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The state is not your friend… even when it does one of the few things it should be doing Rihanna’s music is not particularly ‘my thing’ but clearly she is an internationally known high profile star. Thus when she was recently allegedly beaten up by her then boyfriend, this made it onto newspapers world wide. Unsurprisingly the police got involved, as indeed they should do in such cases.
But low and behold, far from treating the victim of a domestic assault with sensitivity, some piece of crap working for the police decided to make some money and sold the evidentiary pictures of her, which can now be seen across the internet. I would not even link to this if they were not already hard to avoid by anyone connected to the web.
I mean how low can someone go to have done this? I sure hope they find who is responsible and lock them in a dark hole for a portion of their life for a grotesque breach of fiduciary responsibility. The more I understand people, the more I like cats.
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“A violation of this type is considered serious misconduct, with penalties up to and including termination.”
That’s all?
Anyhoo, I’m not much of a fan, but she is incredibly hot… Chris Brown is a spoon of the highest order.
I’m a fan of Rihanna (well, ‘SOS’ and ‘Take a bow’ are OK, maybe even ‘Shut up and drive’ for comedy value but not that awful ‘Umbrella’ song, obviously) so I cheerfully stuck the photo’ on my ‘blog and wished her a happy birthday.
I like this bit from the LAPD: “The Los Angeles Police Department takes seriously its duty to maintain the confidentiality of victims of domestic violence.”
Everybody knows who she is and that she got beaten up, I’m not sure there’s much confidentiality left. Obviously, whoever leaked the photo’ ought to be sacked in disgrace and have their pension cancelled, that’s a different topic.
Mark. Any chance you could link this into land value tax?
Forgot the taste of your foot there Nick?
Why was I so rude?… Sorry, Nick, I meant “be careful what you wish for”.
Here goes…
Police departments in the US are primarily operated by cities. City governments in the US are primarily funded through retail sales tax and (wait for it) property tax, which I guess is just like LVT except for the differences. And with more LVT revenue they could give raises and so whoever leaked the pictures would be less likely to do so, at least for economic reasons.
But this won’t be a REAL thread about US policing until someone comes in here proclaiming the need to off the pigs.
And with more LVT revenue they could give raises and so whoever leaked the pictures would be less likely to do so, at least for economic reasons.
Mind you, they’d have to give them a very large raise. That picture will have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Until reading this post, I had no idea who or what Rihanna is, or what (allegedly) happened to her. And I tend to believe none of what I hear, and only half of what I see.
But if she was beaten, and if someone is being charged with crimes as a result, then the images of her are evidence in a criminal case, and (absent any compelling reasons to the contrary) should be a matter of public record. Maybe not in the investigative phase, but sooner or later, these images would – and should – become publically available. Her fame, and/or the fame of her boyfriend and alleged abuser, are immaterial.
To suggest otherwise is to suggest that domestic violence (whether or not among the ‘stars’) is a special form of crime which must be prosecuted based on evidence which is kept secret. This is bad public policy – justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done, to have its correct effect upon society.
If she had been some average woman beaten by her boyfriend, or even by a random thug in the street, would anyone be up-in-arms if images of her injuries were made public? I doubt it. Most of this furore is over the fact that she is a ‘star’ and undeniably most attractive, and these images seem to show that she has been seriously beaten. But I would have thought that the recent examples of OJ Simpson, Robert Blake, Phil Spector et al would teach us that special treatment for ‘stars’ is not conducive to the ends of justice.
FWIW, I have my suspicions about this whole ‘leak’ story anyway. Precisely because of the long history of mis- and dis-information and special treatment of the ‘stars’ on the part of LA-area police departments, and because I believe very, very little of what comes out of the whole ‘entertainment’ world anyway. Their whole purpose in life is to play a masquerade, why would this be any different? Almost 100 years ago, the Rappe case should have taught us an object lesson about stories of this sort.
llater,
llamas
Llamas, I certainly agree with you that a victim’s/perpetrator’s celebrity should have nothing to do with the judicial process. But:
Sorry, no. Justice is not about effect upon society (if it does have such positive effect, it should be considered a fortunate side benefit, but not an aim in itself). It is about effect upon the victim and the perpetrator of the crime. And even if I grant you this, does the public really need to see pictures of a person beaten and humiliated for them to observe the justice done? Why isn’t it enough for them to see the perpetrator behind bars or possibly on a death row to observe it and internalize the message? Why does this woman has to be humiliated on top of being victimized?
Must disagree Llamas. The point you have missed is that until this goes to trial, it is outrageous for this to be in the public domain.
Alisa – you are right and I should have been more clear. The correct effect of publically-performed justice on society is one of its benefits, but not its only benefit and certainly the first and most-salutory effects are, and should be, on the victim and the perpetrator. Your point is well-taken.
Now, then . . . .
You have automatically assumed that the story that you have been told is entirely-true, and that Rihanna is the entirely-innocent victim of a violent assault. The images we have seen say nothing about whether or not that is the true state of affairs.
