News Son Convicted Should Serve No Prison Time For "20 Minutes Of Action"

[joeylittle]

I will question whether there are people who are getting in on the basis of being good at sport, rather than having the academic abilities, and what the effect of such preferential entry has on the culture of the campus

oh - this is a 100% true thing at many many many US universities. The bigger the sport (revenue wise), the bigger the problems. The trickle down is multi-faceted, and not only in issues of criminal conduct - but (as you say) overall culture.

Under compensatory rather than punitive systems, the compensation is the price to dissuade the friends, relatives and other supporters of the victim from taking more rigorous actions. It is recognised that the victim can never be fully restored.

it is strange, isn't it - that in our rigorously capitalist society, we did not turn over to a compensatory system. I mean, once prisons became big business, I think the chance was lost. It makes me think about the difference between orphanages and jails. Foster kids are sources of income, for who knows how many people - I can't imagine there's a reliable statistic, but even if it were only 10% of foster kids, using the conservative 'any given day' data, that equals 40,000 children being used as income streams.

But adults - we let all the cost incurred for incarceration now turn a profit for a handful of owners, instead of potentially using the threat/actuality of compensation as penalty.

Of course, then wouldn't everyone in the US end up with personal criminal liability insurance, just as car insurance is mandated? A new money-maker.

Argh. People. Society. Law. Government. Capitalism. Sometimes I just :bawling::banghead::sorry::lurking:

(Sorry for the tangent. It speaks to, though, whether there will ever be a way to truly resolve crime and punishment; or, is the most useful framework simply to seek the lesser of the evils...ultimately stats say 7 years in jail stands a better chance of creating a repeat offender...but 6 months in county lockup is minimizing the crime, because our primary metric is do the crime, do the time)

 

[Neverthesame]

I do wonder if people like him ever 'wake up'....

I'm sure some do. Though I think if your upbringing is that of a spoilt little brat, then probably not. Possibly with an actual punishment, but I think the only thing this kid monster in training, learned was. A sad face and a shallow apology, will get you out of anything. Even brutalising an unconscious woman.

He's just sorry he was caught.

After I posted that incoherent rant yesterday. I was thinking that something was bothering me about the picture of the kid f*cking rapist, being led to the courthouse with his attorney and parents. I couldn't put my finger on it till just now.

It was the parents. The fact that they were there after the conviction was handed down. Why?

I mean he did it, it's not like there's any doubt. His parents know that their own son is a rapist. Yet for some reason they're still at his side. Why?

I know mine wouldn't be. They sure as hell wouldn't if I wasn't even sorry about it.

I don't think that's a bad thing, there's no excuse for what that kid piece of shit did. I'd disown him in a heartbeat. I'd make him pay for his own f*cking lawyer too.

Edit: I repeated myself in this post. Weird I didn't catch it in my proof read. Must be more tired than I thought.

 

[RussH]

Prison time punishes almost everyone, It costs the tax victims (that's us) something like $70k to over $100k a year to keep someone in a cage (some facilities management firms, who make large political donations, are the only beneficiaries).

Far better if the rapist's pay was deducted at source for the next twenty plus years in order to pay off a lump sum compensation package.

The only problem with this idea is; this guy raped an unconscious girl, a stranger. This was not a date rape where the two got drunk, and he went too far. This was an animal raping a girl who did nothing to encourage him, and he violated her in an unspeakable manner. Sometimes prison is used to protect society from animals like this.

If he is allowed to remain free, can we be absolutely certain that he will not rape another girl? I am not, at all confident, he will not.

 

[Neverthesame]

I thought he meant that after his release from prison, that he would be forced to pay retroactively for the expense of his being incarcerated.

At least I hope that's what he meant. Or else the wealthy elite, would be able to literally afford to rape, pillage and murder.

Instead of buying a yacht, one could buy an Uzi and an hour in a crowded area.

Scary thought.

 

[joeylittle]

This was not a date rape where the two got drunk, and he went too far.

This was an animal raping a girl who did nothing to encourage him, and he violated her in an unspeakable manner.

I don't think there is a difference.

A person not knowing where the line is - when one needs to stop - is what makes a person dangerous. Doesn't matter if it's shooting someone, raping them, drunk driving, setting a building on fire, hazing...it's all the same. You recognize that you need to stop, or you don't. When you don't, someone gets seriously harmed, killed, irreparably damaged.

And it doesn't matter whether you were drunk or high - that's just another boundary the individual blew through; they should have stopped; they didn't.

