Alas, it says different things to different people.
To people like us, it tells us that the dragnet of the criminal justice system is set so that everyone is potentially guilty of something, and the police and the tough-on-crime politicians have criminalised existing-while-powerless.
To Daily Mail readers and Fox News watchers, it means that criminals are everywhere (everywhere: there’s probably a criminal in the room you’re in right now!), and the police need thermite grenades and tactical nuclear weapons to control them.
Don’t forget lying about having evidence and offering deals to convicted inmates to be witnesses against suspects to get them to accept a plea. What also jumps out at me about the system is the type of crimes where they make an effort to drop charges in exchange for a guilty plea vs. the ones where they don’t bother to bring charges at all. They’re more concerned about their stats than anything else. More details about all of this can be found in the Defund the Police thread.
Even if this money does come from the taxpayers’ coffers instead of the royal family’s private fortune then the settlement is helpful in the sense that it incentivizes the taxpayers to cut off their support for a corrupt and depraved royal family.
I think the situation was that Prince Andrew’s lawyers argued that the NDA in the settlement Ms. Giuffre reached with Epstein precluded her from suing any of his associates for related crimes. The court decided that was bullshit.
" compensatory, consequential, exemplary, and punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial; costs of suit; attorneys’ fees; and such other and further relief as the Court may deem just and proper."
That could be have been as little as £12m, but I’m thinking that Andrew got this settled for pence on the pound. An aggressive defense would not have endeared him to a jury.
Eh, half of England is in line to the throne there it seems. No ninth in line has ever assumed that throne. While I’m sure it could happen, it’d have to take a catastrophic event to knock out the eight in front of him.
The statute of limitations has expired. And prosecution would have required a coordinated multi country prosecution of a quasi head of state. A very rich one to boot.
While it may say nothing in a criminal court about his guilt - it says world’s about his guilt everywhere else and to everyone else.
I doubt you’d let your teenage daughter do a sleepover at his castle. Or his island getaway.
To be fair, I was addressing the context of Lion’s friend, not Prince Andrew.
Regardless, it’s a legal system increasingly structured to favor the gentry.
In a criminal case, that is true, but in a civil lawsuit like this that is a mixed blessing, because it also means there is a lot of money to gain from a succesful case against Andrew, which means Giuffre presumably also could get the best lawyers.
I only commented whether the settlement proved anything new, that Andrew is a creep was known before. Epstein was the real monster, of course, but Andrew was old enough to understand what was going on. What surprises me more than the lack om moral from Andrew and the other of Epstein “friends” is that they seemed unaware of the blackmail potential.
It’s a perfectly valid conclusion for the public to draw that she was going to meet the standard of preponderance of the evidence for guilt in a civil case to anyone following this.
He wasn’t going to settle until he lost that last ruling that the case could proceed. Evidence became available from other cases during the process from other civil and criminal cases that supported her claims that wasn’t available previously. Even his mommy abandoned him.
Civil cases can never prove criminal guilt. They’re not in the criminal system. Settling this case is not so different from accepting a plea deal in a criminal case. Proof to a criminal court that has no criminal case before it and therefore can’t make that decision? That’s not possible and not the same as proof in the eyes of the public. As your unwillingness to let your daughter do a sleepover supports. You feel there’s enough evidence to act upon in your personal life.
I respect Guiffre’s right to do whatever is best for her in terms of closure and such; it would be astonishingly cruel to follow up on victimization by demanding that she serve our vengeance interests; but I can’t deny being disappointed that this one got squelched prior to a lot of good, solid, discovery.
