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The Willis Family: Rape Charges Part 2


samurai_sarah

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25 minutes ago, Front Hugging Fiend said:

As such, I feel like I count as open-minded. I can acknowledge the talent some of the kids have whilst also acknowledging the dangerous elements of their upbringing and loudly speaking out in support of the victim. THAT's what open-minded is.

It's so shitty. I mean, I know this is how the system works, but god... at what cost to the victim? And how does a defense attorney sleep at night if they've knowingly been defending a guilty person?

Agreed. The kids are talented but their upbringing was messed up. They never had a choice about whether they wanted to perform or pursue the interests forced upon them. 

I think most defense attorneys don't want to know if the person is innocent or not. Clearly that's not always the case. But then there are also amazing defense attorneys like Strang and Buting (making a murderer) that remind me why their job is important. 

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      I think a defense attorney is necessary. People do get wrongfully accused, or you want to make sure the punishment fits the crime. 

      When you defend blatant violent criminals who refuse to plead guilty is where a person can have trouble sleeping at night.

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23 hours ago, Grimalkin said:

      How did her statement differ?

Not everyone can stomach being a defense attorney. If a person says they were raped it's a defense attorney's job to make prosecutors prove it, it's kind of hard not to get the victim involved, and cause further pain.

 

Thanks. And yes, @snarkopolis practically quoted me.  The post seemed a bit aggressive, but I took her "you" as a "general you" and not personally.  No, defense attorneys don't have to like their client.  They have to uphold the law.

Defense attorneys also have to take a lot of shit.  It is not surprising that they may seem defensive.

I am very glad they exist and know how to do their jobs.  Innocent people are sometimes shafted by the system.

 

7 hours ago, Front Hugging Fiend said:

It's so shitty. I mean, I know this is how the system works, but god... at what cost to the victim? And how does a defense attorney sleep at night if they've knowingly been defending a guilty person?

It is what the system is.  Everybody deserves a fair trial and everybody should have a defense attorney who will give them that - with every fiber of their professional  being.  When defense attorneys fail on that - sentences tend to be over-turned.

I don't know @snarkopolis, but I do personally know a defense attorney who sees this as a moral and ethical obligation and (in her words) as a game of chess.  It is the law (practically her religion), fair process, and the strategy that counts.  No, she does not necessarily see the accused as innocent. But she will do her damn-dest to make sure the accused gets fair process.

I really do respect that.  

I do wonder sometimes how defense attorneys can live with the strategies they have to employ and the fact that their skills in the law sometimes get the guilty off.  I'm fairly sure the attorney I have referenced sweats the heck out of that.

I genuinely respect the work defense attorneys do.  Perhaps that was not clear to @snarkopolis

 

 

 

 

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Well, @Palimpsest said it perfectly. Without defense attorneys we have no justice system (well, not a fair one).  We need them as much as we need prosecutors.  I can't imagine how difficult it must be to defend someone the lawyer believes, or knows, is guilty. Someone's gotta do it. 

 

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When I asked how the statements differed I actually thought I may of missed something and maybe my comprehension was off. Lol.

        @PalimpsestI imagine a person would need to be extremely logical and practical to be able to be a defense attorney. You may even need to be a Vulcan. Or Data. Data would of been a good defense attorney.

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52 minutes ago, Fascinated said:

Well, @Palimpsest said it perfectly. Without defense attorneys we have no justice system (well, not a fair one).  We need them as much as we need prosecutors.  I can't imagine how difficult it must be to defend someone the lawyer believes, or knows, is guilty. Someone's gotta do it. 

 

Agreed. And the thing is, as hard as it is to swallow, even the worst people in the world have human rights and dignity. Part of a defense attorney's job is to make sure that their client's rights are respected. I think that a good way to rationalize defending someone you know is guilty or has done a terrible thing is to see your role as the person who makes sure that when justice is meted out, it is fair and just for your client as well as the plaintiff. I'm very much not a defense attorney, but that's how I view a defense attorney's job. And why I get mad about people villifying defense attorneys.

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When you are a defense attorney, it doesn't really matter if your client did it or not. Your job is to provide the best defence possible. Sometimes that defense is the person did but it was justifiable (like self-defence), they are culpable at the time the crime was committed (age, mental disease or defect) or the state does not have the evidence to prove beyond a reasonable guilt that the accused committed the crime they are accused of committing. Even if your pretty sure the person committed the crime, you make the state prove the case. And you make sure that your client's right are protected throughout the process because the state's power is overwhelming when compared to accused. You also make sure that the evidence was properly obtained and properly handled. Or you make sure the evidence is proper to begin with. Having an innocent client certainly helps  with being able to provide a good defence. 

