Posted on 08/31/2006 1:28:45 AM PDT by dennisw
An enraged Connecticut lawyer leaped through the window of the house next door and plunged a knife into his neighbor's chest a dozen times - after being told the man had molested his 2-year-old daughter, police said yesterday. Patent-law attorney Jonathon Edington, 29, turned vigilante after receiving a phone call Monday evening from his wife - who was away on vacation with their daughter - telling him that the neighbor, Barry James, 58, had been sexually abusing the little girl.
That prompted the seemingly mild-mannered Edington to storm over to James' house in the quiet suburban neighborhood, jump through a kitchen window and stab him, said Capt. Gary MacNamara of the Fairfield, Conn., police. The victim's elderly parents looked on in horror.
When Edington returned to his house, James' 87-year-old mother called police. Officers found the lawyer in his kitchen trying to wash blood off his hands and the murder weapon lying on the counter, MacNamara said.
Edington was arrested without incident and was charged Tuesday with murder and burglary.
His lawyer said his client simply lost it after being told his daughter had been sexually assaulted.
"The daughter gave the mother information which was alarming and disturbing. The mom relayed it to her husband. That was the spark," attorney Mickey Sherman said.
He would not say when the alleged molestation occurred.
MacNamara said police have no evidence that such an assault took place but were investigating.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
with the current pitiful state of affairs with the nambla judges - I think that parents of children who have been molested should extract JUSTICE from the perverts.
Maybe we could convict the parent of littering? unless he cleans up the greasy spot afterwards.
I, on the other hand, have proposed a more reasoned explanation on my post #44:
In reality it was Carl Rove acting on orders from Bush. Rove directed his aide to call the wife with news of the supposed molestation. But the inside story is that the ordered "hit" was based on a demand by Hillary in order to break the inner circle of the CFR - the guy that was stabbed was on the CFR board (what no one knew is that his mother was pulling the strings!).
And until more information comes in that ties in crop circles and chem-trails I, for one, think it is prudent to set aside wild theories.
Living in 21st century society, looking at this situation from the outside, it's easy to see that there might have been a more appropriate way to handle it that wouldn't have gotten the girl's father charged with killing this guy. Since we're now obliged to play by "girl's rules" rather than "frontier justice", the smartest thing the father could have done was call the cops, take a tranquilizer, and get some counseling for what he was going through.
But ya know, there are just certain things that will trigger an immediate demand for rough justice, the consequences be damned, and this was one of them. This was one of those situations where the perp's right to a fair trial by a jury of his peers isn't really in effect until the molester makes it safely into the protective custody of the police, in a nice secure jail.
But, admittedly, Edington could have handled the situation differently. Lawyers have lots of money, they know lots of unscrupulous felons, and he could have arranged for someone else to do the deed and make the evidence disappear. And everybody would have said, "Aw gee, that foul-mouthed naked weirdo Barry James must've gotten drunk and fallen in the river and drowned".
If it had been me, you would have had to chain me up to keep me from doing the same thing Edington did.
Back in the day in Texas, a perfectly acceptable defense for homicide was that the other fella was somebody who needed killing. Somebody shot the neighborhood bully, the rest of the neighborhood said "yup, he had it coming" and that was it. There also used to be a Temporary Insanity defense, but it's not generally recognized now.
Too bad for that. Hopefully the judge and jury will take the circumstances into consideration at sentencing.
>>Right now the details are too sparse and while I can sympathize, we just don't know enough yet.
That says it for me, on this one.
If a little girl sez he did it, then he's guilty, right!?!?
OTOH, if the 2yr old saw one of daddy's porno DVDs and confused the 'action' with the naked dirty old man next door, well....
A manipulative woman? Puhlease! Never! LOL.
Notice the neighbor is 58 years old, and living with his parents.
My comment was not to *justify* his actions, merely that if the attacker truly believed his neighbor diddled his child, many parents would have trouble convicting him.
Now, it could be this is all a set-up (by the mom) or a false alibi (he actually killed for an entirely different reason but knew he'd get more sympathy with this defense) by the father.
I could very easily see a "temporary insanity" defense case being built around this - that the father knows what he did was wrong but was so blinded by "justifiable" rage that he flipped out, etc.
Whoever is the prosecutor will need to step gingerly here to win a conviction unless he can prove Daddy was lying about the child molestation charge.
I'd say your glass is a little more than half empty. I'd say it's durn near bone dry.
"Several detectives went to Edington's house yesterday and examined a window panel that they took from the scene."
I'm going to make a wild guess that the little girl said the nasty man has been climbing through her window at night.
I will admit that I'm impressed that the slight geekified dad committed such an amazing act of overkill.
as people have replied, if you enter a place without permission and intend to commit any crime, you are burgarizing.
As a father myself, I would not convict the dude even if a videotape shows he sliced the guy up in the middle of Time Square during rush hour...
He should have just broke in and cut the guys tackle off. Then he would have just been guilty of assault.
If the guy molested the child, the father's act was understandable. Not legally correct, but "understandable". It's the ultimate act of passion and civil disobedience. We live in a society where child rapists are being let out after months to go prey on new children. These guys often have hundreds of victims. If the neighbor didn't molest the child, the dad will go to prison for murder - as he should. But if the neighbor did molest the child, justice has been done.
I know that sounds harsh.
But the job of the law is to protect the innocent and good from the evil and powerful. And that's not happening now. Perverse incentives are turning the legal system upside down - often it's evil that's protected. At the expense of the innocent. People react to his new reality. And that reaction looks like lawlessness - but is it?
There was a time when I would have felt differently. In my area a nine year old was repeatedly raped and buried alive by a monster who judges had let go over and over and over again. This man spent a lifetime preying on young children. And getting away with it. If some father along the way had, in an act of passion, killed the monster, hundreds of children would not have been hurt. And nine year old Jessica would not have been buried alive. Sorry, but if the man did molest the child, I want to send money for the father's defense. And after that, to protect the innocent of the future, laws need to be changed to lock these predators up - and to stop liberal judges from letting them out after serving small portions of their sentences.
It was an act of passion - not a premeditated murder. He's no Tookie...
How come if several generatioins of the wealthy live in a huge mansion it fine,but if multiple generations of poor or average live in a smaller home it is automatically a sign of wrongness?
How come the BATF never assaulted the Kennedy compound,home to a man who left a woman to drown;but did assaulted a ramshackle building in the middle of Idaho? where the man was only accused of a tachnical firearms violation?
Too many freepers are keyboard atheletes that can jump to conclusions based on nothing.
The dead man would have been exercising his constitutional rights if he shot and killed an knife wielding maniac who broke into his residence.
As the case of little Marcus here in Cincinnati just proved ,you need to investigate ,not believe the first statements.
ON the much-lauded frontier justice,how many people were lynched just because they were different or not well liked? Or strangers?
And here the young mild-mannered patent lawyer doesn't wait to interview the daughter himself -- no for *some reason* he felt immediate lethal action was needed. Sorry charlie, THAT bell doesn't ring AT ALL. There's more to this story, and more back-story relationships to be uncovered. At least if the investigators are up to it. Which they probably ain't. When DID the last murder happen in that area?
perhaps he was feuding with this foul mouthed alcoholic neighbor and the lawyer and the wife made up this molestation excuse after the fact. Seems strange thing to tell a husband something like that over the phone while on vacation. I would've waited until I got home. How did the neighbor get access to her?
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