Rather than have to read about 3 “report this post” messages per day, then re-read this thread, I’m moving it to Great Debates. It truly isn’t a great debate, and the OP was simply asking for answers to a general question, but I’m old and tired tonight.
samclem, Moderator, General Questions–from whence it was moved.
I’m not interested in debating this topic; the OP asked a factual question and I provided a factual answer. That your personal sense of “morality” doesn’t accord with this particular public policy is irrelevant to that factual answer. There are other people who would find it more “moral” to establish a public policy, backed by laws, that protects children even at the expense of adults.
The more interesting question is whether this public policy is still appropriate in an era of increased sexuality, particularly in a society that sexualizes its children even from a young age. Arguably, we need this policy now more than ever. But as I said, I’m not interested in a debate, so I’m done.
There are several things the law does that I object to quite a bit. One is prosecuting for statutory rape when it’s clear the offender has been deceived, as in Taylor’s case. Putting people in jail for things they had no reasonable way to know is just wrong.
Another is charging everyone involved in the crime with murder if one of the group kills someone. I don’t think it’s right to sentence some poor guy to death because while he was waiting outside as the getaway driver in what was supposed to be a simply robbery, one of the guys on the inside got trigger-happy and shot and killed someone.
And the third is immediate and permanent seizure of cars, boats, homes or other private property without what I would consider to be due process if drugs are found. It’s hard for me to believe this practice was ever allowed to get off the ground in the first place.
I haven’t seen her picture cause she’s a minor, but I don’t know any 15 year old kid who looks old enough for legal sex to someone who’s plus 50.
They have different degrees of murder, do you have a cite for a simple getaway driver getting the chair?
Not that I don’t agree with you but I imagine it started as, “Senator, are you in favor of helping drug dealers?”
Actually that happened on L&O, not SVU.
She wasn’t the bartender, either, and she had a history of enrolling in school and pretending to be younger than she was. (She was in fact, in her thirties)
Your personal experience is (1) irrelevant, and (2) at odds with that of anyone who knows more than a half dozen 15 year olds. I will leave the question of why 50 year olds are somehow less able to judge the ages of kids than anyone else aside for now.
In a felony murder jurisdiction, any homicide occurring in the course of a felony (such as grand theft) is automatically considered a capital crime. In fact, however, the Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that a getaway driver would not be eligible for the death penalty if he had nothing directly to do with the killing, but almost immediately afterward ruled that an accomplice would be eligible for the death penalty if the death was a “forseeable result” of the original felony.
So he’s sort of right - if it was supposed to be a simple robbery, a death would probably not be ruled a foreseeable result - but sort of wrong, since a simple robbery in which the perpetrators were carrying fully automatic weapons or somesuch might be judged differently.
It happened on SVU, too, then – as I only watch SVU and have never seen the original L&O. Season 8, episode 21 (thanks, Wiki!).
Lawrence Taylor is 51, accused of boinking someone he thought was legal age but in fact was 16/17. Yeah, he might prefer a young woman, but it’s stretching when we’re talking she was 30 years younger than him, let alone 35 years. If you’re going to [play] ball on the edge, one should expect to end up out of bounds and suffer the consequences.
He should have claimed his drug abuse history as a partial defense.
When you order a prostitute and she turns up with a black eye and saying they’re 19 with no ID provided, one might expect a ‘reasonable person’ to be a wee bit dubious if they were really of age or not. And thats the best case scenario for him.
After that the debate is about what does constitute reasonable measures and really that comes down to a jury or judge in my view, as it will always involve weighing a number of factors, ie the ‘reasonable person’ standard.
To get really silly, if an 8 year old gives someone a fake ID and says they’re 21, that isnt going to cut it as a defence. You cant boil it down it single ‘I did this’ arguments.
Otara
In some places it does. In Ireland the statutory rape law was ruled unconstitutional a few years ago because it didn’t allow a defence for reasonable mistake as to age. It now does, and it’s up to the jury to decide whether the mistake was reasonable. Is that not the case anywhere in the US?
I think prosecution should have to prove that either 1. a reasonable person would have determined the child was likely not an adult, or 2. the defendant had intent to have sex with someone under the age of consent. It’s kind of silly that a person can be convicted of rape when at no point before or during the crime was there any intent of committing it.
not to my knowledge. The “think of children” crowd, far outweigh the “common sense” crowd here.
And some people think “common sense” means thinking with the right head.
Is it silly that a person can be convicted of homicide when at no point before or during the crime was there any intent of committing homicide (as in DUI manslaughter cases)?
This issue raised its head in Ireland, and the law was struck down.
There is now a defence of honest mistake, but the onus is on the defendant to prove the defence.
(The CL that resulted led to the SC having to hold that unconstitutionality of a law does not retrospectively invalidate all actions taken under it - so even if the law holding you is unconstitutional, you can still be stuck in jail).
Me neither, but there are some exceptions. I’m not a teacher but I come into regular contact with children where I work, and, for the most part, it’s easy to tell they’re minors. There was one young lady I came into contact with who had both her arms fully tattooed, a large tattoo on her back, and at one point she went out for a smoke break. Turns out she was just a student but I could have sworn she was a lot older.
Lawmakers have decided that you really shouldn’t be having sex with young girls, period. Just because she’s 20 doesn’t mean it’s OK. It’s more like :dubious:
So kids who are damaged aren’t worthy of society’s protection. :dubious:
I’m imagine that what he meant was that if they’re lying and working as prostitues, their innocence has already been lost. So there’s little justification for prosecuting their johns under unreasonable laws intended to protect their innocence.
I know a few…hundred maybe. ok maybe not quite that many but easily close to 100 over my 5.5 years teaching drivers ed, its not that uncommon for a teenage girl to be developed well past her age range, and when you add in some underdeveloped over 18 year olds you just get more confusion in the mix.