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I am outraged, a plea deal to avoid life imprisonment? What the fuck did I just read?!
This guy trafficked, raped and tortured her, and other underage women. Police did jack shit. And she was supposed to be watching him just walk away? Grotesque.
Any jailtime is ridiculous. She's been in prison for 8 years. The judge had a chance to try and rebuild her life, but they gave her punishment for getting trapped in a bad situation. What's the issue, does the judge think she's going to go out and start shooting other rapists and traffickers?
If this was how my cards were dealt, I would likely make it my life's mission.
This country certainly goes all in for cruel and unusual punishment.
Well the very act of shooting someone in the head twice, burning their home down, and stealing their car is cruel and unusual punishment.
Despite what everyone in the comments seems to think you're not legally protected from going John Wick on someone regardless of how much they've wronged you or if the system failed you.
They were dead when they got shot in the head, everything else is largely unrelated to the punishment in my opinion its just cathartic. She couldve done far far worse to him than a quick execution, id have probably ripped out his nails and teeth and then killed him with a power washer via the worst enema.
Id have cut off his dick and made him choke to death on it.
What if the house fire she set caused other houses to catch on fire and kill the families living there?
There's an argument for her going to jail for arson if anything.
Thats actually valid, I was simply pointing out that its just not adding to the cruel and unusual punishment element.
You don't believe the state destroying all of someones possessions after conviction then death doesn't add to cruel and unusual punishment?
The difference here is the actions of a state versus the actions of an individual. When its the actions of an individual it should be a case by case IMO burning shit is kinda instinctive. But for the state it is a seperate case altogether since instinct shouldnt factor in. Also this would better be covered by arson and wrongful destruction of property.
Dead's dead, dude.
Mutilating a corpse is also grounds for worse punishment.
However she chose burning down the house to hide the evidence no matter how much sympathy we have for the victim, it’s hard to get past that she was free, she showed premeditation, she drove a considerable distance to find him, she murdered him, and she attempted to hide evidence.
What part of not cruel and unusual punishment since ya cant punish the dead are ya not getting. Im only addressing that element not the rest of the shit, improper handling of a corpse, grand theft auto, and arson are their own charges.
The guy raped several children and sex trafficked them.
I’m of the opinion this girl did the world a favor. There is no rehabbing sex pests
The issue is that the patriarchy must uphold rape culture, and that the absence of justice for rape survivors is a feature of that, not a bug, and the courts can't have that power taken away from them.
Could it be the judge more cares about being the one to impose sentences and doesn’t like others doing it?
Like, it’s easy to see this same decision happening even in a non-patriarchal context - at least for me.
That's the bottom line, yeah.
This is a good point. Prison is supposed to be rehabilitation. But how can you rehabilitate someone who has run out of targets. Plus if she has been in 8 years as you say. Time served. I am guessing she had a public defender who gave her bad advice.
I don't think the judge did have that chance if I'm honest.
Despite her understandable motive, the fact is that she murdered the guy.
I think it would be easy to prove that she suffered a mental break at most and get mental help instead of jail.
This is a shitty corrupt judge in a shitty corrupt system.
I'm certain that even the worst lawyer in history would have considered this angle if it were viable.
I dont know how it could be argued anyone was in their right mind after going through what she went through.
Obviously she wasn't in her "right mind" but that doesn't mean she had no capacity to understand that killing someone is murder.
Or she decided to end the threat to her before he hurt her again. Self defense is generally not considered murder and rapists get, what, 5 years in prison in this country then go on to rape more? If convicted at all?
I can easily see where she felt like she had no other choice.
As I've said many times, her actions are understandable and in her situation I'd probably do the same, cognisant that I would face the consequences of my crime.
You can frame her actions as self defense if you wish, but they do not meet the legal definition of self defense because there was no clear and present threat to her person at the time she planned and perpetrated the murder.
This is exactly what jury nullification is for
With or without a jury, the inescapable fact is that she murdered him.
