The Stanford swimmer, the rape, and the letter the victim read in court

The judge is the one who messed up. I wonder how many 19-year-old black and Latin kids he has sent away for less violent crimes.

 

San Jose columnist was rooting for the lighter sentence.

Herhold: Brock Turner deserves county jail, not state prison, for Stanford sex assault

I do not envy him his inbox.

 

I'm working on a brief as a sit here to try to get my client out of a life sentence and I'm fucking proud to do it.

Y'all can go pound sand.

 

Ergo my point, Donnie. Defense attorneys zealously defend the worst cretins we have. They justify it in any number of ways, wrap themselves around the constitution etc. (insert wanking motion here), and they all sleep like babies at night. I'm sure the Stanford swimmer defense team opened a nice, expensive bottle of merlot that night, and toasted each other on how they kept the rapist out of jail.

 

In most cases it's possible to be a zealous advocate without being an asshole. I've seen very skilled defense attorneys handle cross examination of a victim in a compassionate way that accomplishes what they need without leaving the victim feeling re-traumatized. But they're in the minority.

It's easy to justify horrific personal behavior when you wrap yourself in that zealous advocate cape.

 

Put in there that the victim was drunk.

 

But enough about prosecutors.

 

Someone should have burned down that frat house at UVa.

 

I'm the first to admit that it cuts both ways, DW. It's not justified on either side of the bar.

 

As you may recall, I don't find it a great system for reaching just verdicts. Not sure what precisely I'd replace it with.

 

That was a really interesting letter. Really interesting. There's a lot to chew on in that letter. Although it clearly comes from an emotional, authentic place, and you have to respect those emotions and authenticity, there are some implications that would come from upholding every word of that latter that I'm not sure, in the long run, any of us would be totally comfortable with. I know I wouldn't.

And the danger of the automatic "retweet" and "like" on a letter like that is that you just gloss over those implications. We really shouldn't do that. The depth of her pain should, of course, take up most of our introspection on the matter. But not all of it.

 

And after you succeed, we'll check back when he murders someone after he gets out.