Well, I talked to my friend last night and tried to get some more details on why this guy was acquitted, as the local press has been very lax on covering this case. It seems to be a case of a really bad prosecutor and a really good defense. Friend says, “the jury was told that the semen was there because he admitted having sex with her before she was killed, amd that she really enjoyed forced anal sex. His bite marks on her body were ‘love bites.’ And the big gob of phlegm on her? He hadn’t spit on her dead body at all—he coughed on her before he left, and apparently she loved him so much that she neglected to wipe it off before someone else broke in and killed her 30 seconds later.”
My friend also tells me this guy—two days after his acquittal!—is already out at the local bars trolling for his next girlfriend. I hope all the girls in Bensonhurst stand warned, as this was the kind of killing a one-time amatuer does not do.
Hey, neither my friend nor I know of any threats to this guy (my friend is the least mobbed-up guy in Bensonhurst). But if he turns up missing, my lace hankie will remain dry and tear-free.
I’d agree that this explanation is the likely one, but there are many reasons that a jury could be upset, not all of which establish that something isn’t right. What if the jury deeply sympathized with the victim’s family, thought there was a pretty good chance that the defendant did it, but ** did its job and acquitted because the evidence did not establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?**
FTR, if the evidence was indeed what was described here, without more, I don’t see reasonable doubt here.
Yep, Philo, a dozen guys with baseball bats should do the trick.
I tried to talk to my friend last night and get some more balanced details out of him as to how and why the jury could have acquitted, but all I could get out of him was “because the jury was a bunch of . . .” well, I don’t use language like that. I wish there were some more press coverage of the case so I could get a well-balanced view from both sides.
No, because that would be a purposeful, malicious act - not a terrible mistake made in the process of justice. Let alone it being a hyperbolic, inflammatory example.
Please don’t put words like that in my mouth again.
I disagree strongly that that it the primary intent of the criminal justice system. I personally have no idea if that has ever been stated officially, but there are a great many people who don’t believe it should be anything like that. Letting one hundred guilty people back into society will cause a hell of a lot more suffering as they go back to commit thier crime. I’m a cold hearted pragmatist, suffering and unjustness are all bad, regardless of the cause. The main issue is that your feeling is that a suffering caused by the government is 100 times worse because it is the representation of ‘us’. Many people simply don’t feel that. My feeling(and it’s most certainly not unique to me) is that accused criminal rights are infringing on the rights of society. I think that many laws and Supreme court rulings have gone far beyond the original intent of the constituition(the fourth amendment comes to mind)as far as protecting individual rights, and are handcuffing the judicial system in convicting criminals who should be taken off the street. I also think that views like mine are becoming more common, and that we are in the beginning of a pendulum swing back away from criminal rights, and away from this 100:1 nonsense.
How does the criminal justice system protect you if a criminal who should have been convicted and imprisoned, is freed on a technicality and murders you?
Didn’t mean to be putting words in your mouth, so please accept my apology, and let me try to clarify a bit.
It seemed to me that you were saying that a system which occasionally puts away innocents in order to more completely catch actual criminals would be prefferable to one which does not accidentally convict innocent people, but in guaranteeing that also fails to catch many more criminals.
In my mind, that translates to: “sacrificing innocent people for the greater good is an acceptable method of society.”
Well, what I am saying is that there must always be a balance. One one side, there is an extremist view of “a single innocent conviction is the greatest crime against humanity”. On the other side, there is an extremist view of “always assume everyone is guilty, just to be sure you get all the criminals”. Currently, we are somewhere in between this.
I would contend that unless we are in position (1), we are already “sacrificing innocent people for the greater good” of Society - to some extent. Because humans, and human-based and derived systems are fallible, unless you convict no one at all, you are going to have accidental and tragic convictions of the truly innocent.
So, in effect, yes - innocent people are sacrificed, every week I imagine, because our system only strives to be perfect, and is not anywhere near perfect.
But what is the alternative? In the “convict none, out of fear of a wrongful conviction” position, those who work to destroy Society are protected from the reactions and defenses of Society. And as a result, Society will not only lose, but can Society be stable, and even continue to exist? Can you have laws, if they are universally unenforced?
So, let’s lay out my hypothesis, flawed though it may be:
Societies exist because of laws which define and organize them.
A Society which wants to continue to exist in its current form, or perhaps in any form at all, must enforce these laws, and punish those who willingly violate them.
Because humans and human-derived systems are fallible, this punishment will, at times, be applied unfairly and unjustly to innocents.