 

[Deleted member 28740]

US VP Joe Biden's letter to victim:

An Open Letter to a Courageous Young Woman

I do not know your name — but your words are forever seared on my soul. Words that should be required reading for men and women of all ages.

Words that I wish with all of my heart you never had to write.

I am in awe of your courage for speaking out — for so clearly naming the wrongs that were done to you and so passionately asserting your equal claim to human dignity.

And I am filled with furious anger — both that this happened to you and that our culture is still so broken that you were ever put in the position of defending your own worth.

It must have been wrenching — to relive what he did to you all over again. But you did it anyway, in the hope that your strength might prevent this crime from happening to someone else. Your bravery is breathtaking.

You are a warrior — with a solid steel spine.

I do not know your name — but I know that a lot of people failed you that terrible January night and in the months that followed.

Anyone at that party who saw that you were incapacitated yet looked the other way and did not offer assistance. Anyone who dismissed what happened to you as “just another crazy night.” Anyone who asked “what did you expect would happen when you drank that much?” or thought you must have brought it on yourself.

You were failed by a culture on our college campuses where one in five women is sexually assaulted — year after year after year. A culture that promotes passivity. That encourages young men and women on campuses to simply turn a blind eye.

The statistics on college sexual assault haven’t gone down in the past two decades. It’s obscene, and it’s a failure that lies at all our feet.

And you were failed by anyone who dared to question this one clear and simple truth: Sex without consent is rape. Period. It is a crime.

I do not know your name — but thanks to you, I know that heroes ride bicycles.

Those two men who saw what was happening to you — who took it upon themselves to step in — they did what they instinctually knew to be right.

They did not say “It’s none of my business.”

They did not worry about the social or safety implications of intervening, or about what their peers might think.

Those two men epitomize what it means to be a responsible bystander.

To do otherwise — to see an assault about to take place and do nothing to intervene — makes you part of the problem.

Like I tell college students all over this country — it’s on us. All of us.

We all have a responsibility to stop the scourge of violence against women once and for all.

I do not know your name — but I see your unconquerable spirit.

I see the limitless potential of an incredibly talented young woman — full of possibility. I see the shoulders on which our dreams for the future rest.

I see you.

You will never be defined by what the defendant’s father callously termed “20 minutes of action.”

His son will be.

I join your global chorus of supporters, because we can never say enough to survivors: I believe you. It is not your fault.

What you endured is never, never, never, NEVER a woman’s fault.

And while the justice system has spoken in your particular case, the nation is not satisfied.

And that is why we will continue to speak out.

We will speak to change the culture on our college campuses — a culture that continues to ask the wrong questions: What were you wearing?

Why were you there? What did you say? How much did you drink?

Instead of asking: Why did he think he had license to rape?

We will speak out against those who seek to engage in plausible deniability. Those who know that this is happening, but don’t want to get involved. Who believe that this ugly crime is “complicated.”

We will speak of you — you who remain anonymous not only to protect your identity, but because you so eloquently represent “every woman.”

We will make lighthouses of ourselves, as you did — and shine.

Your story has already changed lives.

You have helped change the culture.

You have shaken untold thousands out of the torpor and indifference towards sexual violence that allows this problem to continue.

Your words will help people you have never met and never will.

You have given them the strength they need to fight.

And so, I believe, you will save lives.

I do not know your name — but I will never forget you.

The millions who have been touched by your story will never forget you.

And if everyone who shared your letter on social media, or who had a private conversation in their own homes with their daughters and sons, draws upon the passion, the outrage, and the commitment they feel right now the next time there is a choice between intervening and walking away — then I believe you will have helped to change the world for the better.

 

[ladee]

Read today that the Governing Body of Sports Bans has banned him for life !!! poor baby, guess justice will be meted elsewhere for this entitled offender.

 

[Anarchy]

Russ and Neverthesame,
if someone is a psychopath now, six months, two years, or five years in prison isn't going to change that. That is the length of imprisonment that is being discussed under the present (punishment and vindictive retribution based) US system in this case.

under the current systems in both Britain and America, a particularly gruesome set of offences would need to be committed in order to get a psychopath locked away for life in a prison or a secure psychiatric hospital.

The secure hospital option is currently under challenge in parts of Britain as psychopathy is not an "illness" and although controversial, the mainstream position remains that psychopathy can not be treated; so imprisonment in a hospital becomes a human rights issue as there is no therapeutic purpose or outcome.

under an insurance and a compensatory system, a person needs insurance to be able to function in a society

anyone who is expelled from an insurance group, either needs to find another group which will accept them, or else risk the potential retribution of people who they have wronged and those people's supporters.