Right, that's my point -- jury nullification is the mechanism by which juries find that a crime was committed by the letter of the law but the defendent is not guilty.
Interesting. I'd never heard of this.
A quick read of this wikipedia article makes it sound very sovereign citizen.
This part is particularly salient:
Basically, a jury's one job is to determine whether, based on the facts, a person committed a crime. "Jury Nullification" is a perversion of that role. It may be "just" but it's not justice.
If Jury Nullification is a thing, then essentially juries can decide the law in any given case. What's the point of laws? You could just have public kangaroo courts where citizens decide the fate of the accused based on the vibe.
That's basically what white juries have been doing for the KKK since Reconstruction. One reasonable argument for nullification is that dishonest jurors will just vote "not guilty" anyways and aren't required to justify their reasoning. So nullification tips the scales to give honest jurors the same power to acquit a woman who didn't do anything morally wrong.
If the races involved were reversed, she'd be walking free.
Your summary seems to imply that whatever happens to currently be written into law is considered "justice". But we've always known that the law is not perfect and needs constant corrections for true fairness.
Jurors, laws, judges, witnesses, none of them are perfect. Each has stoked fears that they will overpower the rights of the others. Courts do their best to have each balancing the power of the other.
Justice is a tricky word because it can mean justice as in a fair and equitable outcome or it can mean justice as in the outcome provided by the established justice system which we both know is frequently "un-just".
If you read what I wrote as "whatever outcome the law provides is just" then either I've explained myself very poorly or you've misunderstood.
I don't disagree with any of this. The manner in which power is balanced is to segregate the role of the different components of the court. It is the role of the jury to determine whether the defendant is guilty of the crimes they are charged with. If a Jury is allowed to determine whether the punishment for the defendant's crimes is reasonable given the circumstances then that jury has all the power, and there is no balance.
Sov Cits try to use it all the time but it usually doesn’t work for them.
However it has been used to prevent convictions for unfair laws in the past. Juries used to use it to prevent people who harbored escaping slaves from being convicted for example.
I don't have experience with it personally, only heard about it from a possibility perspective -- apparently prosecutors do a very thorough job screening jurors to make sure that never happens. Just knowing about jury nullification can get you dismissed. I don't think you're off the mark with that read, but where I think it comes back from kangaroo court and sov cit land is all jurors have to agree, even one objection to a nullification would stop it; if twelve strangers all agree, there's probably some merit to it. But, certainly can be abused in the wrong hands.
That's because it's not really a thing.
The jury doesn't have the option of finding guilty, or not guilty, or nullify.
If you ask a potential juror, "will you do your job of finding the accused guilty or not guilty?" and their answer is "what about nullification?" then they're basically telling you that they do not understand the requirement and are incapable of performing the job.
Nullification is finding them not guilty, in this case due to the whole story.
It's not, it's saying they are not guilty in order to avoid penalties for the defendant, despite knowing that they perpetrated the crime. That is quite obviously a perversion of the court.
Wouldn't the judge then be in the line of fire, technically, as well as those that own him?
Who is the f’ing prosecutor?
Someone who understands she was free from the person who was trafficking her and she sought them out and killed them. Yeah it's glorious justice on the big screen but in the actual legal system this is vigilante justice.
In my state under the Castle Act or whatever it's called, someone can break into your house, threaten you and your family's life but until you prove your ability to flee was prevented physically you cannot fire a weapon for protection regardless of intent to scare, injure or kill.
That is the framework used by our legal system to prosecute cases of self defense. You as a citizen cannot take the law into your own hands like the defendant did. No matter how justified it may seem.
I don’t understand why she wasn’t tried as a minor
Most 17 year olds charge with murder, or some variation of killing someone, aren't charged as minors. That's not taking a position on this specific case, it's just a fact.
They need to re-evaluate that especially in cases where somebody has been robbed of years of development like this one
Totally agree. Mitigating circumstances, absolutely. Self defense, nope. There should be some punishment. What that should be, I do not know.