"He can now look forward to a productive life without being burdened with the stigma of having to register as a sex offender,”
This makes me so angry. Why, why, why, do we put so much concern on “ruining” a promising future for a young man who chose to rape/assault and so little concern for the victims past, present and future whose lives are usually severely impacted by an event they didn’t chose.
I know, we need to get these judges off the bench! This is infuriating.
Surprise, surprise.
I feel the judge’s ruling in this particular case was fair given that the primary victim accepted his apology. Had she not accepted his apology then that would be a different story…
Regardless, I don’t think what the kid did was right, but if the victim accepted his apology, what can you do?
Sentence him according to the law, because, in the U.S., the victim’s forgiveness do not negate the criminal liability. It may negate the tort liability which would be a separate case.
Ok, but why is it any different than a situation where one person punches another person, and the victim chooses not to press charges? It’s still assault, and there is still criminal liability…
Going back to this case though, it is ultimately her body, therefore, she should have the final say. Again, if she chose not to accept his apology, then I would be in full support of locking the kid up and slapping a label on him.
edit: duplicate
While I don’t like the idea of the sex registry being for life, especially when someone is young, the judge’s reasoning is basically treating this like some sort of youthful prank gone wrong or something that is no big deal. While I can understand not treating this as a violent rape, but rather as non consensual sex (and that is just my opinion, not a lawyer and I don’t know if Mass distinguishes between the two) and I don’t think the guy should have been sentenced to 15 years hard labor, I also think that this is not a youthful indiscretion, he committed a serious felony that victimized someone. The judge went out of his way to make sure the poor little darling didn’t suffer too much, and in the end made it like the kid got caught doing something naughty…It would be like if this idiot drove drunk, slammed into another car, someone got hurt, and saying “oh, he didn’t mean to hurt someone”, the fact is in that case he did.
And yes, I think this is privilege, whether class and/or race I can’t tell for sure, but if this kid for example had been some poor black kid or had been a working class white kid working at a burger joint, I wonder if the judge would have been so lenient, but because the kid was going to college and even better, had been an athlere, well, this was just, to quote his lawyer “a mistake”. Funny thing about mistakes, you are supposed to pay the consequences to them in relation to how serious it was, this wasn’t the kid got drunk underage, this wasn’t the kid committed petty vandalism or got into a fight with another knucklehead over a girl, this was a felony, pure and simple, and the lawyer (I know it was his job, but still) was way out of line trying to dismiss this as anything but a serious crime. What makes this even worse to me is there has been so much written about these things, that the kid unless he really was a dense piece of rock, had to have read that if someone is blotto they can’t consent, it has been on tv, on social media, it is everywhere, and he thought it was okay because she didn’t say no, when apparently she couldn’t even talk? It is a sad commentary on our society when we will try kids as young as 14, 15 for major crimes, arguing ‘they knew what they were doing and should pay’ and can end up in adult jails as a result, and then have someone who is an adult legally get a slap on the wrist because 'we don’t want to screw up his life".
As far as the victim (or one of the victims) accepting his apology, that is meaningless, that is like saying don’t charge a murder for killing someone if the murdered person’s family forgives him/her, it is meaningless.
There are two victims.
I hope this story reaches the female students at his intended college…
@fractalmstr , while I like your logic, and acknowledge that other countries have different criminal procedures, it is not how U.S. justice system is. And therefore the offender in this case was unfairly afforded what the rest of us aren’t.
“Though forgiveness and mercy matter greatly in social life, they play fairly small
roles in criminal procedure. Criminal procedure is dominated by the state, whose
interests in deterring, incapacitating, and inflicting retribution leave little room for
mercy”
Where many, including the author, propose adopting forgiveness and mercy to play bigger more role in our legal system, and I don’t object as long as it is for everybody and not just a handful of white boys with possible connections, there are some concerns too, such as;
"Forgiveness and mercy are not panaceas: not
all offenders and victims would choose to take part, there are dangers of fakery and
arbitrariness, and some forgiven offenders would reoffend.
http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1920&context=faculty_scholarship
According to an update at the top of the story: In a statement to MassLive, the University of Dayton said that David Becker will not be attending the school. Becker’s attorney, Thomas Rooke, had no comment.
At least the students there will be safe from this DB.
This was touched on in another thread, but she told the court she did not want him in prison. I would bet money the victim and the other girl’s family do not want much about this out in the press or really any of the parents involved. High school kids drinking and having co-ed sleepovers…not in my house thank you.
“Ok, but why is it any different than a situation where one person punches another person, and the victim chooses not to press charges? It’s still assault, and there is still criminal liability…”
I am not a lawyer (and hopefully one of the lawyers on here will talk about this), but from what I know there are classes of crimes where they don’t need a criminal complaint to file charges (and this varies from state to state as well I believe). For example, with battered spouses I believe that they can file charges against someone, same with rape, in large part because with both crimes the victim is often reluctant to file charges, with rape victims the shame of it, with spousal abuse the complicated web of fear of financial ruin if their spouse is put away or fear of retribution, whereas with other crimes they need a complaint. With something like this, if they had evidence it happened and didn’t need the victim to corroborate it, they can press charges (again, from what I know of the law, and it is likely limited).
When two clowns get into a fight there is a different standard, maybe they assume in that case that the person is capable of deciding whether or not they want the other person brought up on charges, I don’t know the full reasoning.
“Going back to this case though, it is ultimately her body, therefore, she should have the final say. Again, if she chose not to accept his apology, then I would be in full support of locking the kid up and slapping a label on him.” There was another victim, and accepting an apology doesn’t mean she wasn’t party to the charges against him(none of the articles mentioned if she filed charges; one account I read said that she accepted the apology only because it was awkward and she didn’t know what to do…here is from the NY Times article on what happened:
“In a text message to one of the victims the next day, Mr. Becker apologized for the assault, the court documents said. The victim responded with a text telling him, “Don’t even worry about it,” but later told the police that she had said that because “she did not know what else to say,” according to a police report presented in court.”
He may have no official criminal record, but the albatross will hang around his neck no matter what college he goes to.
I think it goes to the point that not all cases are the same, not all parties involved are the same and certainly not all situations are the same which is why there are guidelines…so that there is latitude to place individuals on the continuum where it makes the most sense for society. Add that to the concept of federalism where states are given latitude for some determinations. It is the “state” or jurisdiction prosecuting…not the accuser/victim. Most states offer the accuser/victims the opportunity to express themselves with regard to their feelings in addition to the prosecution and in some cases monetary restitution in addition to whatever the court deems appropriate. But rare would be the judge who would discount the victims statements, discount the probation department recommendations and discount the threat to society and throw the book at someone. Judges too are on a continuum in approach to sentencing albeit generally fairly narrow.
^^ And that’s exactly what this judge did.
post 8 asks- what if he were a poor black kid?
The answer is Jameis Winston.
Personally I think color skin has less to do with sentencing than benefit to society…an educated kid of any color in my opinion, who has higher probability of going on to be a successful contributing member of society is going to be viewed differently than a kid of any color who has been truant, has an existing record, no plans for further education who may receive a sentence with longer institutional remediation. The media lens is very narrow and right now what gets clicks is stories about smart, middle and upper middle class mostly white kids with bright futures who are charged with sexual assault.