Pinkeyes said:
Sequoia - you are of course right. I am not a medical expert, or particularly clued up on law. I made my judgement from what I read from what I consider to be a relatively unbiased source, not some tabloid rubbish. News from that source tends to be to the point, and 'just the facts, ma-am'.
My thoughts on the medical testimony regarding this crime are not drawn from my own medical expertise (or in fact theirs). They are drawn very much in the same way you wouldn’t let a convicted paedophile take my kids to the zoo for the afternoon, despite every doctor in the world telling you he is cured now and won't bring any harm to your children.
My personal judgement is that if somebody can repeatedly stab someone in the face with a knife, I would no longer EVER trust them with knives and faces again. I don't care who tells me I should do.
This opinion my not be worth a damn to you - but it’s what I tend to go off.
Now you are also right in saying I know nothing about how to sentence this case. I have no right to decide this mans punishment. But going off the knife/face thing I mention above - I make a personal judgement on when I would like to see this man walking the streets again. It certainly isn't in 19 months.
This may be wrong in your eyes, but if I had my way - rapists would never be let out of prison again and beaten on an hourly basis for the rest of their lives and paedophiles would be hung. This may horrify some people, but only in the way that this particular judgement horrified me.
I also have no answer on how to bring justice fairly and without influence from large amounts of money. I am probably wrong to assume that this happened in this case - but I think we both agree it is very likely he paid the most money he could to get the best defence he could - and it is their job to get this man the best outcome they can. Whatever it takes...
Despite it having taken a couple of days to reach this point, I think we actually agree on almost all of this .... except about rapists. My punishment wouldn't involve beatings ..... but if it was up to me, it might involve being dropped naked into a pit of fire-ants, then suspended by the goolies, using rusty barbed wire, over a pit of angry vipers. Then, I'd start to get nasty .... and inventive.
And as for kiddy rapists ..... well, I'd better not say. This is a 'family' forum.
I am NOT a 'liberal' when it comes to sentencing.
But back to the case in hand, if someone held a gun to my head and told me it was MY responsibility to sentence this bloke based solely on the information I have, to date, from news reports, then I, like you, would want a heavier sentence. Quite a bit heavier. My real point, from post 1 about this, is that I just don't feel the information I have is enough to say the judge got it wrong. I'm certainly not saying the judge was right - I'm saying I don't feel I have enough information to second-guess him and, perhaps more contentiously, I don't feel anybody else does either IF they are relying on news reports.
As for him paying for the best defence, that I would imagine is a good bet. Who wouldn't? I would, I'd imagine you would and I strongly suspect every (or nearly every) other member of this forum would. The problem, then, is that some of us have more money than others and can therefore afford better lawyers. This is a problem with social inequality, and I don't see a solution. After all, some lawyers simply are betterthan others. They may be brighter, more experienced, better advocates, or all three. So, given that the "best" is a limited commodity, either we accept that the "best" have a right to pick and choose their cases, which will usually invove the size of the fee as a central element in the decision, or we decide advocates are going to be allocated on an entirely random basis, thereby removing the right from individual lawyers to decide their own caseload. Either way, we hit ethical problems, and practical ones too.
The only way to really remove money from the equation (short of totalitarian regimes where the courts do the whim of the leaders, and all that achieves is to shift the medium of power from money to political influence and power) is to have a some type of Utopian communist society where every member has equal wealth. And we all know how well that idea, however attractive in theory, works in practice. As I said, I don't see a solution to the fact that those with money can afford better (and more) lawyers.