A defense doesn't need to prove the accused is innocent, they just need to prove there is reasonable doubt. The court's ruling is either guilty or not guilty and not guilty is not the same as innocent. 

The above though can be incredibly hard to do though and many defence lawyers burn out because of it or switch practice areas. 

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Don't defense attorneys get to choose the types of cases and clients they take on? Besides a public defender, of course. 

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My understanding is that attorneys choose niches, or specialties like doctors. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I hope I am. Because if an atty chooses pedo defense as a specialty, they surely must know some of their clients are guilty. And if the atty is good, it's likely most are. I hope people who charge hundreds of dollars per hour to defend child molesters do have a tough time sleeping. Most kids don't make that sort of thing up. To put them on trial in the name of some chomo's 'fair' trial is a travesty, as far as I'm concerned. The attorneys who choose to defend these criminals are as disgusting as any other rape apologist. 

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Another important job for defense attorneys is to make sure clients who have a lot of evidence against them get good advice on plea bargaining, and receive fair sentences. It's extremely important that poor clients and clients who are people of color don't end up with longer sentences for the same crime than a wealthy white person would. (Something our criminal justice system could do MUCH better at... Hiring more defense attorneys to lower their average case loads would help.)

Not that this is what's going on with Willis, who is white and relatively privileged. But from my understanding, it's part of the motivation and job satisfaction for defense attorneys, especially public defenders, even when their clients are very likely guilty.

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24 minutes ago, SusanAtTheLastBattle said:

It's extremely important that poor clients and clients who are people of color don't end up with longer sentences for the same crime than a wealthy white person would. (Something our criminal justice system could do MUCH better at... Hiring more defense attorneys to lower their average case loads would help.)

The CJS would have to actually care about poor people and minorities to hire more defense attys. And they would have to compete with the market. Defense attys are usually in the game to make money. They do their time helping the poors, and they're out. 

Of course there are exceptions. But I'm not making any for anyone who puts a child on the stand to cross examine their awful experience. 

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40 minutes ago, raised in rebellion said:

My understanding is that attorneys choose niches, or specialties like doctors. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I hope I am. Because if an atty chooses pedo defense as a specialty, they surely must know some of their clients are guilty. And if the atty is good, it's likely most are. I hope people who charge hundreds of dollars per hour to defend child molesters do have a tough time sleeping. Most kids don't make that sort of thing up. To put them on trial in the name of some chomo's 'fair' trial is a travesty, as far as I'm concerned. The attorneys who choose to defend these criminals are as disgusting as any other rape apologist. 

But a trial without defence doesn't exist except maybe in North Korea and similar places. A trial comes into existence when a prosecution and a defence, both trying to demonstrate an hypothesis, have a dialogue where, like in a Socratic dialogue, a truth emerges. This truth is witnessed and declared by a third uninvolved side and it isn't an absolute dogmatic and abstract truth but a so called judicial truth. I don't see how disrupting the whole process of ascertaining the truth undermining the value of the attorneys who act the defence in the dialogue that leads to a judicial truth is gonna help especially since "most victims don't make things up" is a judicial truth ascertained through countless fair trials. The only way to be sure that the judicial truth is as near as humanly possible to "the truth" is prosecution and defence doing their job at their best. Maybe we should work more on protocols and procedures that could make inquiries and trials more sustainable for victims, basically without revictimising them. Or we could work on a better cultural awareness of these crimes, against prejudices towards victims, against press sometimes de facto identifying victims. Most of all we should imho try our best to prevent these horrid crimes from happening because no judicial truth, even the fairest, can erase the damage and give back to the victim their previous life. How? With better cultural awareness, protecting vulnerable minors, educating parents, CPS doing their job etc.

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36 minutes ago, raised in rebellion said:

My understanding is that attorneys choose niches, or specialties like doctors. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I hope I am. Because if an atty chooses pedo defense as a specialty, they surely must know some of their clients are guilty. And if the atty is good, it's likely most are. I hope people who charge hundreds of dollars per hour to defend child molesters do have a tough time sleeping. Most kids don't make that sort of thing up. To put them on trial in the name of some chomo's 'fair' trial is a travesty, as far as I'm concerned. The attorneys who choose to defend these criminals are as disgusting as any other rape apologist. 

Of course they know most of their clients are guilty. But as difficult as it can be to accept, even if we know someone is guilty, if the state can't prove their case, they should get off. Take OJ, for example. If law enforcement and prosecutors had done their jobs ethically and effectively, he would have been convicted. The state needs to constantly be checked in order to prevent it from taking unfair advantage of the power imbalance.