If it were to subsequently come out in evidence that she produced a pistol from her purse and threatened someone with it- doesn’t matter who – and took this beating as a result – would that change your opinion about these images?
Starting to get it, now? You have already assigned her the mantle of innocent victimhood because a) she’s female, b) she’s a ‘star’ with an apparently-wholesome reputation, and c) her alleged attacker is a rap ‘star’, and we all know how THEY are, don’t we?
If these images do anything, they reinforce this narrative. Could that be why they just happened to pop up, at the most-opportune time?
It would not be the first time that a ‘star’ has presented an alternate narrative to try and escape the consequences of their actions. I understand that OJ Simpson is still searching for the true killers of his wife and Ronald Goldman. And the tone of the LAPD’s comments only reinforce the narrative – note that they have already ideintified her as a ‘victim’, as though the tiral is over and the verdict is in. I hope that this turn of phrase is merely intended for public consumption and that real detective are looking at this case a little-more dispassionately.
Now, when you strip away your assumptions about what happened here – does that change your opinion about the propriety of these images?
I may not have been the best LEO there ever was, but I did learn enough to be automatically-suspicious of the perfect narrative.
As to your comment ‘ . . .does the public really need to see pictures of a person beaten and humiliated for them to observe the justice done? ‘, I say – yes, they do. The pictures at least need to be entered into evidence and available for any and all to see. I think that crime needs to be sharply contextulaized in the public mind, and perhaps especially when it comes to crimes like domestic violence where there are sometimes cultural dissonances – there needs to be a clear message that says ‘if you do this to someone, you will spend 3 years in prison’. If that means that a ‘star’ is occasionally humiliated in public – if this were Joanna Q Public, noone would bother to pay the copying fees to get the photographs – well, that is a small price to pay for public justice, seen to be done in public. Rihanna’s ‘stardom’ does not guarantee her special treatment by the CJS to ensure that nothing unflattering about her is ever made public.
llater,
llamas
Our generous host writes:
‘Must disagree Llamas. The point you have missed is that until this goes to trial, it is outrageous for this to be in the public domain.’
And I ask – Why?
If this event had occurred in public, and a passing citizen had snapped images like these with a cell-phone – would you be in favour of suppressing them, perhaps until trial, or perhaps forever? If your answer is ‘yes’, then please state your reasons.
Let us assume that the story is true and that these really are photographs taken by the LAPD for use as possible evidence and somehow leaked. I reserve judgement on that but let’s say we believe it. On what grounds of law or public policy do you assert that they must be kept secret? Merely saying that it is ‘outrageous’ is not enough – I find rap ‘music’ outrageous but that’s not enough reason to suppress it.
llater,
llamas
Llamas, everything you wrote in the second part of your reply went without saying for me. Obviously, I should have written “a victim”, instead of “this woman”.
As to justice being seen, again, sorry but no. We don’t punish crime to set an example. I do fully realize, however, that example is being set, whether we like it or not, and we should do our best to make sure that it is an example we like, as often as possible. But if I am assaulted, by someone I know, or by someone I don’t know, and I go to the police, it is not prevention of future crimes that concerns me, nor is it the benefit of society, whatever that is. It is about me and the person who assaulted me. That is not to say that I see no situation where, in order to achieve justice in a private case, evidence may have to be handled in such a way that makes it practically impossible to keep it from the public. That is unfortunate, but I’d have to accept this as part of the imperfection of the physical world in which we happen to live. What I don’t want is this evidence to be purposely used to prevent some future crimes without my consent.
Alisa wrote:
‘We don’t punish crime to set an example . . ‘
I disagree. Setting an example is one reason we punish crime – as Franklin quoted, a man was not to be hanged for stealing a horse, but that horses may not be stolen.
In many criminal instances, there is no direct redress – you cannot be un-beaten, or un-raped – and so the primary, interlinked purposes of the criminal justice system are to punish and to dissuade. And part of that purpose of dissuasion is to present the definitions and consequences of criminal acts in a stark and unequivocal light.
Fairness to all parties also demands that the acts of the criminal justice system take place, so far as is possible and just, in the cold light of day. The fact that a person may be embarrassed or inconvenienced by that is just too bad.
llater,
llamas
If we do, than it is wrong, and we shouldn’t be. If you think that we should, than we’ll have to agree to disagree (and it wouldn’t be the first time).
I usually make a point of not arguing on either basis but as you ask, the concept of sub-judicae is the basis in law. The ‘public policy’ reason is that if going to the police is tantamount to offering embarrassing private details to the media, it is hard to see how that is helpful for maintaining order or assisting traumatised victims of violent crime seek justice.
Actually it is upon the concept of common decency I object to someone, anyone, taking a picture of a battered woman and offering it for sale against their wishes. However if that was a private individual do that, I would not seek to see them punished by law (I would merely spit on the ground in front of them if I ever met them and invited them to take a picture of that).
However everything changes when the person acting does so under the force backed colour of the state’s laws: so yes I would like to see people who act in ways that both undermine people’s willingness to use the protection of law against violent attackers (the ‘public policy’ question) and who release official evidence for private gain (the sub-judicae question) , thrown in gaol and placed in a cell with a large hairy man called Doris.
