Criminal punishments for lawyers who do their jobs because their clients are horrible people is not how an adversarial justice system works. That’s how a kangaroo court works. The prosecution is ethically obligated to make their best case for conviction, and the defense is ethically obligated to do their best to defend their clients literally no matter what they’ve done, even at sentencing hearings. It’s the court’s job to judge, not the counsel.
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This topic is temporarily closed for at least 4 hours due to a large number of community flags.
This topic was automatically opened after 4 hours.
If only we didn’t see so many light sentences for people who did commit assault:
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I came back here after the topic unlocked to express my condolences to the poster who suddenly lost their son.
That post seems to be one of several thoughtful posts that didn’t survive the purge.
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This is one of those (rare!) cases where the replies to an inappropriate post (promoting violence, especially rape, in any context, is not ok) weren’t really derailed by the issues with the original post. I’ve restored what could be given that context.
It is, however, an important reminder to flag those who violate the community guidelines rather than reply to them, lest this happen.
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Thank you!
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I am truly sorry for your loss.
Loss of a loved one sucks. It doesn’t justify hurting others so you don’t have to feel it. You are literally saying that it’s okay as long as the people suffering pain are not you.
The damage done to those whose privacy, consent and trust are violated is real and can last a lifetime. Imagine never again feeling safe, even in your own home. Imagine a lifetime of fear. Of shame. Of guilt.
What you are going through is horrible. But expressing a willingness to do harm, real harm to others, especially others who had nothing to do with what you are going through (even just hypothetically or hyperbolically) isn’t a good thing. It’s part of the same systemic culture that is willing to treat real damage as “not that bad” and (like his lawyer suggests) “it’s not like he physically touched them”. It’s the kind of attitude that leads to not taking victims seriously. It’s wrong.
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If chemical castration worked, I’d be all for it. It does not seem to decrease recidivism.
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After an investigation into Alden’s personal devices, it was discovered that there were victims outside of just the individuals in the homes he had serviced, and an officer with the Edmond Police Department said the recordings could fill 12 spindles of compact discs, News 9 reported. Police said that there was child pornography on five of his computers and two of his phones.
I wonder how many bad people get away with stuff like this because they take basic steps like encrypting the evidence of their crimes instead of leaving it strewn around their apt like they’re dennis from always sunny:
i am a privacy advocate and have strongly resisted encryption backdoors… but i do feel terrible that the price of privacy/freedom is that sometimes really bad things happen and can’t be prosecuted (at least, not in a civilized country that bans torture and requires untainted evidence for conviction
all this epstein shit going around has made me wonder how many folks in my community are hiding really dark shit. i probably shouldn’t dwell but it’s a really disheartening thing to think about.
Don’t call people monsters. It makes you an asshole.
Also, 150 years is pretty ridiculous.
Um… the only real monsters that exist in the real world which we inhabit happen to be other people, who consciously choose to engage in horrible, inhumane behavior.
There is no Dracula, no flesh eating zombies, no Frankenstein’s monster.
It’s just us flawed human beings and the evil that some of us choose to perpetuate.
The ‘asshole’ in the this scenario is the guy who actually exploited countless innocent kids for his own twisted motives.
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Right and we all tolerate horrible hideous behavior in the production of our food, our technology, our public safety, etc (pretty damn sure you’re reading this on some device that probably has some connection to slave labor, heavy metal pollution etc etc). Calling people monsters distances them from us as human beings and perpetuates the idea that these people are radically different from you and me. They might be but they might be a lot like us but a lot more delusional in their selfishness.
Regardless I’m not into calling anyone a monster. That includes murederers, rapists, politicians etc. Probably all some variety of flawed human.
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Not if you accept the fact that people each have the capacity for both greatest good and the greatest evil within us all, and it’s our consistent active choices and behavior that determine whether we are "decent " or “monstrous.”
It doesn’t matter what you are personally “into”; trying to tone police others is a form of needless derailment.
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It’s cool if you want to talk about monsters and 150 year prison sentences Fox news has all you need.
Well there certainly has been an enormous amount of flagging on this particular thread, does that count as tone policing?
It ‘counts’ as the community enforcing its own standards and code of conduct, seems to me.
Y’know, like stuff like “be cool” and “don’t insult other users.”
But if you personally have an issue with how the site is being moderated, there’s a thread (or two) for that.
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So if life+150 years is fair for this guy what sort of sentence is appropriate for these guys:
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You know, I thought I did have some specific examples, but the “clear bias” divorce court examples I was going to reference turned out to not be as applicable as I thought: there are a few extreme cases where a judge’s comments post-trial opened the door for appeal, but on the whole, if a judge can show that they kept the proceedings on the rails then an appeal is difficult to obtain. So yes, I was speculating, and was more wrong than right.
Thanks for the update! Yes, bias didn’t make a difference in my mother’s appeal, where the original trial judge had said during sentencing that the case represented everything that was wrong with the American criminal justice system and that the jury had been “hoodwinked by a fast-talking lawyer.”
After many years of reflection, though, he was probably right anyway.
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