Posted on 06/11/2007 11:05:28 AM PDT by John Cena
ATLANTA — A Georgia judge on Monday voided a 10-year sentence given to a man who was convicted while a teenager of having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl.
Monroe County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson voided Genarlow Wilson's sentence and dropped it to misdemeanor aggravated child molestation with a 12-month sentence, plus credit for time served. Under the new ruling, he will not be required to register as a sex offender
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Imagine if it is your son.
Cause it can’t result in a baby. Even if you have a brood of kids already, you aren’t allowed to waste one sperm.
At least, that is the rationale some Bible thumpers use.
No, just like I said, we do. Judges still sentence according to the guidelines.
“Its amazing how the law is being ignored here when constantly I see threads complaining about judges legislating from the bench.”
The legislature changed the law.
“I guess it depends on the case?”
It hinges on the fact that the law wasn’t intended to turn teenagers into sex offenders for having sex with their peers. Now if this kid had been 30, I’d have agreed that he was a sex offender. But ruining a life to follow a law to the letter that was not intended for this... that’s immoral.
It did when the cute teacher didn't serve one day for raping her students because the judge felt she was too hot for incarceration.
By recognizing that "predictability" can refer to weighted ranges of probabilities as easily as it can to binary choices. Any actuary can give you "predictability" without being able to predict individual actions or outcomes. They base rational business decisions on their fuzzy predictions all the time, even recognizing that occasionally, the odds will beat them and the unpredicted occur.
This guy would appear to be a serial rapist.
But it isn’t mandated by the Rule of Law. It is a guide line, a reference. If the individual case demands it, it can be set aside to let reason prevail.
This view is typical of those who hold a strictly Rule Utilitarian view of justice. They believe that if some rule benefits society as a whole, then that rule is morally good regardless of those it hurts on the outliers. This makes sense if you make a couple of assumptions. First you need to assume that a strict rule is the only way that you can make a rule. Second you need to assume that you can simply add up the utility (or happiness in some definitions) of the people as a whole and compare between potential rival rules selecting which one comes out numerically superior.
Myself, I think Rule Utilitarianism is a good theory, but that it needs to be supplanted with a virtue ethics theory in order to meet my own innate definition of justice. I reject the first assumption outright and I don't intend to address the second assumption (because it is irrelevant to my argument). Unlike those who take a strictly Utilitarian viewpoint, I think that rules or laws should be enacted only through good reason and judgment. "Good reason and judgment" is of course what Aristotle would have replied to almost any question--because it is an inherently correct action. How can you go wrong by thinking?
So instead of trying to be clever, I will just steal Aristotle's multipurpose defense of good reasoning and judgment and say that I think utility (or happiness) will be better maximized if all rules are interpreted through good reasoning and judgment that if they were to be strictly enacted. And this is rational decision making to me.
Answer me this: if the rule of law is always right because it maximizes the happiness of everyone concerned, then would it be just if a law was made that let the government use force to harvest the organs of innocent people? This would save multiple lives for every one lost (someone gets critical bone marrow, another a new heart, another a lung, and another a kidney), and you could select that only the greatest 'losers' were slaughtered as to maximize happiness. Should this be done or not? And feel free to explain your objection without using good reasoning and judgment.
Predictions may be “fuzzy,” but there is a general idea of the outcome. One can be fairly confident of a particular outcome because there is some element of predictability to the law.
If you take that away, as it advocated, it becomes impossible to judge the probability of any sort of outcome at all; it would be akin to betting on horse races without the Form.
According to Georgia law he wasnt a teenager.
I agree the spirit of the law over the letter of the law is best applied.
But if anyone ruined his life he enabled them by being a dumb little bastard.
Not that I wasnt at his age.
Still the 10 years is excessive.
Worse criminals spend less time.
Oh, and one more point. Japan has a 99% conviction rate. Would you call that the epitome of rational decision making because defendants know they are going to prison before they set foot in the court room?
I remember, as did many here.
Theres a double standard if the perp is female and hot.
She was under the influence and, at times, unconscious, making her incapable of giving consent.
“The judge here ignored nothing”
I was talking about FR posters. ;)
Unless you are either a)in the DA’s office or b)were on the jury, you are simply repeating prosecution characterizations which the jury rejcted. The jury saw the tape, heard the testimony of the female and disagreed. I suspect you were neither on the jury nor were you privy to viewing the tape.
From everything that I have been able to find, the 17 yr. old was gang raped while under the influence/unconscious. If a female passes out at a party, anything goes?
Since when a 17 year-old? Or is it a crime when one of the minors is male?
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