone would institute adversarial proceedings against you, especially those involving impressionable minds.
FWIW, I also parse the argument as a somewhat stumbling attempt to say that the victim suffered no lasting physical harm.
As for presenting “obviously false” alibi testimony, how about this?
Your client is a Native American teen who’s been positively identified by the victim as the person who assaulted and robbed him. Your client tells you, no, no, some other Native American teenager must have done it (this is in a place where Native Americans are a very small minority). He says, sure, he was at the place where the assault happened, but he had only just arrived when the cops got there. See, he had ridden the bus with his paraplegic sister, gotten off too early, then had to wheel her down the street, when this nice soccer mom stopped in her minivan, and offered them a ride. Only she got really lost, so they drove around for a long time, and arrived at the apartment where the assault occurred really late. And yeah, the lady gave them her phone number, but they threw it out.
As you no doubt guessed, this unlikely story proved to be true. They found the lady’s number in the dumpster, she corroborated the story, and had phone records of a call to her sister to get directions as well.
I do beg your pardon. I was pissed and posted without considering how clearly I’d be able to make my point.
I will say that even as pissed as I was, I didn’t say a single thing against the need for people to have a vigorous defense. I may not always like how that defense or advocacy may play out, but I do recognize the need.
I will stand by my belief, based on my experience, that the code of ethics that Mr. Excellent linked to is not universally followed, and the methods for redress or even to counter frivolous or false statements are only rarely followed.
Happy Scrappy Hero Pup, when people are talking in Family Court that I am a “would-be child molester,” I get both furious and panicked. For some silly reason, I have a great deal of difficulty dealing with such allegations, when I am forbidden to even speak up in my own defense, in a completely rational manner.
ETA: At the time I did the only thing I could that would not queer things for my housemate: I kept quiet and ate that shit raw.
I think it’s not unreasonable for me to still have a bad taste in mouth from the experience. No matter how saintly you seem to think I should consider lawyers.
One more thing, Happy Scrappy Hero Pup - you seem to have missed, I was never actually proceeded against. If someone had started adversarial proceedings against me I might have been able to defend myself. Or at least demand some evidence be shown to the court that I was a “would-be child molester.” As it was, I was simply described as part of the the home environment for the child’s mother. No evidence was ever presented in court to support the allegation that I was a “would-be child molester,” and it is my belief that no such evidence exists. But that doesn’t matter - the PD handling the case didn’t challenge. And I couldn’t, because I wasn’t officially a party to the suit.
You know, I read the link in the OP and I fully understand how someone might find that outrageous. But after reading the thread I also understand the purpose of the lawyer’s presentation: “no physical damage” indeed.
If the range of sentences is (for instance) 15 years to Life, based upon the severity of the crime, and Life is reserved for the worst example of that crime committed by the worst offender, then “no permanent physical damage” is certainly a relevant factor.
I mean, if you give Life to a gang rapist who didn’t actually torture and disfigure his victims before murdering them, what sentence do you give the guy who does?
What are you talking about? I don’t see anyone denying a defendant’s right to leniency (or an attorney’s right to plead the case for it at sentencing), but to say “well, yeah she was gang-raped, but it really didn’t cause any harm” as justification for that leniency is not only callous and immoral, but patently false.
Whether or not the client told the lawyer to say that before a judge is irrelevant, the attorney shouldn’t have uttered something that stupid and blatantly untrue, he actually quite likely harmed his cause for a sentence reduction by pissing off the judge for spewing such a cruel inanity!
Whatever happened to the “tried and true” litany of excuses like “he grew up abused, has ADHD, is bipolar” or any of the other relatively unprovable bullshit defense attornies conjure up?
To try to turn this around on the victim “she was asking for it, she was wearing a short skirt…we didn’t hurt her, we just fucked her!” is just dirty pool of the lowest order.
Suppose the gang-rapist had not only raped her, but had cut off her ear, spit in her face, and left her naked and tied up? Should the sentence be worse? How much worse?
Suppose the gang-rapist had done all that, and had killed her. Should his sentence be worse still?
Arguing that he hadn’t caused permanent physical damage is very much relevant to the case: it determines where in the sentencing guidelines he falls.
While I grudgingly agree, mental anguish can manifest itself in physical forms. Mental damage can be gauged by psychiatrists/psychologists.
It doesn’t change the fact that it’s a slimeball move, whether it’s legal to say something like that or not.
Plus, fifteen years for being the ringleader of a gang rape doesn’t seem like all that much. He’ll be 41 when he gets out. Hardly a life sentence.
Hopefully the judge is smart enough to recognize this for what it is: a cheap-shot, desperate, ill-founded ploy to reduce the sentence of someone that truly deserves their comeuppance for the crimes he committed.
Whatever happened to accepting your punishment because you acknowledge you were wrong and committed a crime?
“Well your honor, what my client did was bad, but he shouldn’t serve such a long sentence even though it is within the guidelines, because the victim didn’t suffer any noticable physical damage. I mean, just look at her over there, shaking and shivering. She’s fine!”
The concept that rape must necessarily bring mental anguish to the victim is (or should be) built into the baseline sentence.
I don’t think it’s a very practical approach to say that all rapists must get the maximum sentence without mitigation; that doesn’t do anything to protect victims. If you view the sentence as a deterrent, then the harsher the behavior, the harsher the punishment.
Are you arguing that the sentence for rape, all rape, no matter how minor, no matter any mitigating circumstances or behaviors, should always be life?
Well I don’t feel that way either. There are almost always mitigating circumstances to be brought to light in criminal trials.
Someone that gets 15 years for sex he thought was consensual but the girl was drunk and didn’t actually have the ability to give consent comes to mind, so do many instances of statuatory rape where say an 18 year old has consensual sex with a fifteen or sixteen year old girl and gets “caught”.
Those instances are deserving of lighter sentences, IMO.
I am merely pointing out that the tactic this particular lawyer used in this particular case was egregious to the victim, again, IMO, and if I were the judge, physical harm or lack thereof in this case is secondary to the fact tha tshe was repeatedly raped by a group of men, led by the defendant in this case.
In this instance, I think the defense is out of line, and should have stuck to the old standbys of placing blame for the act on the defendant’s lack of morality on upbringing, mental capability or some such nonsense.
What is false is all the people parsing the guy’s words to conveniently exclude the word “physical”. If somebody says a rape victim didn’t suffer harm, sure, string him up.
You haven’t answered the question posed above. If the range of punishments is, say, 8 to 25 years, and you argue that a victim who wasn’t physically harmed should get the 25, what sentence should be imposed when the victim was raped AND given permanant scars on her face and breasts?
If your “grudging agreement” above was an admission that this makes a difference, then why is the defense out of line?
If your grudging agreement referred to something else, then answer the orginal question – should the rapist that inflicted physical scarring get the same sentence as one that didn’t?