…in the only, ad hominem sentence you wrote insulting my intelligence. Was a little on the ironic side, don’t you think? It wasn’t about “winning” an argument; this is about having a discussion.
Anyway, are you telling me that juries (and you) don’t consider a defendant’s personality & history? The difference is we have a seemingly isolated instance here not someone out on parole or with a history of gang violence. I’m not saying his case should be dismissed because he has a B average, I’m just trying to get you to look at this so-called criminal honestly. Sue me.
I will now brace myself for a pointlessly abusive response.
The remedy for an unjust or invalid law is to seek to change that law. It isn’t to violate that law or to applaud those who do. If the law outrages you, then that’s all well and good if you channel your outrage into working to amend or remove the law that so outrages you. If all it motivates you to do is defend the person who broke the law, then I submit your priorities are in the wrong spot.
Until a law is changed, it’s still the law.
I also dispute that the law itself can be categorized as outrageous and morally wrong - there are at least arguably reasons to have such a law in place, historically and currently. I’m not entirely sure I agree with those reasons, but I don’t live in Georgia, either.
There are also reasons for laws to have different penalties based on the sort of sex act it was - not ones that I necessarily agree with - but reasons all the same. If, for example, you believe sexual acts should be reserved solely for procreation (not that I do, but a goodly number of people at least profess to believe so), then there’s every reason for having oral and anal sexual conduct in that situation carry heavier penalties. In some instances, there are health reprecussions - for example, anal sex is more physically dangerous than vaginal sex for women - or can be.
As for the law itself being newsworthy, that’s just bollocks. To the best of my knowledge, all 50 states have laws prohibiting “statutory rape” (i.e., prohibiting sexual relations solely because of the age of the participants, regardless of consent).
There are plenty of reasons for those laws to exist. For starters, historically, one of the reasons behind the original enactment of “statutory rape” laws was to prevent people who had sex with children from arguing they’d gotten consent from the child in question. This is based primarily on the premise that there is an age before which a child is unable to give meaningful consent to sexual activity, and therefore all sexual activity is by necessity nonconsensual. For an explanation of how this evolved, you can see the discussion in State of North Carolina v. Anthony (http://www.aoc.state.nc.us/www/public/sc/opinions/2000/342-99-1.htm) or alternatively, the article noted here: Abstract Redirect | NCJRS
Another historical reason for the enactment of such laws was to discourage the then-traditional practice of marrying girls off as soon as they began menstruating. Girls can quite often begin menstruation before age 12, and instances of girls with regular menses before age 9 are uncommon, but not unheard of. Marrying a girl off at that age is in no sense healthy for the girl - physically or emotionally.
Not all of the historic reasons for enacting those laws still apply, but they’re not totally baseless, either. Granted, prohibiting anyone under the age of 18 (the age at which a person is entitled in this country to enter legal agreements - generally the benchmark for full-consent status) from having sex isn’t reasonable. But, like it or not, it’s hard to dispute rationally the notion that there is an age before which a person cannot give anything that resembles “consent”. A three-year old can say the word “yes” to agree to activities, but I’m not certain it’s possible for a rational argument to be made that the consent is valid in any generally understood meaning of the word “consent”.
I repeat, again, that being outraged because the law was applied as written and implying (or flat-out stating) that the person who broke the law was somehow entitled to do so is wrong-headed thinking and frankly shameful.
Just because you do not agree with the law, does not give you the right to violate it.
It’s an implication based on what I didn’t read in the articles linked - and in the other ones I dug up associated with this case. Namely, an assertion that he didn’t know she was 15. Also, implication based on what he did say. During the trial transcripts (which were quoted in one of the above links) the guy actually starts defining and analyzing the statute in question. Also, it’s clear from the links above that he knew this girl. He either knew or should have known that she was a couple of years younger, which ought to have triggered an alarm bell for him if he had any inkling that statutory rape laws existed. If he didn’t have that inkling, I’d be interested in the size of the rock he was living under.
Although, even if he were unaware of what statutory rape is and that it’s against the law, I might be more sympathetic to him personally, but I wouldn’t be defending his actions.