Our gracious host wrote:
‘ . . . However if that was a private individual do that, I would not seek to see them punished by law . . .’
Good, at least we can agree on that. I would agree with you that it would be a despicable thing to do – but despicable and outragous acts are not yet unlawful, else every Congressman would presently be in durance vile . . .
As to
‘ . . . going to the police is tantamount to offering embarrassing private details to the media, it is hard to see how that is helpful for maintaining order or assisting traumatised victims of violent crime seek justice. . . .’
I have this old-fashioned idea that the public has a right to know what acts are being performed in its name. If accusations have been made and evidence is gathered in the public’s name to use against a citizen, then let all the public see it.
Your point about matters SJ is well-taken and I think I tried to express a similar sentiment – if releasing evidence would be contrary to justice or the rights of the accused, then keep it secret – but only for so long as that condition applies. You did express the sentiment better than I.
But the fact that evidence of a crime may be embarrassing or humiliating to someone-or-other – Too Freakin’ Bad. The performance of public, impartial justice is more important than the transitory discomfort of one person. If it’s a crime – if you allege a crime has been committed against you – then it’s no longer a private matter but a public matter. Sorry. I note that gag rules that are supposed to protect the delicate sensibilities of crime victims and enourage them to come forward in spite of their shame always seem to have negative consequences – which is only what you would expect when you design a system that allows people to make anonymous accusations, or to be shielded from the consequences of lying.
I think the fact here is that you find the release of these photographs of a beautiful woman who has apparently suffered a severe beating to be offensive and troubling. That is to your credit. But you have not shown any reason why the act of releasing these photographs to the public is, or should be, a crime punishable by imprisonment, or indeed, at all. Has ‘hurting the feelings of a star’ now become an indictable offence?
And the fact remains that we know absolutely nothing of the true facts of this incident. I note that the supposed assailant has been charged – but not with this assault. Perhaps, before we get all solicitous about protecting the delicate feelings of this poor innocent, we might want to wait until all the facts are in. In the meantime, the fact that photographs that appear to show her battered face have been made public is distasteful and unpleasant, but it really does her no actual harm, nor does it impede the course of justice in any serious way. I object to making the police into some sort of PR flack for a ‘star’, looking to control what the public can see and what they can’t.
llater,
llamas
the fact that photographs that appear to show her battered face have been made public is distasteful and unpleasant, but it really does her no actual harm
Yes it does. It humiliates her. And that has nothing to do with whether she is famous or not.
A woman who stays with a husband or boyfriend who beats her up will almost certainly have low self esteem. They will be ashamed of staying with him, and the humiliation they feel on being seen with their face beaten will compound that shame, making it more difficult to leave the man.
As you say you know nothing about Rhianna, you may like to know:
1 Her public life has in the last few months been marked by her cancellation of appearances at short notice, which certainly wouldn’t exactly challenge the assumption that she had been beaten up by the man in question before.
2 She does not have “an apparently-wholesome reputation.” Her father was an abusive drug addict. It is well documented that many women with abusive fathers end up in relationships with abusive men.
These facts might account for some of the sympathy being extended towards her by some journalists in the entertainment media. Although previously her unreliability had prompted some hostility.
I’m not a Rhianna fan either, by the way. I just take an interest in things.
I have to say I find your application of legal and civic principles with little apparent interest in the wellbeing of the (likely) victim upsetting, but more to the point, it’s an approach which is likely to lead to fewer convictions for domestic violence.
Bendle –
– her ‘humiliation’ is not my concern. ‘Humiliating’ someone – anyone – is not a crime. What should concern us is the very real matter of how, when and by whom she came by her apparent injuries. Her ‘humiliation’ be damned. The criminal justice system is not a counselling service, the activities of which are to be tailored to the mental well-being of those it addresses. Its business is finding criminals and bringing them to justice, and doing so in a publically-accountable way. If peoples’ feelings get hurt along the way, that’s just too bad.
– All of your various assumptions, suppositions and allegations about her upbringing, mode of living and life choices are all no-doubt true and valuable – but they tell me absolutely nothing about how the release of these images has harmed her in any way, or harmed the cause of justice in any way. I, for my turn, will observe that the release of these images (however it happened) is likely, on balance, to be more-prejudicial to the alleged assailant – and that may be why they were released.
– I note that I was incorrect when I wrote that the alleged assailant (who you have, seemingly, already completely analysed and convicted of all he is accused of here, and more) has not been charged with anything – he was booked on ‘suspicion’ and released on bail. This was 16 days ago, and the DA has not yet made an arrestable case – and all of a sudden, up pop these photographs. Which appear to show the results of a serious, violent, prolonged assault. And a suspected assailant has been freely named – and yet he’s not been charged? Does this not strike you as – odd?
– Something smells very fishy here. To me. I realize that you have already largely fitted this story into a pre-existing context, and now see everything in terms of that context. You’ll forgive me if I’m just a little bit more skeptical.
llater,
llamas
I may have missed a few points here and there but I have to agree with Llamas.