And most of what defense attorneys do is not getting criminals off, anyway. The vast majority of cases never go to trial, and of the ones that do, the vast majority end in conviction.

I don't think attorneys who defend sex offenders are necessarily rape apologists. Some are just people who believe in the process of law. Some, of course, are rape apologists (like the ones that try to discredit rape victims by saying they're promiscuous and that kind of thing) and those ones are indeed deplorable.

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I agree philosophically, but I truly believe child molesters should be chemically castrated. Research shows that kids RARELY lie about sexual assault. I understand fair law, but I can't extend it to crimes on children. Cos I want to cut their balls off. 

And I get that women do it too. A lot of naughty teachers! I don't know the answer...people suck. 

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8 minutes ago, raised in rebellion said:

I understand fair law, but I can't extend it to crimes on children. Cos I want to cut their balls off. 

This is the reason for trials were invented, because civil humans aren't apes and civil human society doesn't allow mob lynchings nor does call them justice. 

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1 minute ago, raised in rebellion said:

I agree philosophically, but I truly believe child molesters should be chemically castrated. Research shows that kids RARELY lie about sexual assault. I understand fair law, but I can't extend it to crimes on children. Cos I want to cut their balls off. 

And I get that women do it too. A lot of naughty teachers! I don't know the answer...people suck. 

While it's true that children rarely lie about sexual assault, there are cases where they are manipulated by other adults to make false accusations, like the whole crazy daycare satanic sex abuse paranoia thing of the 1980s. Those kids weren't lying, they were confused. I once asked a probation officer who supervised sex offenders if she believed any of them were innocent, and she said yes, there was one she believed probably was. She believed the child's mother had manipulated the child to make the accusations. And probation officers are not too prone to thinking their clients are innocent and this one was no exception, so she was probably right. I hate that child victims' testimony has to be subject to any scrutiny, but unfortunately I don't think there's any other way that wouldn't be even worse.

But I understand how you feel too. Even though I know it has to be done, I sure as hell couldn't be the one to do it.

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There have been several police shootings this week. Two high profile. Men with broken cars get murdered, and molesters need a fair trial? Cos civil? 1930's Germany was civil! As was 1840's American south. As was the genocide of the indigenous all over the world.

@Coy Koi you make really good points. I forgot about that fiasco! Satanic ritual abuse was EVERYWHERE! 

Yes, everyone should get a fair trial. Ugh. That hurt to type.

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1 hour ago, raised in rebellion said:

There have been several police shootings this week. Two high profile. Men with broken cars get murdered, and molesters need a fair trial? Cos civil? 1930's Germany was civil! As was 1840's American south. As was the genocide of the indigenous all over the world.

I said that lynching mobs aren't civil and how you can interpret it like Kristallnacht being civil is a mystery to me. Indigenous genocides weren't carried out of civility but quite the contrary out of racism and disparage of any different civilisation and of human life. As for today America I do think a country where Tryvon Martin's killer was acquitted should work better on its own civility. Civility isn't perfect anywhere because humans aren't perfect but incivil and criminal episodes shouldn't be excuses to unleash our ape like instincts or even worse to give them the approval stamp of law.

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9 hours ago, raised in rebellion said:

My understanding is that attorneys choose niches, or specialties like doctors. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I hope I am. Because if an atty chooses pedo defense as a specialty, they surely must know some of their clients are guilty. And if the atty is good, it's likely most are. I hope people who charge hundreds of dollars per hour to defend child molesters do have a tough time sleeping. Most kids don't make that sort of thing up. To put them on trial in the name of some chomo's 'fair' trial is a travesty, as far as I'm concerned. The attorneys who choose to defend these criminals are as disgusting as any other rape apologist. 

You're wrong. Lawyers don't have to specialize, and most are advised not to specialize too narrowly or it will hurt their chances of employment. Public defenders and low-level private attorneys in particular have very little choice in who they defend. Even lawyers who do defend accuse pedophiles don't specialize in "pedo defense" because that's not a thing. 

You seem rightfully angry at things like Nazism and indigenous genocide and police brutality, the kind of things that the State is guilty of perpetuating. That same State can't be put in charge of unilaterally meting out "justice" with no checks because they can't be trusted. It's easy to lump all criminals in with some guilty pedophile, but the dozens of people arrested for protesting in Charlotte this week will need defense attorneys too.   

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8 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

Maybe we should work more on protocols and procedures that could make inquiries and trials more sustainable for victims, basically without revictimising them. Or we could work on a better cultural awareness of these crimes, against prejudices towards victims, against press sometimes de facto identifying victims. Most of all we should imho try our best to prevent these horrid crimes from happening because no judicial truth, even the fairest, can erase the damage and give back to the victim their previous life. How? With better cultural awareness, protecting vulnerable minors, educating parents, CPS doing their job etc.

