Why is there always a comment from the legal fatalism gallery in every HN thread like this? Can we not strive for victim's rights or for more human policy-making?
Beyond that, it's annoying, obvious, and contributes nothing.
Beyond that, it's annoying, obvious, and contributes nothing.
Other than that major point, we don't have context. Yes, I would like everything to be public so we know what we're paying for.
I'm going to 'pass judgement', and leave you to responsible commenting.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/readme/2002/...
http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2012/05/when-innocent-clients...
I presume that such cases are a minority, that those who plead guilty generally are. But I don't know what the actual odds are. What makes you certain? Or are you comfortable passing judgement regardless?
I'm comfortable forming an opinion based on the facts available. As I said in my comment, I'd like more info since it's ostensibly a public function to run a government court.
Otherwise we can all just run around with our hands in the air crying about how we just can't make a decision on anything in which we weren't directly a party.
With that said, this is not a clear cut issue. I hope grace prevails and we do not attempt to ruin the boys lives in pursuit of vengeance. This is not something a mad internet does very well and would be a justifiable reason for the court to ban publication.
Sexually assaulting people in real life is dangerous.
Why should the victim care one iota about what happens to these guys? Because of some arbitrary "moral-code", "justice" or "rule-of-law"? If this were me, I'd have done the same or worse. Which is why I can say, unabashedly, good for her. She witnessed first hand how the justice system works. They got their slap on the wrist, no she'll get hers.
You "hope grace prevails"? Are you trolling?
Grace for the victim, or the attackers? Whom, if they were a couple years older would have their names publicly available.
Again, we all fund this, there's no reason we shouldn't be able to get the information other than "it's not allowed now".
This seems like a very strange and naïve way to look at government.
Think of government as the Rolling Stones: you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need.
Government accountability is a complete joke, but we should expect and demand better.
However, two of my kids are daughters. As the victim, their rights should trounce the rights of the attackers. That doesn't necessarily mean naming them, but if they aren't going to be named (which is usually the right thing to do for juveniles), they must be appropriately punished.
Unfortunately, we are missing whether they were appropriately punished. From her perspective, I'm sure the answer is No, but objectively, we don't know the answer.
I can't imagine how much it would suck to be a judge.
OK? of course not. But it shouldn't destroy their whole lives, the way being publicly named would. As long as you're a kid you deserve another chance, even after murdering someone. That's the whole point of trying juveniles differently.
Criminals should be appropriately punished. But those decisions need to be made in light of all the facts, preferably within the legal system. Dumping the names out there on Twitter is, as an above post said, dangerous. Maybe these guys deserve it, but maybe "twitter justice" will give these guys -- or some innocent kid in a similar case -- punishment far beyond what they deserve.
Judges obviously don't think having gross amounts of almost completely unaccountable power sucks, or they wouldn't be judges.
Why? Assuming we're still talking about rights as citizens under the law, here.
Yes, it is! And this is what I want people talking about!
I don't have a particular point to make here, except to say that the discourse could be better.
Apparently not, guess the GP must be right and the victim got what was coming to her.
It's insane how detached we've become from the real world. Arguing about patents and iOS vs Android and open source. Two people pled guilty to a rape, within a court that we all pay for, and somehow there's a random smart-ass that wants to sound smart with the legal fatalism angle on this.
someone who has a different opinion than you
1. Any state actions that promotes the current legal hegemony is inevitable, making a comment noting the fatalism inherent in taking an action (principled or not) that could trigger blowback from this legal hegemony is by definition obvious.
2. It's annoying because it doesn't say anything that isn't already evident from a passing understanding of the power dynamics of western society, especially as it relates to the courts. You don't need to say something emphasizing the power of the judicial system to ruin your life...we know that already.
3. And it contributes nothing because such comments rarely go beyond capitalizing on the opportunity to be snarky, doing nothing to describe the ethics of the situation or how the system could be improved.
Rather than regardless of whether she's in the right/wrong for posting their names.