‘We don’t punish crime to set an example . . ‘
Other than perhaps persuading the individual not to repeat the act/offense, then exactly why do we punish
except to set an example of the consequences of certain actions ???
As for the assumed privacy issue – tough.
Some of these remarks, come, I assume from London dwellers ( forgive me if I’m wrong ) who are photographed how many time DAILY without regard to privacy and still no uproar to eliminate the cameras. Ah, but you say’ that’s in public’, to which I reply, you do not know that this apparent beating was not in public as well.
Th woman may very well be embarrassed but if the story as presented is true wouldn’t the more likely feelings toward her be one of sympathy ??
The only disgusting thing I see about this is the money involved for the images. Even that is somewhat ‘gray’ given celebrities general propensity for ‘exposure’.
llamas, do you not consider humiliation harm, then?
By the way, everything I cited is a matter of public record, rather than being supposition, assumption or allegation. I didn’t say Chris Brown had beaten her up.
However, I should have added that if he wasn’t guilty of assault, one might have thought he would have issued some sort denial of the accusations rather than this statement:
“Words cannot begin to express how sorry and saddened I am over what transpired. I am seeking the counseling of my pastor, my mother and other loved ones and I am committed, with God’s help, to emerging a better person.”
I too agree with Llamas. Criminal complaints and trials are inherently public affairs. The old form of pleading (probably still used in some places) was that the action complained of was “against the peace and dignity of the state” (or, for you Brits, “the Queen”). The victim is not a party to the action, merely a “complaining witness”. It is the state which brings all criminal actions (indeed, only the state has the power to do so), and as Llamas said it is acting in the name of all of us. We have a legitimate right to know what is being done in our name. And, and he and Jerry have noted, criminal punishment does, and properly should, have (at least in part) a deterrent effect.
If someone wants to keep such matters private the proper remedy is to bring a civil action, not file a criminal complaint. True, one is still making use of the courts, and most pleadings are in the public record, but in such cases judges are more willing to seal embarassing or confidential material. This is legitimate because the action is not being maintained in the state’s name; the state is merely a neutral arbiter of the dispute.
Bendle wrote:
‘llamas, do you not consider humiliation harm, then?’
Sure, humiliation can do tremendous harm. But it’s still not a crime.
If and when this ever becomes a criminal case, these images (if they are police photos) will be entered into evidence and they will – or should – become available to the public. (If they are not police photos, then they belong to whoever took them and that person gets to choose what to do with them. Any remedy that Rihanna might have against that person, eg for invasion of privacy, is purely civil, not criminal.) The ‘harm’ of humiliation that you are so concerned about will happen then, it’s not so different from it happening now. And that humiliation is an unfortunate but unavoidable side-effect of the criminal justice process, which concerns itself (and rightly so) with the things people do and not the ways people feel.
If Rihanna thinks that she has been ‘humiliated’ by these images, then let her bring civil suit for damages against whoever it is that she thinks ‘harmed’ her. It simply does not have any bearing on the criminal case. Her chance of winning such a civil case is very slim, I think – if the images are, what they are claimed to be, they are a matter of public record and she has no say in whether they are made available to the public. In such matters, criminal justice – the interests of society – always outweighs civil justice – the desires of the individual.
llater,
llamas
I did not say humiliating someone was a crime, nor did I suggest it should be.
In an earlier post, you said that “the fact that photographs that appear to show her battered face have been made public is distasteful and unpleasant, but it really does her no actual harm, not does it impede the course of justice in any serious way.”
I pointing out that the photographs do do her actual harm.
I didn’t say it was a crime.
In an earlier post you said: “the fact that photographs that appear to show her battered face have been made public is distasteful and unpleasant, but it really does her no actual harm, nor does it impede the course of justice in any serious way.”
I said the photographs did do her actual harm.
Talking of humiliation…
Llamas (and Laird), you did a very good job describing the way things are (as opposed to my POV, which describes the way I think things should be) – thank you for the clarification, specifically of the point of the criminal justice system acting on behalf of the state and not on behalf of the victim (it should have been obvious from the standard wording “the state of…vs…). You have given me a good reason to reconsider the role of the state in administering criminal justice.
My Michigander friend correctly observes that these photos, over the course of the criminal process, will become public record. At least, they will if they’re admitted into evidence. That’s a bigger ‘if’ than we’ve covered.
1) Okay, we have a named suspect. He has not AFAIK been charged with anything. Until he is, his name should have been closely held. I never let my suspects’ names out on the street until I’m ready to actually act with that information. For two reasons: One, he’s not as likely to try to run from me if the first that he knows that I’m arresting him is when I tell him “turn around, put your hands on your head, and lace your fingers.” And two, he doesn’t have quite the same embarassment that comes from being reminded that the cops are interested in him by all of his friends. So I keep my cards close to the vest until I’ve got a warrant approved or a summons ready to serve.
