Since there was a public announcement of the settlement the effect is good enough: the entire world knows that Andrew is a child abuser.
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We’re still talking about a hereditary aristocrat who, whether officially or unofficially, has access to state resources. Yes, he was publicly cut off and stripped of his titles, but that doesn’t make his old boy network go away. Plus, attorneys working on contingency for a normal person have a lot more incentive to settle than attorneys working for someone who can pay their legal bills no matter what.
But fine, let’s take the speculation about their relative levels of legal representation off the table, and assume that both of them had the opportunity for effective counsel that can devote as much time and resources as possible to their case. That still makes the comparison to normal folks pressured into a plea bargain in a criminal case disingenuous, because they don’t have access to the same expected level of legal representation. No shade on public defenders, but even if you have the best attorney on the planet working as your PD, they still have to focus on the rest of their caseload too.
And on the topic of incentives, let’s consider that if you reject a criminal plea bargain, you end up incarcerated anyway unless you can post bail, and the right to a speedy trial has been all but dismantled in practice, so we’re easily talking years before you even go to trial. So your choice is between a guaranteed stint in prison with the possibility that you have to stay even longer if you’re found guilty, or a guaranteed stint in prison with a known end date. And those plea deals are carefully calculated and offered with that pre-trial time in mind.
On top of that, settling before trial means that there’s no opportunity for additional facts to appear and end up in the record during discovery, which is much more of a concern if you know or believe that such evidence exists. Conversely, if you’re a public figure accused of sex crimes that you didn’t commit, exoneration at trial and/or having the case dropped without a settlement is a pretty great benefit.
What all of this tells us is that Andrew knew or believed that there was already sufficient evidence to convict (albeit at a lower standard than a criminal trial) and/or that there was such evidence obtainable in discovery that was more damaging than publicly paying off Giuffre to stop suing him for raping her.
We might have assumed that was true before, but now the person who absolutely knows whether or not Andrew is guilty and wants to minimize the damage to his reputation has confirmed it. And all of it demonstrates that this case has nothing in common with normal people pressured into criminal plea deals beyond the most basic, “it’s about the legal system and they made a deal” level.
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Plus, on the civil side, the total lack of constraint against binding arbitration agreements, which take the legal system out of the picture entirely. It’s almost as if allowing the wealthy to inject money into the justice system has had negative outcomes for almost everyone who isn’t rich.
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I mean, it would have been better if we’d had discovery, because then we’d have direct, hard evidence of wrongdoing, and that would make it a lot harder to pretend that he’s totally innocent but needed to protect himself and his family from made-up accusations.
Still, provided that Giuffre felt free to make this decision on her own and wasn’t pressured by lawyers who wanted a quick payday, I can’t find fault in the decision.
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“Prince Andrew agreed to never again deny that he raped Virginia Roberts Giuffre — while his accuser has only been bound to silence for the next few months, according to a report.
In his stunning settlement Tuesday — which sources told The Post was for $12 million — Andrew signed a gag order to stop him from denying in the future that he had sex with Giuffre when she was 17, the Telegraph reported.“
She’ll have to be quiet till after the Queen’s jubbly.
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How many people are locked in prison just because they didn’t have enough money? Hardly seems fair…
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