I agreed wholeheartedly. I also want to work toward a world where some of the most damaging lines of argument against victims during trials (slut-shaming, you asked for it...)* aren't used, because they don't work--because jurors rightly find them disgusting.

*Thinking of a case with an adult victim, I sincerely hope these kinds of arguments would never be used against a minor

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9 hours ago, raised in rebellion said:

I agree philosophically, but I truly believe child molesters should be chemically castrated. Research shows that kids RARELY lie about sexual assault. I understand fair law, but I can't extend it to crimes on children. Cos I want to cut their balls off. 

And I get that women do it too. A lot of naughty teachers! I don't know the answer...people suck. 

Would this solve the problem? I thought it was more about power than sex drive, though I could be wrong.

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11 hours ago, raised in rebellion said:

Don't defense attorneys get to choose the types of cases and clients they take on? Besides a public defender, of course. 

If you work at a private firm, that is true. However, if you are a public defender, you do not get to pick and choose your cases. They are assigned to you. That is why Hilary Clinton represented a child rapist in the 70s/80s. As a public defender the case was handed over to her.

Many people chose to be public defenders because of the cases of social injustice. They want to help the poor. Unfortunately, every now and then, they get assigned a complete scumbag and have no choice. 

1 hour ago, SusanAtTheLastBattle said:

I agreed wholeheartedly. I also want to work toward a world where some of the most damaging lines of argument against victims during trials (slut-shaming, you asked for it...)* aren't used, because they don't work--because jurors rightly find them disgusting.

*Thinking of a case with an adult victim, I sincerely hope these kinds of arguments would never be used against a minor

Well there is that Mayor in Ohio that argues that his four year old victim was a "willing participant..."

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7 minutes ago, refugee said:

Would this solve the problem? I thought it was more about power than sex drive, though I could be wrong.

Rapists get off on power, while a pedophile is someone attracted to children. That is why many pedos are suicidal - they feel terrible guilt over their thoughts and actions. Some are both, and we call them predators. 

I suggest chemical castration because it eliminates all sexual charges, regardless of what causes the excitement. Like eunichs, they have zero drive for any sort of sexual satisfaction. 

Just like conversion therapy doesn't work for homosexuals and other 'deviants', it doesn't work with pedophiles, either. 

I think I started looking at this alternative as a genuine one after seeing Hard Candy with Ellen Page. 

 

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15 minutes ago, refugee said:

Would this solve the problem? I thought it was more about power than sex drive, though I could be wrong.

If I recall correctly from a class I took a while back where a forensic psychiatrist was the instructor, chemical castration was effective in reducing sexual impulses and offending behavior in pedophiles. There are problems with it but I do think, based on this one class mind you, that it's a viable option for willing offenders who want to be rehabilitated. The instructor was very much in support of it. 

I think the phrase "castration" is really what makes people uneasy and fear that is cruel and unusual. It's very different than physical castration - it's entirely reversible if the person stops taking the medication. Also the meds that offenders would take are essentially the same hormones in birth control pills. It reduces sex drive, sexual fantasies, and inhibits the ability to get an erection.

One of the problems are that there may be other health side effects and that people can easily reverse the process by purchasing steroids on the black market. However I had a friend who volunteered to essentially be chemically castrated for 8 weeks as part of a research study for a testosterone or steroid patch. He could tell he got the placebo patch (inactive and thus he was basically castrated or testosterone was severally reduced) and remarked about how much less interested in sex he was. He was like "I have so much time on my hands!" Although he may have been joking. He also used the research study money afterwards to go to Europe. :-)

I think that it's a treatment option to explore and that potentially can allow offenders to avoid life in prison if they serve sentences and are compliant with taking the medication. Clearly there'd need to be checks in the system but I think that could be worked out. 

This isn't really my area and it was about a decade ago that I took the class so keep this in mind. But I remember when I found out what chemical castration involves it seemed reasonable but that most people have a knee-jerk reaction to the word castration. 

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I know someone who was wrongly accused of touching a child, because the kid's mother put it into her head as a vendetta.  Even though it was thoroughly investigated and proven to not have happened (mother has a history of this sort of thing), it was still devastating to him, and understandably so.  I realize that it may be rare for a child's accusations to be unfounded, but it does happen.

As with any profession, I think there are defense attorneys who are ethical, and those who aren't.

And I think there should be an "out" for a defense attorney to resign from a case for ethical reasons.

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