2) The DDA doesn’t just walk into the courtroom and start handing 8×10 glossies of tuned-up girlfriend to jurors. When he files the complaint, he has to include the full list of witnesses he intends to call and evidence he intends to present. The defense then gets to file motions to suppress[1] a given witness or given item of evidence. The classic example is the fruit of an illegal search. However, that’s not the only reason to suppress. Evidence can also be suppressed because it’s irrelevant, or because it’s unreliable (hearsay, for instance), or because it’s unduly prejudicial: a risk with these photos in this case.
What I mean by “unduly prejudicial:[2]” Imagine that this case fell onto my desk and that the major charge to be prosecuted is, say, “second-degree assault.” The elements of which are that the defendant, in the State of Colorado, knowingly or recklessly cause serious bodily injury to any person. Each of those elements needs to be independently proven beyond a reasonable doubt for a conviction to result.
“Serious bodily injury” has a specific definition in state law. Generally, SBI has to be certified by a doctor. All he does is describe the injuries he finds on the victim and then says “In my medical judgment, those injuries constitute SBI.” But we still have to present some evidence of what the injuries actually are. Thus the photographs. However, an excessively gory or dramatic picture may inflame the jury emotionally, causing them to go outside of their duty to render a verdict based upon the evidence presented. In short, their emotions will cause them to perceive guilt where it may not exist, out of sympathy for the battered person in the photo. So, a judge will sometimes suppress a photo because it’s too emotionally inflammatory. In those cases, the judge will tell us that we need to substantiate SBI by some other means. Different photos, for instance, or the doctor’s treatment notes.
Of course, some judges will also recognize that in some cases, the pictures were emotionally-laden but were also the best or most-accurate way to document a fact or circumstance in contention. Then, the method in which the evidence was gathered becomes even more relevant. An example that you see in crime-scene classes is, some camera film[3] is advertised as making your colors more vivid than vivid. That’s not what we want in evidence. We want pictures that accurately portray their subjects as it actually appeared to us at the time of photography. An accurate representation, no more and no less. Too much color, beyond what’s accurate, is also prejudicial.
Another problem: these photos combined with the release of a suspect’s name, even without charges. By now, in the court of public opinion, he’s guilty. Or guilty enough that he can argue (with at least a little credibility) that he can’t get a fair trial any more. (And if you’ve ever dealt with the frustration of not getting a complete copy of the case file from the police, when you were victim or witness, or the frustration of the cops refusing to discuss a case with you at all: that’s why.)
As for “justice must be seen…” I think deterrence is utterly critical. We prevent some crimes by locking the actor up where he can’t misbehave, at least for a while. IMHO, we prevent more by having his friends all say “You hear that he got ninety days for drunk driving? I ain’t never doing that in that town again!” Or, when I write an evil, fascistic ticket to a guy who runs a red light, I actually want him to go and bitch to his friends about how mean and nasty I was. They’ll be less likely to run the same red light themselves.
[1] Meaning, a motion to prevent the trier of fact, usually a jury, from being shown a particular item or told of its existence.
[2] Colorado terms and definitions used; I don’t know California’s.
[3] Kodak Royal Gold, my go-to film for non-work use, is an example here.
So Llamas wants a criminal justice system in which woman are fearful to come forward when they have their faces punched. I am guessing Llamas is a man. Of course that is not how he will see it. He’ll say “if they want to press charges then a little embarrassment is no big deal” or something like that.
Sounds very sensible but has no basis in messy reality at all.
So I guess if the photographs the cops take can be sold to the media for money because a trial or even charges, as it’s all “public”, well why not wire taps? Mafia capo having a chat? Sure, why not. Protected witnesses? Hell, lets sell their names to the tabloid too. All must be public!
llamas wrote:
the criminal justice process, which concerns itself (and rightly so) with the things people do and not the ways people feel.
Sunfish’s excellent description of the criminal justice process demonstrates that unless it does concerns itself with the ways people feel, it will reduce its chances of correctly establishing what they do.
Criminal justice principles should not concern themselves with feelings. The process has to involve compromise to deal with what Janine describes as messy reality”. Would anyone argue that it’s a bad idea to allow a woman alleging rape to be initially interviewed by female police officers? Obviously in an ideal world male police officers would be as neutral and easy to talk to as female officers. In messy reality, the woman making the allegation is far more likely to give a more accurate account to another woman.
Please note the point is the acccuracy of the account, not the sympathetic hearing.
Janine wrote:
‘So Llamas wants a criminal justice system in which woman are fearful to come forward when they have their faces punched.’
Inflammatory, argumentative and entirely without foundation. A poor attempt to deflect attention from the point by an ad-hominem attack and a play for sympathy. We’re having a serious discussion here – either join the grown-ups, or keep quiet.
FTR, I want a criminal justice system which finds and punishes criminals openly and in the cold light of day. Not a system which relies on evidence which is kept secret so that people’s feelings won’t be hurt.
So that we can see where you’re coming from, Janine, please describe your opinion of the idea that the names of accused rapists should be kept from being published in the press unless/until they are convicted.
