Thanks, T-D-C [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

Again, his excuse is obviously BS, but this sets an odd precedent:

Are we responsible for our subconscious acts? What about drunken ones? High ones? Ones while we were stressed out?

It seems that more and more excuses are being taken into consideration.

1. I was stressed
2. She prevoked me (relating to a downgrade from a murder charge to a manslaughter charge in the paper the other day)
3. I was alseep
4. I was mentally ill.

So many judges are looking at these excuses and letting people off or downgrading there charges.

When is it going to stop

Ahhh Mr Judge I didn't mean to kill her just wound her. Ok then here is a suspended sentance.

On the other hand, some of these matter. Some of these genuinely affect who 'you' are and how you make decisions. It'd be nice to see documented evidence of what people in general can do while asleep, and what this fellow in particular may have done in the past.

We can't have systems of justice that ignore mitigating factors, but we can't have one that absolves all cases with mitigating factors either. I guess that's the price of having actual justice.

Getting high is a terrible excuse, because it's almost always a choice to do so.

Of course, we're talking about different regions of the world and different legal systems. As for claiming mental illness, in the US, pleading insanity is a really risky legal tactic. It almost never works, and when it does the sentence is much longer than it would otherwise be.

The key word is mitigating, i.e. milder or less severe.

Should aquittal even be an option here? That he raped the young girl is not even disputed, only his ability to prevent himself from doing so.

Whether it's his fault or not is really not relevant. He is still a menace to society, and must be prevented from ever doing this.

I'm not talking about punitive justice -- I'm not sure it even exists in any morally sound sense. The only point of law is to protect people from other people.

Agreed Aleph. Mine was more of a general comment.

In this case, full aquittal seems a strange precedent, since he did actually do it. The woman's rights were trampled on.

And if his old girlfriend was telling the truth, he's got a habit of this...

<font face="Verdana" size="3" color="#00FF00">Some people just need to be handcuffed to the bed when they sleep.</font>

[ 12-10-2004, 10:52 AM: Message edited by: pritchke ]