To ensure equal justice under the law*, the jury has to let Kyle Rittenhouse walk too.
*offer not valid for persons of color
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It’s more often lynching innocent people, historical, than it is ensure justice is served. It’s almost always been about ensuring white supremacy is maintained.
We don’t.
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Sorry, are you talking about rapist Brock Turner and rapist Christopher Belter, the rapists?
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Sure, and look at the trial and nothing has changed much.
- Tassi was already known as a rapist, having spent time in jail for it.
- His wife was missing, probably dead, and he was probably responsible.
- During the trial even the judge admonished him to stop lying. Nonetheless . . .
- He claimed that he had never had sexual relations with Gentileschi.
- He claimed that Gentileschi was a “known prostitute” who slept around and wrote erotic letters to other men. The truth was that she was a virgin, and could not even write.
- He claimed that her house was a bordello, staffed by her mother, sister, and aunts.
- He brought in witnesses who claimed she was a known prostitute, and who told such outrageous lies about her that the judge warned them to stop lying.
- Gentileschi was tortured to get her to recant. [Standard stuff, but still nasty. Today we torture the women in the court of public opinion]
While he was likely convicted, he only served jail time, and even that for a few months before being pardoned. [A known punishment for rape of an underage virgin in 1400s Italy was for the man to be staked out on the the ground, naked, and to have his genitals whipped bloody with a tree branch. In one instance in Florence a priest had an affair with a woman and then hired a hit man who killed the husband. Indicted for both homicide and adultery, the priest was decapitated. In another case in Florence a man named Muccino raped his eleven-year-old niece while his wife was out shopping. The court ordered his genitals whipped with tree branches until he was mutilated.]
Gentileschi, for her part, ended up being married off to a relative of one of the witnesses in order to “save” her reputation.
So, the guy got off lightly, and she had to suffer an unwanted marriage. He was allowed to lie his way through court, and likely got a light sentence because “he was from a good family.” Yep, asshole all the way.
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Pointing out the obvious… His family should check in with younger female family members he has had contact with, just to be sure of his innocence. F’ing scumbag.
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I don’t understand how there can be any nuance here - as your quote points out, he plead guilty to first degree rape, third degree rape and sexual abuse involving multiple victims. Those crimes have a definition:
NY Penal Law § 130.35: Rape in the First Degree
As a class B felony, of the three rape charges included in the New York Penal Code, rape in the first degree is the most serious. Under New York Penal Code section 130.35 you will be charged with rape in the first degree if you do one of the following:
- Engage in sexual intercourse with another person by forcible compulsion
- Engage in sexual intercourse with another person who is physically helpless
- Engage in sexual intercourse with another person who is less than 11 years old
- Engage in sexual intercourse with a child who is less than 13 years old and you are at least 18 years old.
Legal Definition of Third Degree Rape
New York Penal Code § 130.25 states that third degree rape exists if a person committed any of the following:
- Had sexual intercourse with a person who is not able to give consent,
- Had sexual intercourse with a person who is younger than 17 years of age when the person is 21 years of age or older, or
- Had sexual intercourse with a person who did not give consent to the act.
There is nothing hard to figure out what happened with regard to consent - it didn’t. The media isn’t doing some sort of weird representation of this - that Belter is not suffering a greater consequence is a miscarriage of justice, plain and simple.
My thoughts are with the victims. They can’t be comfortable knowing their abuser/rapist will continue walking free. At least one is suing him in civil court, which seems to be the only way that victims of sexual assault can get a little bit of justice.
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he may even get nominated to the supreme court one day!
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Thanks for providing some context that I wasn’t able to find. I would correct that it doesn’t appear to me that he plead guilty to first degree rape. I also am unable to reason through his being a minor when he committed the acts. Looking up the New York statutes in this regard wasn’t terribly helpful because the system of Family Court vs. Youth Part etc. is fairly convoluted and I am still wondering if the negotiation concerning his status as a minor lead to the unjust sentencing, rather than it purely reflecting a terrible call on the part of the judge.