Wire taps? Sure, if you’re going to send someone to jail on the basis of a wire-tap, or surveillance video, I want that payed in open court and made available to the media. That is often the case already, as it should be.
Bendle makes more sense, in that the CJS can certainly look at ways to ensure that accurate evidence is obtained. But let’s take his/her example further. Let’s say that a woman makes an accusation of rape and is interviewed by female officers and examined by female medical staff, because it is felt that this will give a better chance of obtaining more-complete evidence.
Should that evidence then be kept secret, even to the point (and beyond) of a trial, because it is ‘humiliating’ to the accuser? Are we to have ‘special’ crimes, where saving the accuser from ‘humiliation’ is more important than an open, public process?
What about the ‘humiliation’ of the accused, quite possibly branded as the perpetrator of a horrible crime that all abhor, when in fact he/she may be guilty of nothing and the victim of a malicious and false allegation? Or doesn’t that matter so much – as long as the accuser is a woman, and the accused a man?
I’m just askin’.
My natural skepticism also calls me to point out the implicit bias in Bendle’s description, where it is simply assumed that any allegation of rape is true and that the use of female officers to interview accusers merely helps to get a more-accurate account of the crime. Messy reality is somewhat different . . . . .
It might also be good to consider that the CJS is not set up simply to efficiently process those accused of abusing women into prison – it does actually have the purpose of determining whether or not abuse actually took place, and who did it, before locking the accused away. In your desire to protect the innocent flowers of womanhood from humiliation and embarrassment, you may want to spare a thought at least for the idea that the alleged abuser may not have actually done what he is accused of, and that it might be a good idea to have one of those trial things, you know, with lawyers and judges and evidence and stuff.
I say ‘Kobe Bryant’. What comes to your mind?
‘Rapist’. You know it does.
What was he convicted of? What did he admit, and what did he deny? (It’s OK to Google it – most people have to, because most people have no idea of what actually happened. They just ‘know’ he’s a rapist. Everyone knows that.)
What was the name of his accuser?
Who suffered more ‘humiliation’ in that case? The accused, or the accuser?
Think about it.
llater,
llamas
llamas, I do respect your point of view, but I feel you are looking for bias in my account. In fact I deliberately sought to make it unbiased, hence:
– I refer to a woman alleging rape, not a rape victim.
– I specified “a woman” because men can be rape victims too. In fact when posting I did construct a multi-gender version (!) but it became unclear. One cannot include every single caveat and qualification in a single post.
– I refer to the “accuracy of the account”, not “the crime”. In practice in rape cases, female interviewers are more likely to flush out false accusations.
To answer your question, I would without qualification respect the right to privacy of the accused and the accuser. And in some cases I would keep it secret on both sides, as sometimes happens – you may recall the abuse case of the father and his daughters in a Sheffield Court in December last year.
I take your point about Kobe Bryant. And if you don’t mind me saying so, I think I understand your annoyance that in discussions such as this, the principles of law and justice tend to be derailed by assumption and speculation. It’s a very emotive subject, and it is true there are some women (and men) who will make false allegations, and biased dupes who will believe them, in order to slur the good name of innocent people. I am not being bogus when I say this, I mean it.
However, as you might perhaps guess, I have some personal experience in this area. Several sexually and physically abused close female relatives, abusive male relatives, and (though I realise this will probably get me drummed off samizdata!) work in the public and private care sectors. I have not been a victim nor perpetrator myself. Now, I know when someone says “I have personal experience…” it throws the argument, detracts from principles, runs the risk of becoming a competitive misery-sharing exercise. This is absolutely not my intention. I do sincerely respect your point of view, and in fact I would argue that sometimes, some of your cool rationality would be of benefit in dealing with cases of rape and abuse.
I just mention this experience so that you know I’m not making it up when I say the actual reality is that there are thousands and thousands of cases, probably more than most people would believe, in which the victims do nothing precisely because of the humiliation (sorry to use that word again, but there it is) and the public exposure. The embarrassment and shame that people – women and men – feel when it happens to them is unique, and it gets in the way of rational, responsible behaviour. The abusers tend to know this very well, and use it to stop their victims going to the police.
As I think you’ll understand, one of the worst things about this situation is that it means the perpetrators, male and female, to carry on freely. And it is very common. The more privacy the victim has, the more likely they are to make a complaint, and thus the more likely justice is to be done. In contrast, by the way, someone make a false accusation is likely to be less interested in privacy.
That’s why I don’t think it’s quite so simple as not being concerned with how people feel, and why I said humiliation was significant when I entered this discussion.
I’m sorry to have gone on so long here – I just wanted you to know what the reality of the real situation was. I’m also sorry some of my early posts were a bit angry. And I repeat that I’m not trying to override or short circuit the arguments with confession/accusation etc etc. Your arguments are difficult for me, but I think it’s important to have them.
Best wishes.
Bendle:
Don’t worry about being bounced out of here. There’s at least one guy who puts the ‘police’ into ‘police state,’ another who’s retired from the same thing, and one more current and one more retired who haven’t been seen in this thread yet.