There is therefore a strong incentive for the miscreants to comply in order to stay insured, and there is a business opportunity there for entrepreneurs to offer secure housing and employment for such people. In the past, in Europe, the church offered such "sanctuary".

There is absolutely nothing in a compensatory justice system which implies:

At least I hope that's what he meant. Or else the wealthy elite, would be able to literally afford to rape, pillage and murder.
Instead of buying a yacht, one could buy an Uzi and an hour in a crowded area.

That actually tends to read more like the real exploits of members of some of the leading American dynastic families and like current united state foreign policy in the middle east. That is also very close to what came public knowledge in around 1990 in Italy and later came out in other European countries, under the heading of "Operation Gladio". The supposedly left wing terrorism from the mid 1960s to the late 1980s was all found to have been originated and orchestrated via NATO headquarters.
When you have a monopoly provider - there is no one to protect you from the abuses of the monopolist.


For the really difficult cases, I'm not in support of either executions or indentured labour/enslavement, but don't think that a compensatory system need be an easy way out for miscreants;
There's an interesting passage in George Ayittey's scholarly work "Indigenous African Institutions" comparing the rate of executions in one of the (I think it was 18th century) west African kingdoms with the execution rate in England at that time.
The West African kingdom was not executing serious criminals, instead, those who's crimes went beyond being compensated, got to pay compensation with their bodies and labour; they were sold:eek:.

_____________________________

From a victim's point of view
The current system subpoenas victims to appear in court, and frequently punishes them if they refuse to testify

why the threat of force to get victims to appear?

it is because it is not in the the victims interest to appear. The best they can usually hope for is the vindictive satisfaction that the abuser / attacker will be caged (and raped by Bubba, due to the appalling organisation of prisons).

For centuries, kings and later on parliaments have continually extended the scope of crimes which are considered to be "against the crown" or "against the state" and hence any fine or forfeit doesn't go to compensate the actual victim, it goes to compensate the king or the state.

The actual injured party merely becomes a witness for the crown or the state.

Perversely, it is the crown or the state that claims to be the injured party:wtf:.

Also, if you look at the punishments, those are not the punishments arrived at by people of wise counsel and sound judgement who are seeking to avoid an escalation of violence, or to avoid lasting resentment that could turn into a feud, and instead to promote peace and reason.

They're leftovers from the punishments thought up by plundering, blood thirsty, power crazed and sadistic kings and their bullying henchmen; robbing people to fund the king and his henchmen, sticking people in unsafe cage farms, and executing people.

There's no need to quarter the body and display the bits on the city gates or at the corners of the kingdom now - TV and youtube do that job.

 

[Deleted member 28740]

The actual injured party merely becomes a witness for the crown or the state.

OJ. Burden of proof. This case had witnesses and not just standby, they chased and held him and showed up to follow through. OJ got off but not on the civil case. ANON here can pursue civil. Worth the hell of being the one on trail again as the process works now for damages? Victim's family went after OJ,but not so intimately personal and re traumatizing.

Brock Turner rapist thought community service would be enough of so sorry yep I was a bad boy and punitive enough. Really embarrassing too.

Parallels in the Oscar Pistorius case. Public opinion said no to the verdict and the sentencing.

 

[Deleted member 33880]

I read the girls statement and I am sobbing. I am sitting here sobbing. I was a student at Stanford but I refused to live in a frat house and I don't drink and I loved my time there but goodness, I avoided frat boys and jocks and I feel ashamed that my university still has this awful attitude to rape. I went back to Stanford last summer and walked around remembering how wonderful it was for me to be there. then I went over to Berkeley campus and there were rape education posters/consent posters everywhere. I agree with this survivor. As a survivor of rape myself, it can take seconds to rape someone, but those seconds have changed the last three decades for me. I have been damaged in ways I never thought was possible. The message should be loud and clear: it doesn't matter who you are, how successful or entitled you feel you are, if you rape and sexually assault someone - you don't get leniency. the only way this man can really convince me he is serious about changing is if he manages to change the view of drunken students about consent. If she can't say yes to a cup of tea, then don't make her tea. If she can't say yes to intercourse, don't make her suffer intercourse - just like you wouldn't pour tea down her unconscious throat.
see the video that we have in England: if you google:
this-new-sexual-consent-and-tea-video-from-the-police-is-brilliant
you should be able to find it.

 

[ladee]

Thanks for sharing this @Kaluki !!!

 

[ladee]

If you thought the Dads letter was sickening, wait until you read what the Mothers letter said... That kid is doomed. Prayers for the real victim here... and it's not him.