One thing that also doesn’t seem to have been addressed is that the rapist’s parents were also initially charged as they seemed to enable the events. Was the decision to have him treated like an adult in part to absolve them of responsibility?
I too hope that the victims will at least get some modicum of repayment if not justice from the civil courts.
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I wish those crimes had a mandatory minimum sentence, too. That would avoid the problem of judges like the one in this case (and too many others) who sentence predators with minimal to no penalties for their crimes. Since it is so difficult to remove judges from the bench, changing the law seems like a better solution. If there’s pushback from apologists, repeatedly publishing the names of judges whose rulings made it necessary would be another win.
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Mandatory minimum sentences seem to create far more injustice than they enable. For every case like this that would be prevented, there would be 20 people (almost always black) going to prison for 20 years for trifles.
edit: discussion continued here: Mandatory Minimum Sentences - #2 by jerwin
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Kid has a bright future in the new GOP. I can assume we will see him running for office in the near future?
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“The very rich are not like you and I”, from some literary source.
This enrages me. It defies the bedrock of how our society is supposed to work: “Equal justice under law” is supposed to mean no one gets it worse or better for reasons such as this.
I know it does not always work and i do not live in a fantasy, Had he been Black, he’d be lucky to still be breathing.
The fact that junior has already shown his pledged word to abide by the court’s requirements is empty is beyond outrageous.
I wonder if this religious crap is grounds for appeal. “Praying” over something instead of seeking what the law and justice require would be a better use of his time.
I do not trust a judge who listens to voices in his head like this. But at least he did not require the victims to marry their rapist as “Biblical justice” requires.
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Given that Black people tend to get harsher penalties in the first place, it’s more likely to make sure folks in cases like this don’t wind up with a slap on the wrist. I’m specifically talking about sexual assault cases.
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So the linked article indicates that he actually plead guilty to third-degree rape, attempted first degree sexual abuse and two counts of second degree sexual abuse. Anyway, the victims still didn’t give consent. He was not given youth offender status, according to the article.
And yes, the parents and a family friend are involved and also charged with child endangerment. They have not been to court yet. I don’t think that had anything to do with the judge’s decision.
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“Oh lord, please help me. What punishment can I give that will not anger my wealthy benefactors & campaign donors and not leave me uninvited to their fancy high-society soirées? I so dearly love tiny canapés.”
/s
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I lost my original reference to this explanation, but I am going to say it again because it bears repeating:
When it’s anybody else: the law is the law.
When it’s a rich white kid: it’s suddenly an episode of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN.
"We can rebuild him! We have the technology! "
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A 17 year old raping intoxicated girls of like (but also significantly lower age) is still rape. And he indeed plead guilty to a count of rape. His youth might reasonably factor into the punishment and potential for rehabilitation but has no bearing whatsoever on whether a stoned, shitfaced child can consent to getting fucked.
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Here’s a thing: if this guy gets to be tried in the Juvenile system and treated like a 17 year old raping even younger girls wasn’t actually that bad, then how about also doing something about the other 76,000 children tried as adults as often as not on far more tenuous cases.
So the real question is: if he wasn’t tried as an adult, why not? (Oh, right, bright kid promising future bleurgh.)
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I agree completely, but my first readthrough of the events was murky. If the situation was such that it was two equally intoxicated and similarly aged children having conscious and willing sex, for example, it would be disturbing to say that one of them couldn’t give consent while the other could. However, on closer reading, given the laws and the pleading, that doesn’t seem to be what happened here. The dude is awful and should have been punished more severely.
As I said, I found the description in the local news confusing and I am glad I received some clarification.
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It really is very weird. The judge ordering them not to name him, even at 20, is strange and absolutely not constitutional. It’s easy to presume that their coverage must be compromised in less explicit ways. Weird takes on each little detail to avoid Trouble, and so on.
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