If I were the supreme dictator of how the US CJ system worked, trials would continue to be open to the public and media in all respects. Any evidence that either side doesn’t want publicly viewed would be excluded entirely. (Yes, I know the people who wouldn’t shut up about us being at war won’t like it. Too bad.). Motions hearings where the admissibility of evidence is to be weighed, I don’t know. Although I can see good argument for closing them, at least in rare cases, just to preserve the integrity of the jury pool. The case at hand is a good example.
Releasing the names of involved parties: In the US, the media has all of the victim and witness information on day one of the trial. If motions hearings are held as to, say, the competence of an expert witness, then that witness’ name is out there a lot sooner. It’s a convention among the press that prevents publication of names, and that doesn’t have the force of law.[1]
Haven’t been either victim or perp myself. I have victims in the family, though, and a passing acquaintance with this stuff professionally. It’s gorram ridiculous how many non-rape DV complaints I get that turn out to be false: an accuser looking for an advantage in a divorce case[2], or being a drama queen. I kind of wish our DA’s office weren’t so soft on filing false-reporting charges. We get the usual excuses “It’ll discourage real victims from coming forward!” which is certainly not good but does nothing for the victim of the false report. See llamas’ example of Kobe Bryant, or the lacrosse team at Duke University.
The first DV I ever went on, this was exactly what happened. She filed for divorce. She then cooked up a story about how he pushed her down the stairs. We get the call and find her freshly fallen down the stairs and him drunk, insisting that he’d walked in from the bar five minutes before and that he didn’t do it. She signed a statement with a false-reporting advisement at the bottom. We arrested him for 3rd-Degree Assault. Then, a few weeks later and a week before the arraignment, we find out that she’d bragged to a friend about setting him up in order to get the kids. Obviously, we immediately gave that to the DA and he filed his motion to dismiss, which was granted.
He could probably have won that at trial, but there are many good reasons (especially in the US) to keep it from going that far if the guy is innocent.
[1] Is the UK different about this?
Bendle – a well-thought response. Thank you for that. I do see many of your points – I just don’t agree with them . . .
See what Sunfish wrote. As one of our resident active-duty JBTs, he knows as much about the ‘messy reality’ of these matters as anyone here. I played in his duck-pond many years ago, and while my institutional knowledge may be out-of-date, I believe my street degree is still current.
To address Sunfish’s [1], yes, in the UK, a judge can issue a gag order to prevent the media from reporting names and breaking the order means contempt and possibly jail. In these days of the Interwebtubes, such orders do not have the force they used to. The UK media generally self-polices these matters pretty vigourously – but strictly along PC lines. They voluntarily withhold the names of CSC accusers, for example, but will print the names of the accused unless ordered not to, and sometimes even then.
I agree with the rules of procedure that are proposed for the Sunfish Empire. I particularly like the one about excuding evidence entirely if one side wants to use it, but keep it secret. No dice.
More people should grasp the reality of what Sunfish describes and what most street coppers know – DV and CSC complaints are routinely fabricated for all sorts of reasons and (the other side of the coin) are also dreadfully under-reported or recanted, even when anyone who can fog a mirror can clearly see exactly what’s going on. You should also realize that most working coppers hate both sides of this nasty calculus. Most coppers dislike real wife-beaters and will pursue them with vigour – but most coppers have also seen plenty of tales of DV that are more-or-less entirely fabricated.
We have a nationally-known figure in our neck of the woods that every copper in every department for miles around knows about – he likes to get a skinful and then slap his wife around. They’ve been to his mansion a dozen times or more, to find him wasted – but still well-aware of his rights – and her, slapped around. But each time, she figures out that if she presses on, it’s bye-bye lakeside mansion, bye-bye Bentley, bye-bye unlimited charge accounts and back to working for a living. And so she hides in the closet and won’t come out, and she goes to the spa for a week, and it’s all good. One day, he’ll hit her when a copper just happens to be driving by, and then it will be all over. Now, who’s at fault here? Him? Her? The cops? You tell me.
I once was on an auto theft bust where the female part of the duo went from weeping hysterics (at the scene) to a calm tale of graphic DV and intimidation (after talking with her attorney). It wasn’t her fault that she was boxing the rides out to Mexico and the Phillippines – he was beating her! It’s often used as a convenient bargaining tool and/or means of garnering sympathy.
llater,
llamas
Drop dead you arrogant piece of crap. Sorry but the woman is intimidated. Read my fucking comment, I was talking about releasing wiretaps before any trial, just like this picture was released.
Ah, the old ‘drop dead’ argument – always so persuasive.
I did read your comment, to wit:
‘So I guess if the photographs the cops take can be sold to the media for money because a trial or even charges, as it’s all “public”, well why not wire taps?’
Would you like to try again – in English, this time? Go ahead – you can do it, I know you can. Try.
‘Intimidated’ means ‘in fear’, or ‘coerced or inhibited by threats’. Please describe how the release of these photographs into the public domain – regardless of when it happened – caused her to be be ‘intimidated’.