It might be more of a motivator for me to work to have the law altered or stricken from the books, but it remains that he actually did what he was convicted of.
Deplore the law to your heart’s content, it’s the defending of the lawbreaker that irritates the beejesus out of me.
I guess I’d see the logic in that if it wasn’t for the fact that HE was a minor. I’ve yet to see anyone provide a logical basis for punishing a minor for having sex with a minor.
Perhaps if she was 12, but 17 and 15? Honestly, do you really think 17-year-olds should be legally punished for having sex with 15-year olds? Isn’t it kind of silly, really, to do that?
Not to mention that if the law was executed in an equitable fashion (and not as I suspect because this was a black kid getting a hummer from a white girl) half the 17 year old boys in George would be locked up. He was a junior or a senior dating sophomore; when I was going to high school that was the most common dating demographic (much to my chagrin when I was a sophomore) and blowjobs meant you didn’t lose your virginity as well so they were very common.
In the real world, people are going to subvert, evade, and ignore laws that clearly fly in the face of reasonable and legitimate impositions that the government is permitted to impose on the populace. Blaming “disrespect for the law” on people who treat bad laws with contempt rather than on politicians who pass bad laws is as absurd as blaming the current mess in Iraq on the locals who failed to greet us as liberators rather than on the administration that failed to plan for normal reactions to a foreign invasion.
Aangelica, your reply to this incident seems out of proportion to me. I get the feeling this is somehow hitting close to home.
Did you or sister get caught in a situation like this?
Was it a 17 year old who did it?
If so are you sure you are not projecting your trauma on these kids?
If these are too personal, please feel free to curse me out, but I find your position very extreme and very emotional. I think you might be coming from a different point of view than most of us.
And how many of these hummers have been recorded on video? What’s your evidence that the law is being executed inequitably? It seems to me that the law was enforced here because there was no need to force a reluctant witness (reluctant in the sense she did not wish to complain) to testify; they had the video tape. If you can provide examples of other videotaped underage sex acts that were not prosecuted for white offenders, then please do so. Otherwise, your conclusion is merely speculation.
No, actually. I’m not packing around any sexual trauma to speak of. I gave and received my fair share of oral sex when I was in high school - although it was perfectly legal
My reply is actually less to this particular situation than to a trend I’ve noticed on this board and actually in general. I’ll admit to being a little emotional on the issue - but my emotion isn’t based on the circumstances of this particular case, but rather on my monumental frustration with people who snag one set of circumstances in which they do not care for the outcome and vehemently declare it the worst thing evah.
Apologists of criminals chap my ass. The crime this guy was convicted of was originally intended to protect children from sexual exploitation by adults - a laudable goal. Whether or not its application in this instance is answering to that larger goal is another question entirely. I’d be willing to bet this conversation wouldn’t be taking this tenor if the girl were ten instead of fifteen. By necessity, laws regarding sexual activity by people under age 18 have to draw a line somewhere (sometimes several lines actually) about at what age we cede children the right to make autonomous sexual decisions. It so happens a fair number of people participating in this thread do not agree with where the state of Georgia drew that line. Take it up with the state of Georgia. In fact, it appears other like-minded folks did so and were successful. Good for them!
Now, so what if this kid is still in jail for something that is no longer unlawful? It was when he did it. He’s free to exercise the avenues of relief available to one convicted of something that is no longer a crime - and I assume his attorney has begun to do so.
I don’t care if he’s white, black, yellow, red or green - or what hue his oral sex provider was either. What he did was illegal - I’ve yet to see any indication that he was unaware of its illegality. Do the crime, do the time.
This particular one irked because this guy was clearly misbehaving and yet we have this whole cadre of people vigorously denouncing the law and everyone involved with enforcing it and placing no blame whatsoever on the guy. I truly, to the depths of my mind and heart, deplore the trend to blame the law and the law only. Mechanisms in this country exist for changing laws with which you do not agree. Breaking the law and then whining about the outcome of breaking the law subsequent to conviction is not one of those mechanisms. I will allow the sole proviso to this statement is when an activist working to change a law or laws with which they do not agree breaks that law and then accepts prosecution and lawfully-imposed punishment as a mechanism for raising awareness about a law they find repugnant.
