I agree 100%. We shouldn’t have cash bail at all in this society. I’m against it for everyone in general, instead focusing on bail/no-bail based on threats posed to society and flight risk. I think if you knew my causes and what I write in letters to my political representatives, you’ll find I’m against it in ALL cases. Especially in the case of poor, but also in case of the ability to pay.
The question should be reversed. Why are we condemning anyone to certain risk of death from covid when we don’t need to be? Yes, it’s sad that we are only doing this for the rich now who can afford bail, and yes, we should be doing it for those who cannot afford bail as well. But that still doesn’t make it right to insist that she go to prison before she’s been convicted of a crime. Nobody should be serving time before they’ve been sentenced. That applies to rich AND poor.
I said two things: Flight risk, and danger to society.
Yes, I know Maxwell has the means, but she had the means all along and was in contact with federal prosecutors from day one. The same federal prosecutors who arrested her by going straight to where she was and picking her up. No manhunt, no massive search, nothing. They negotiated her surrender and then went to pick her up at the house she purchased and that was deeded in her name. These are not the actions of someone who is a flight risk really. Where would she go now with her passports revoked and on a GPS boundaried tracker that she couldn’t have gone in the months the press claim she was “missing?” So yes, maybe she’s a flight risk, but she’s given no indication that she’s willing to flee. None, whatsoever. People who are going to flee don’t buy houses and stay in them and remain in contact with federal prosecutors from the start. That’s what people who make deals do.
The second thing, is she a danger to society? Locked up in a house, like she’s been thus far? Where is she going to cause this danger to society? You can bet if she steps outside the GPS boundary, she’s going to jail, immediately. It probably also would violate the very decree she’s trying to use to exonerate her, the federal agreement from miami for Epstein and “co-conspirators.”
So I’m not too concerned where this woman ends up. I’d like to hear her testimony, and in my book , that means she not be in a prison system that killed her co-conspirator and that routinely kills people. I’d rather she not be around a system that doesn’t really care if she survives to trial or testimony and that has done very little to protect inmates (even of minor crimes) from COVID thus far.
Either you believe Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, or you believe he was murdered. The prison system is second only to nursing homes in COVID infections. She’s old. It’d look even less suspicous for her to die of COVID than it did for Epstein to die of “suicide.” If you want a deal, and to hear what she has to say before we lock her up at club-fed for the rest of her life, you want her to live through the pre-trial pandemic. If you want her dead or to risk what she has to testify about in her deal, then put her in the same prison system that ended Epstein’s life.
They’ve already raided Epstein’s house. If there is dirt, they already have a lot of it. They aren’t interested in his “client list” for obvious reasons. Her alternative can be to “rat out” Epstein’s associates, but by law, she won’t be able to financially profit from it, greatly reducing her motivation to do so.
But a trial, with all the testimonial evidence available, does seem highly unlikely: she will plead (if she is smart), and get 15-20 years.
Dershowitz thought he was being so strategic going on the “Filthy Rich” documentary… He knows exactly what a defendant needs to say and how to say it. And he is almost convincing. But, poor guy, he has this amazing, “pants on fire” facial tic on his right eye, as he utters his denial (S01E04, 6m56s).
EDIT: And the funny thing is, even if you believe his statement, it’s an implicit admission he did have sex with girls on the island, just not “underaged” ones. Now, the age of consent in Virgin Islands is 16. (Florida is 18.) Could Dersh be trying to maneuver around sex with 16-year-olds this way?
(He would know that Epstein, in transporting a 16-year-old to evade one state’s consent law, was committing a felony; that alone would be grounds for disbarment.)
But if (the, by the way, married) Dershowitz’s sex was with adults, he’s still compromised by fact that it was far from consenting. These trapped women were being ordered by Epstein to have sex with Dershowitz, and who were literally planning to swim away rather than remain there.
In our legal system, that shouldn’t be an argument. Either we have a right to counsel, or we don’t. If we condemn defense counsel for mounting a zealous defense of guilty clients, we abandon that right for guilty and innocent alike.
This is a pretty important clarification, though: The issue isn’t that Dershowitz defends horrible people in his role as an attorney. Our system of justice depends on people willing to defend the unpopular. The problem is that it appears quite likely that Dershowitz was a friend, confidante, and likely participant with Epstein and Maxwell. THAT is why (or, at least one of the main reasons) he deserves to be thrown in the garbage.
That, and he has a history of defending sex with post-pubescent minors, arguing against statutory rape, and saying 15 or 16 should be the age of consent. Because if kids are having sex with each other, it really shouldn’t matter how old the people who seduce them are. Gah, what a fucking slimeball. I watched the Filthy Rich doc last night, and that man almost creeped me out more than Epstein himself. Having read the anti-statutory rape stuff years ago, which got stirred up again recently for good reason, I had no problem believing he did exactly what Virginia Roberts is accusing him of. Fuck that guy, now and forever.
As spetrovits pointed out, it’s not so much that Dershowitz defends horrible people. I don’t doubt that an accused criminal should have zealous defense. It’s just that he chooses his clients, and how he picks his clients frankly says a lot about his beliefs because he talks about his beliefs. If I were a lawyer and I talked about how pedophilia should be okay, and only defended pedophiles, even the sickest of the sick ,and got them off their charges, I would expect society to notice the pattern.
Yes, people deserve a zealous defense. Dershowitz is definitely that.
