Posted on 02/24/2007 10:46:46 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The national media won't tell you, but in Miami right now, a man named John Couey is on trial for brutally killing a 9-year-old girl named Jessica Lunsford. Couey, a convicted sex offender, kidnapped Jessica out of her modest Florida home, brought her to a trailer, sexually abused her, and then buried her alive. When authorities found her body, she was clutching a stuffed dolphin.
Because of that heinous act, the state of Florida passed "Jessica's Law," which mandates that a first-time conviction for felony sexual battery on a child will result in a 25-years-to-life prison sentence. No plea bargain, no parole, no nutty judge dispensing light punishment. You do it once -- you're gone.
In the past three years, 41 out of 50 states have passed a version of Jessica's Law, but there is still powerful opposition to it. Many trial lawyers object because they want the ability to plea bargain. Some judges dissent because their egos are bruised. They are taken out of the equation after a child predator is convicted. And many in the left-wing media object to Jessica's Law on the grounds that it is cruel and unusual punishment; these people want rehabilitation for violent sexual offenders who brutalize children.
Let's deal with the rehab situation first. In our system of justice, the punishment must fit the crime. If you rape or sexually brutalize a child, that child will never fully recover. For the rest of that person's life, the crime will be played out in a variety of ways. Thus, the punishment must be the forfeiture of freedom for much of the abuser's life. That's punishment fitting the crime.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Every person charged with a crime deserves a vigorous defense, and part of that process is an attempt to plead down the case. Defense lawyers have nothing to be ashamed of in the slightest.
Some judges dissent because their egos are bruised. They are taken out of the equation after a child predator is convicted.
Ego doesn't have anything to do with it, Judges understand that justice isn't as simple as a rulebook.
Sad to say but I didn't need Bill O. to tell me this. If there is any kind of perversion the democrats are for it. Coddle the criminal, blame the victim.
How can anyone be a democrat? (rhetorical question)
child molesters are unable to reform and the most merciful punishment for them is death.However we are a "civilized "society and must try the alternative.Or so say "enlightened"liberals.Uh-huh.And I'm a mongoose,too.
I'm not sure your hyperbole serves your case any better than O'Reilly's hyperbole serves his.
Sophistry should not be substituted for a "vigorous defense." Yet that is the case in much of our judicial system. Deconstructionism and postmodern concepts of truth (or lack thereof) have turned our "adversarial" judicial system into a game of verbal gymnastics which has only tangential connections to reality and truth. And not a lot to do with justice as a concept, only as a definition.
The Tyranny of Tolerance Written by Robert H. Dierker, Jr.
Category: Current Affairs - American
Format: Hardcover, 288 pages
On Sale: December 26, 2006
ISBN: 978-0-307-33919-5 (0-307-33919-X)
Also available as an eBook.
Published by Crown Forum
About this Book
Read an Excerpt
ABOUT THIS BOOK
For the first time, a sitting judge blows the whistle on America’s out-of-control courts.
A judge for more than twenty years, Robert Dierker has enjoyed a distinguished legal career. But now that career may be on the line. Why? Because he is breaking the code of silence that has long kept judges from speaking out to present a withering account of how radical liberals run roughshod over the Constitution, waging war on the laws of nature, the laws of reason, and the law of God.
Even those outraged by America’s courts will be shocked by Judge Dierker’s story of activist judges, deep-pocketed special interest groups, pandering politicians, and others who claim to stand for tolerance, equal rights, and social justice, but actually stand for something quite different—something closer to totalitarianism.
Citing not only Judge Dierker’s own experiences but dozens of other recent court cases, The Tyranny of Tolerance shows how the courts enable left-wing activists to ram their dangerous agenda down the throats of the American people. Consider:
• Why do the courts claim the power to tax us?
• Why is a Christian fired when he voices opposition to his employer’s favoring homosexuals?
• Why are airline pilots sued and sent to “diversity training” for recommending that suspicious-looking people of Middle Eastern appearance be kept off planes?
• Why does a judge who defends a monument to the Ten Commandments in a courthouse lose his job?
• Why are speech codes imposed on employers, university students, lawyers (and judges!), while “artistic” indecency is protected from even the mildest regulation?
• Why are peaceful abortion protesters thrown in jail, their right to free speech crushed?
• Why are white and Asian students denied admission to colleges and universities in the name of “diversity”?
• Why is an enemy fighter captured in Afghanistan granted access to U.S. federal courts, overturning judicial precedent safeguarding the president’s wartime powers—to say nothing of common sense?
With this passionate insider’s account, Judge Dierker reminds Americans what’s at stake in the battle for the courts: the Constitution, the success of the war on terrorism, the freedom to worship God, the ability to keep our families safe, the institution of marriage, and much more.