I’m calling you on that one Steve MB. If you have any evidence this kid was involved in an effort to get statutory rape and child molestation laws in his jurisdiction changed and arranged to have himself arrested as a protest to raise awareness, I would be happy to read it. Until then, keep your Rosa Parks references to discussinos where they belong. Her situation and that of this guy are not the same.
To start with, Ms. Parks did not break the law. Her refusal to relinquish her seat was not unlawful under the existing laws of the time, merely against customary usuage. It was customary for bus drivers in Montgomery to require black passengers to give up their seats in the black section of the bus, but the law actually read that any originally correctly seated passenger (as Ms. Parks was) was not to be required to give up their seat.
Perhaps that’s because the people in this thread don’t think he did anything immoral. Would you suggest that consenting adults in Georgia should have refrained from oral sex between 1986 and 1998? Do you think it would be right to send them to prison for 10 years if they didn’t?
Indeed. And the law recognizes that, no matter how carefully drafted a law might be, there are rare circumstances where justice requires an exception be made.
There are at least three mechanisms to address this to at least some degree, and one, two, or all of them exist in every U.S. jurisdiction that I*m familiar with.
The first is judicial discretion in sentencing. Sometimes this is constrained, to where a judge has a minimum sentence that he must impose. (A full discussion of this issue and some recent Federal decisions on this point would take more time than I have now. Suffice to say that this discretion is not a complete solution, nor should it be.)
Second is prosecutorial discretion. This allows a prosecutor to prosecute on a lesser charge, or not prosecute at all. There are some practical and philsophical problems with this being a complete and universal solution, but this is a major reason why the jails aren*t full of 17 year olds who engaged in sexual activity with their minor girlfriends. Sometimes this is exercised in the plea bargain process.
Third is a gubenatorial or presidential pardon. The last safety net. It could apply here.
What is not appropriate is an appellate court disregarding the legislature and (most likely) the state constitution by ignoring the law and substituting its views on morarity and fairness. That*s not its role. If you disagree with that, ask yourself this: Why bother having a legislature and written laws at all, if a judge can ignore them at will?
As I said, I dont have a lot of time to educate myself on the facts of this case right now, but Im getting a sense that the defendant did something that I would consider worthy of punishment. Not 10 years in jail, but something. I also gather that the defendant refused to make a deal, and went for an all or nothing result. In other words, maybe the prosecutor thought some punishment appropriate, and offered some lesser penalty, and the 17 year old, or his advisors refused the offer, counting on a hope that the jury wouldn*t convict. That may have been foolish, and not the fault of the prosecutor.
Maybe the result here is so harsh that the governor (this isnt federal, so the president doesnt get involved) should pardon or commute the sentence. I don&t know enough to say. But the appellate court isn*t to blame.
In other words, as usual, I agree with Campion. (We have to stop meeting like this. People will talk.)
In case it wasnt clear, my post above was meant to address the point that changing the law doesnt necessarily fix the problem for existing cases.
Maybe so. But there are still mechanisms in place to ameliorate patently unjust results. Judicial disregard of the law is not, and should not, be one of those mechanisms.
Those who argue otherwise are either ignorant about the system, or would prefer a system where justice is fully dependant on the whim of the judge or judges on the case.
I’m guilty of the aforementioned hyperbole, but, well, the kid’s in jail for 10 YEARS. I’d say it’s probably the worst thing evah for him.
Anyway, so you don’t want to apologize for this kid. That’s fine. He got a blowjob from someone a grade below, which, yes, is illegal (amazingly). As you said, this law was drafted to protect minors from being taken advantage of, sexually, by adults. I’d just ask you to step back and truly say that you believe that’s what happened here, between a junior & a sophomore in high school. You yourself slipped up and called him a “kid” several times. The punishment, plain and simple, does not fit the “crime.”
So no: I think you’re right. This isn’t a case where we should, necessarily, blame the law. The law is for in place and is probably used justifiably 99% of the time. But we can blame the application of the law here for throwing a boy in jail for getting a consentual blowjob in a hotel room. His is a specific case where this law was abused and I put absolutely no blame on the so-called criminal here.
