Posted on 08/30/2006 3:14:40 AM PDT by Cagey
Edited on 08/30/2006 3:23:20 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. --A Fairfield lawyer has been charged with stabbing his neighbor to death after learning the man had molested his 2-year-old daughter, police said.
Fairfield authorities said attorney Jonathon Edington leaped through 58-year-old Barry James' bedroom window Monday and stabbed him nearly a dozen times in the chest. Edington, 29, was arraigned on murder and burglary charges Tuesday in Bridgeport Superior Court. He was held on $1 million bond and is scheduled to return to court on Sept. 12.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
If I was on the jury, my vote would be "not guilty".
That's probably why I would not be on there, and I am in Florida.
Yep, that's probably the tack the defense will take.
I'm in a quandary--hoping the dead guy was really guilty, but that means that the girl was really hurt. It's a lousy situation every way around.
He'll probably get manslaughter.
No its Connecticut...ever so slightly better than Mass-O-2-Sh*ts
So, do you have a daughter or no?
Dunno, when did you stop beating you wife?
Nosy, nosy!
No, it's really a contraction of "My a$$ itch-ooze zits".
LOL, I'm divorced. No wife to beat.
Being a parent has relevancy, based on your position.
Excellent term! Why didn't I think of that?
I don't see how. The legal qualifications for justifiable homicide are the same whether I'm a parent or not.
I don't think it's necessary to have a daughter to relate to a father's horror of thinking (or knowing) his daughter was molested.
I never lost a son in war but I can understand the grief a parent must go through when they do. I don't feel it, but I can understand it.
I believe it is. I would do the same. But I would use a gun.
So losing one's temper, committing rash acts which will certainly end up with a great expense and inconvenience to one's family and might end up with the father taken away from the child is a test for caring about one's children?
They say revenge is a dish best eaten cold. Here the understandable rage of the father may do more harm to the daughter than the alleged (we don't KNOW, do we?) molestation. Further it has been persuasively, if not conclusively, argued that wild and enraged reactions to molestation of one's children exacerbate the psychiatric harm done to them.
I'm not saying I certainly would not have done the same thing. I am saying that it might not be the best or even the right thing to do AND I'm agreeing that, on its face, it sure looks like it's a slam-dunk manslaughter, something a lawyer might be expected to know.
Again, while I would certainly consider nullification if I were on the jury, it's good to think about what such nullification implicitly affirms. Would we support passage of a law which said that fathers could kill people alleged to have molested their children, that the subjects of such allegations were not entitled to a presumption of innocence and a trial before a jury of their peers?
I say again, the alleged killer is an officer of the court. He makes his living working within the so-called justice system. What, I wonder, would be the Freeper response if the act had been done by a police officer?
Judging by stories from the Eddas, the Volsunga Saga, other medieval literature, and through history up to the Martins and the Coys and into modern (?) Muslim countries, we have ample evidence of how gawdawful it can be when people decide that an outrage to them or their loved ones justifies retaliatory outlaw homicide.
Is that how we want to do things? Yeah, I'd want to geld and then shoot the guy and hang him on my fence for the neighbors' edification. I'm just not sure that I should consider myself justified in giving into that impulse.
Fair enough, both of you. Cagey, Ahayes is sayiong it's not justifiable, which lead me to ask the dodged question, because I doubt anyone with a daughter would believe this is easily justifiable.
In any case, we'll see how it plays out. Given the locale, I could possibly be on the jury. THAT would be fun!
Finally a lawyer I can respect!
Actually the saying is 'served', not 'eaten'.
My question was more toward AHayes stance than the actions of the father in the case. Yours is a good response, I don't argue much of it. I think we are in basic agreement, I just didn't write a tome.
AHayes, I include you on the ping because I used your name in the post.
If I were on the jury, there is no way I'd convict him. I've got a 3 yo daughter and I'd probably have made him linger a bit before applying a finishing stroke.
Temp insanity is my take too. If Andrea Yates can do it why not this guy and I'm betting that the perp was a child diddler and deserved to die
If our system were working properly, this pos would have been in jail, and the father would not have found him at home. He also would not have felt the need to take the punishment into his own hands, or would have been able to control that need.
The problem lies with law enforcement not doing their job. Today, someone can molest a child, and be let off with a smack on the hand. There is something very wrong with our system of law enforcement, and we need to fix it.
Typically under the law a justifiable homicide occurs when a person takes lethal action to stop an imminent theat. The aggressor killed must have the intent and ability to cause immediate injury or death. If this father had discovered this man molesting his daughter and killed him at that time, he would probably be tried for manslaughter and acquitted as a justifiable homicide.
What actually happened is that the father discovered some type of evidence causing him to think that this man molested his daughter. He went to the man's home, broke in, and killed him with a knife. (The question of whether he found the knife there or brought it could be vital to the case.) Here there was no imminent threat. Instead, he sought out the deceased, went into his home, and killed him there, possibly with a weapon that he brought along with him. Right now it looks like intent, therefore first degree murder. Because there was provocation he will probably be able to get it knocked down to second degree murder or manslaughter, most likely manslaughter. However, because there was apparent intent to do some type of harm (he broke into the man's house, possibly armed with a deadly weapon) and there was no imminent danger, in my opinion it is not justifiable homicide. The jury might disagree and acquit him, I suppose it depends on the exact details of the case, which are not known.
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