The AG office says āit is required to present all possible defenses.ā What utter horseshit. Required by whom? I would like to know why the scumbag deputy AG who wrote this wasnāt named. If Attorney General Kathleen Kane thinks she can shift the blame for this onto a deputy, then go ahead and do so.
edit: I found it here. Senior Deputy Attorney General Timothy Keating.
pardon me for this because i usually donāt say things like this but what the fuck is wrong with the pennsylvania attorney generalās office? after watching bill simmons get suspended for speaking the truth about roger goodell and the whole #gamergate asshattery i am completely fed up with the unrelenting stupidity of our cultureās treatment of women and iām ready for kathleen kane, the deputy who wrote the brief, the human resources team that hired the deputy, and anybody in the office that read the brief and didnāt prevent it from being issued to step down and be replaced by people who have a clue.
i admit that iām being harsh but i do feel a little better now.
Every fiber in my body is frustrated and upset about this. But one little corner of my brain is trying to parse the āevery possible defenseā comment. Pure blatant speculation: Is this part of some āwe have to deliver all potentially exculpatory evidence to the defenseā rule? As in, they worry if they didnāt do something like this they think the defense might be able to appeal and get it declared a mistrial? It would still be stupid and horrible, but at least it would mean they were taking their responsibility to the defense seriously (something which, of course, BB and its readers often get outraged about police not doing in other contexts).
The ethical thing to do is admit that the state was at fault and settle since it seems unlikely based on at least the description of the evidence and criminal proceedings that preceded this lawsuit that the state has any chance of winning. The state isnāt a human being. It doesnāt have to be defended if it was actually responsible. This provides far too appropriate a use of the term āDevilās Advocate.ā
Thatās offensive enough, I think heās asking for a slap upside the head.
After all, heās acting in a manner contributing to violence against himself.
That murder victim was just asking to be shot in the fucking face!
Itās not horseshit, itās due diligence. A defense attorney has to present the best possible defense, even if theyāre defending the government, or a pedophile, or a serial killer, or Judas Iscariot himself.
The problem is, this defense attorney didnāt do that - because āshe was asking for itā is no defense against a charge of rape. In fact, itās an admission of guilt.
For a criminal defense attorney, what youāre saying is correct to a first approximation, although there are ethical constraints that your statement does not get at. For someone doing civil defense, the ethical constraints are there. Further, the duty is to the client, who may not be well served by winning at any costs. If your client is the state, it has many interests that go beyond the purely financial.
War on women quiz: To what political party does the Pennsylvania AG belong?
(hint: itās not mentioned in either the original CNN article or the BB post)
Iām guessing you think thereās a āGotcha!ā here cuz the answer is āDemocraticā?
(I donāt know if thatās the answer or not. Just guessing.)
This is just staggeringā¦
Iād like to respond more, but, in what is rather annoying regular fashion, the articles Iāve found regarding the incident donāt include links or copies of the actual filing. I want to see just what this AG seems to imagine what this individual did that ācontributedā to the events before unleashing full ireā¦
Perhaps Iām spoiled by some of the law blogs I read, but, Iāve learned the hard way not to judge based on conventional news reports on what a particular legal maneuver or judicial decision means or implies, and I know to go and read the source documents for myself. Anyone know of or seen a source for the actual filing? I presume itās not actually under seal, given that thereās news reporting on this, and usually if itās in a pay service retrieval, somebody will retrieve and repost it, unofficial though it is, for public perusalā¦
Given the response from the elected AG about the report, I expect it to be every bit as infuriating as the news report suggestsā¦
To be fair to Kathleen Kane, she owned up to the fact her dept engaged in victim blaming & according to all involved wasnāt aware of the actions of this Deputy.
Leaders should be held to account for the actions of underlings, but keep in mind that Kane in 2013 inherited a State Attorney Generalās office/dept that has been held by male Republicans since the late 1970ās & was thus staffed by same throughout that time. Bit inefficient to just start fresh & fire everyone, also completely unfair.
But at least she knows now where to start, the Deputy that considered that a vali defense clearly needs to go.
How is this a War on Women quiz?
This is the way the US prison system is engineered to work. It maximizes unconscionable cruelties that brutalize everyone involved. Of course Omar Best has not been rehabilitated - in fact his crimes have been increasingly violent, as the prison system has stripped away what few rudimentary moral capacities he ever had. Of course the people inside the system, and those directly in contact with them, are being raped and murdered - because thatās the way the system works. People joke about prison rape. And of course the people at the top of the system are entirely capable of victim-blaming - they are part of a system of endemic and egregious cruelty, that breeds both callousness and despair.
The āLess right wing than the other right wing partyā party?
ā¦the office released a statement saying that it is required to present all possible defenses and ācontributory negligence is one such defense.ā [ā¦] adding that elected Attorney General Kathleen Kane was not aware her senior deputy included that defense in his filing.
Sounds to me like the Attorney General is the one guilty of ācontributory negligence.ā
So if a male employee leaves his phone and/or wallet in his assigned locker and then it is broken into and the item(s) stolen, how much of the liability is due to his negligence? He did bring that wallet and phone to work, after all.
youāre right, of course. the fact that she was foolish enough to work for the pennsylvania department of corrections obviously means she signed on for strangulation and violent sexual assault, q.e.d.
This article discusses the Omar Best trial. At that trial, the only defense given was that the sex was consensual - even though the victim was choked unconscious and the prison nurse called it, āthe worst case of employee assault she had seen at the prison during her tenure.ā The defense tried to argue that the victim had somehow asked for the attack. They used Best to make that claim.
Defense attorney Deborah Lux built on that, placing responsibility on the victim for interacting with Best and suggesting that the victim was crying when found, not because she was attacked, but because she was caught and might lose her job.
Parks Miller addressed that with color pictures of the victimās injuries. Hours after the attack, her face was still an ashy purple. A week later, the whites of her eyes were still āas red as a cherry tomato,ā filled with blood from vessels that burst as she was placed in a choke hold.
It was a blatant physical attack, and they still tried to blame the victim. It didnāt work - in two hours the jury came back with a guilty verdict.
Hereās an additional article. This one makes clear that the defense for the prison is again attacking the victim.
Centre County Womenās Resource Center Executive Director Anne Ard took issue with the position, too.
āThat is unbelievable,ā she said. āThis kind of victim-blaming is unconscionable and, frankly, makes people distrust the justice system. I am appalled.ā
People are well aware of just how wrong this claim was to make.