Fortunately, Judge Dierker shows how we can defeat the radical liberals’ tyranny of tolerance. By wresting back control of the courts and restoring the legal, moral, and religious principles embedded in the Constitution, we can ultimately reclaim the republic the Founders bequeathed to us.
It all depends on the definition of "child".
After puberty, if no force or threat was involved, a mandatory minimum of 25 years is WAY too much.
I wouldn't object to a high minimum sentence if coercion was involved or if the victim was a REAL child (pre-adolescent) and not just a "legal child" (meaning under 18). But there are lots of teenagers who, while legally minors, are sufficiently mature that it makes sense to say they "consented", and in that case, even if you rightly impose a jail sentence, 25 years is crazy. (And of course you can't jail teenagers of similar ages for having sex with each other.)
Thank you. I can see you've spent some time in the courts. Me too. You're right.
When I was younger I didn't want to go out with the boys my age. I wanted to go out with the ones who drove. I would be 14 and they would be 17 or 18 yrs old. At 16 yrs old I could get into any bar I wanted..... I have 4 sons and I make sure any girl that they hang out with is over the age of 18 yrs old. But I also know that girls look much older now with the hormones in milk & meat etc. I feel bad for boys who get tricked. I think if a girl does that she ought to get some form of punishment too. I just think to label a boy who made a mistake for life or give him 5 yrs jail time is not fair. I hate sex offenders with a passion. But I do understand there can be mistakes made and that those boys shouldn't have to pay the price of being labeled a sex offender for life. Repeat sex offenders or the monsters that go after children ought to be in jail for a long time if not life. I truly would put them in general prison population so they know what rape, fear and being a victim is like everyday of their rotten lives . ~P~
Recent case in Australia...
20 year old boy and 13 year old woman. SHE arranged the whole thing. A lot of it via SMS Text on the cell phone. Said she wanted to have sex to get back at her boyfriend.
After the deed was done, SHE put the guy into the police and said it was Rape. And kept on saying it was rape right up until the defense entered the cell phone and the Text into evidence. Then she admitted it was all a set up.
Boys gets a suspended sentence and some Psychiatric Help (seems he had Problems before = polite speak for not right in the head). No word on her punishment for trying to send someone away for a crime (rape) they didn't commit.
But, of course, these aren't Violent Sexual Assaults/Attacks. It was consensual.
Best advice... Make Certain the woman is Legal first.
"If you rape or sexually brutalize a child, that child will never fully recover. For the rest of that person's life, the crime will be played out in a variety of ways."
Valid, true statement.
I think defense attorneys should do whatever legal measures it takes to get their clients off.The problem is elsewhere. An education system that doesn't teach people how to think critically, and to look beyond defense (and prosecution) hyperbole, a disordered system of social values that spends more subsidizing indolence, bastardy, and drug abuse than it does on enforcing the law, a series of guilt-ridden legal precedents which tilt the balance in favor of the defendant, so that juries end up being made up of socialist idiots, rather than thoughtful citizens.
WE are victims of our prosperity. We don't see how safety and security are related to freedom, we despise and discount the idea of personal responsibility, we think the duty of moral judgment is a crime of being judgmental and hypocritical. "Who are we too judge?" we ask.
The fault, I think, is not that the defense attorneys go flat out to win an acquittal. It's that juries allow them to get away with it.
Thankfully, BOR thinks for us lesser simpler beings without the power of critical thinking skills.
The man is beyond pompous.
I wonder what the defense lawyers who were planning his legal strategy against sexual harassment charges think?
There was another Florida case where an 11-year old girl was killed by a guy with eleven priors for unprovoked assaults against females. In the first case, he hit a woman over the head and dragged her into the woods, but she escaped and, because she was not "harmed" he pled down to a trivial charge.
Right then and there, society lost its best chance to save that poor little girl's life.
Hitting a woman over the head and dragging her into the woods is not a crime like robbing a gas station or writing bad checks, but it is processed in the same way by the same people.
In the case of a guy who drags strangers off to rape them, what's wrong with the offender never gets fixed.
If it were up to me, I'd execute people like this as soon as they were identified, but lifelong incarceration is fine with me - I'd just rather not pay for it.
Sexual predation and relations between consenting teenagers are not the same type of thing, and to group them in the same system of evaluation and punishment is a sign of a culture that is so sick that it can no longer protect itself.
The punishment for statutory "rape" should be left to fathers and brothers.
The John Coueys of this world should be killed as soon as they are found out.
O'Reilly is against the death penalty. I can live with that, provided that the alternative makes the perps WISH they were dead! Life at hard labor, 16 hours a day, seven days a week with no amenities whatsoever, on minimal rations sounds good, but it is too damned expensive. See my profile page for the proposed solution. < /rant >
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