Thus, this sacrifice of the innocents is required for Society to exist.
The argument that remains is really “What level of prosecution should a Society operate at that balances out the rights of the individual versus the rights of Society (which consists of other individuals)?”
Or, more succinctly, “What is the cost/benefit ratio associated with different levels of the sacrifice of innocents?”
Wow, that sounds cold and heartless. It’s not intended to be, not in the least.
Despite the apparent threat of this slowly morphing into a GD thread…
First of all, guilty people are not acquitted. That’s what acquittal means, it’s being found not guilty. People “who did it” are acquitted sometimes, so I presume that’s what we’re talking about. The distinction is, however, not merely semantic or technical. The usage of “guilty” to describe acquitted defendants is symptomatic of a society in which many people assume “guilty 'till proven innocent” even when mouthing the reverse.
To the substance of the point, there’s a difference between a nonfeasance and a misfeasance. Releasing the person “who did it” may end up as a cause-in-fact of a further crime perpetrated by that individual. That’s not something the government did (misfeasance) but something they didn’t do (nonfeasance.) On the other hand, putting a factually innocent man in jail is a misfeasance. Most ethical philosophies, mine own included, only assign moral error to misfeasances, and not to nonfeasances. Thus I have a natural preference for one situation over the other.
Additionally, the assumption that people “who did it”, when released, will “do it” again is both flawed and dangerous to the legal system. Statistically one might generalize that out of the 100 set free at least a few will commit a violent crime, but you can’t say that for certain about any individual member of that group. That type of thinking can lead to things like Megan’s Law, which has turned “do the crime, do your time” into “do the crime, do your time, then live forever as a social leper while we characterize you as a monster because some outspoken psychologists have chosen to assume you will strike again.”
Crimes are committed against indivuduals, not against society. Society has no hopes, dreams, fears, possessions, or ambitions, since it has no brain/will/mind. As crimes against individuals add up they can tear at the cohesiveness of systems to which those individuals belong, but no single such crime can do that. Thus, to my mind, there is no justification for a government entity to perpetrate even a single misfeasance against a citizen in the name of “society.” Presume innocence not just with your words, but with your hearts and minds.
How far does this preference go? Why not abandon trials entirely out of the risk of innocent people being accidentally imprisoned? If a single instance nonfeasance does not create moral error, then an infinite number of nonfeasances (e.g., no trials at all) could not create moral error at all. By your logic of assigning absolutely zero moral error to nonfeasance, you seem to have dug yourself into a hole in which you would prefer a criminal justice system that refuses to ever imprison anyone lest some small amount of misfeasance occur.
In fact, the more I think about it, the dumber your moral philosophy sounds. Using your logic, the passerby who sees a man bleeding on the street corner and chooses to walk by and do nothing is completely morally justified in his actions (nonfeasance), but the one who stops to help and accidentally injures the victim more in trying to aid him has committed a moral error (misfeasance).
I’d be happy to debate Megan’s law in some other thread, but I’m sure you know that Megan’s law was inspired by an actual 7 year old girl who was raped and killed by a convicted sex offender, i.e., an individual who did indeed recidivate after his release from prison.
How far does this preference go? Why not abandon trials entirely out of the risk of innocent people being accidentally imprisoned? If a single instance nonfeasance does not create moral error, then an infinite number of nonfeasances (e.g., no trials at all) could not create moral error at all. By your logic of assigning absolutely zero moral error to nonfeasance, you seem to have dug yourself into a hole in which you would prefer a criminal justice system that refuses to ever imprison anyone lest some small amount of misfeasance occur.
In fact, the more I think about it, the dumber your moral philosophy sounds. Using your logic, the passerby who sees a man bleeding on the street corner and chooses to walk by and do nothing is completely morally justified in his actions (nonfeasance), but the one who stops to help and accidentally injures the victim more in trying to aid him has committed a moral error (misfeasance).
I’d be happy to debate Megan’s law in some other thread, but I’m sure you know that Megan’s law was inspired by an actual 7 year old girl who was raped and killed by a convicted sex offender, i.e., an individual who did indeed recidivate after his release from prison.
Eve for someone who claim to know someone involve in the case… you are clueless …I am friends with the defended … he was proven innocent … because they found a bloody foot print that did not match her or him… they found a 3rd set of DNA… on her body … and the timeline was 19 minute …she spoke to her mother @ 10.02 PM… and he was home @ 10:21 pm calling his friend on his house phone… get your facts straight
And PS… no Brooklyn justice… because his friends ran Bensonhurst