Oh, and by the way – foul language may impress the crowd you run with, but it really has no effect here.
Arrogant? Why, yes – thank you for noticing.
llater,
llamas
I didn’t read the entire thread so if I am being redundant I’m sure I’ll hear about it. I am speaking to moral right and wrong, not necessarily the laws as they are.
People own their own bodies and the privacy of them. If someone is attacked they should be able to report the attack, have it documented according to police/legal standards but, after talking to counsel, decide that they do not want to press charges. If that is their choice, obviously their privacy is not public property. If the forces of justice want to pursue the alleged perpetrator they must do it without violating the victim’s rights.
Further, the release of prejudicial evidence to the general public prevents the victim from pursuing a whole set of remedies that should be available including requiring the alleged perpetrator to consent to restraining orders, getting counseling, paying a settlement or settling to other terms out of court in exchange for not publishing it. If the alleged perpetrator doesn’t like the terms offered, facing the evidence in open court is always an option.
While it is easy to say that the greater good, society’s safety, is more important than one victim’s rights, I hope the ultimate consequences of that priority is apparent to everyone here.
llamas:
Let me guess: white rapper from 8-Mile, described by PJ O’Rourke as “With all the tornadoes at his disposal, how did God miss that particular trailer park?”
Midwesterner:
Protection orders: issued ex parte. I think the standards need to be tightened up slightly (see my comment about false reporting above) but the suspect doesn’t have to consent to an order in order to be subject to it.
Counseling: Commonly ordered as part of a criminal sentence in DV. It’s especially common where the sentence is either probation or deferral. I don’t think much of it as a component of a criminal sentence.[1]
What I really don’t like is, using the threat of a criminal case to create leverage for one party in a civil matter. Whatever my role is in the CJ system, I don’t think it’s to bully lousy husbands into settling out.
[1] There are times where it might have a place. I charged a guy with misd child abuse last year: he threw his daughter out of the house in the dead of winter, at night, when she wasn’t dressed for it. She was being a typical teenage girl, spreading chaos, drama, and bullshit, and he was drunk and lost his patience. He plead out and the sentence was a deferred sentence featuring anger counseling. No jail or fine. I thought it was a good outcome, but this was the rare case where I thought counseling would have done any good.
Sunfish – no, not him. I actually have some respect for Slim Shady, compared to the person in question. So far as I am aware, Mathers has never physically abused his wives – wife – if you marry and divorce her twice, is she a wife, or a wives?
Midwesterner – regarding this:
‘People own their own bodies and the privacy of them. If someone is attacked they should be able to report the attack, have it documented according to police/legal standards but, after talking to counsel, decide that they do not want to press charges. If that is their choice, obviously their privacy is not public property. If the forces of justice want to pursue the alleged perpetrator they must do it without violating the victim’s rights.’ –
I do NOT agree.
A criminal act against an individual is also an act against society, and cannot be simply resolved between two individuals if they so choose, because
– a criminal who goes unpunished will likely repeat the crime, and possibly against another
– many criminal acts cannot be resolved between individuals – you can’t be un-murdered.
– the likelihood of intimidation of victims is extremely high.
The thinking you describe leads to the exact sorts of cases that Sunfish and I have described – the battered wife who refuses to cooperate with the CJS. The price society pays is that a wife-beater goes unpunished (which is bad enough) but also that violent criminals learn that they can get away with almost-anything if they can just ‘persuade’ their victims not to talk. This works fine for the Mafia – is that how you really want the CJS to operate? I’m a tremendous padrinophile and I sometimes have a lot of sympathy for the idea of ‘street justice’, but this way lies violent anarchy and an awful lot of inter-piscine dormancy.
I understand your idealized Libertarian thinking here, and that would be fine if all criminal actors were doctrinally-pure Libertarians too – but they are not, and in the world of ‘messy reality’, the majority of innocent law-abiding citizens need a sometimes-intrusive CJS to protect them from the predatory and amoral minority. Occasionally, that means that their sacred privacy and absolute right of self-determination, so cardinal to Libertarian ideology, must be compromised. Too bad.
llater,
llamas
Sure llamas and the best way to get a battered woman to cooperate for the good of society is to put her picture in the media for prurient interest. Forgive me if I think you are the one who is pie-in-the-sky divorced from reality.
Sunfish,
I did stipulate moral, not necessarily legal.
Regarding “using the threat of a criminal case to create leverage for one party in a civil matter.”
To points, one is that insurance companies have for ages been settling out of court with terms that require the recipient of their largess to keep their mouths shut. I’m not sure how that fits into your picture.
But my greater point is that the threat of legal action exists no matter. Your interpretation assumes that courts will side with the accuser, rather than rule on the facts. If that is the case the system is busted and preventing it from certain outcomes can never substitute for finding facts accurately.
What is at stake here is the alleged victim’s and the alleged perp’s privacy and reputations. Their right to negotiate between each other should be recognized in this as in any other case. There is not a crime until a court says there is a crime, there are only claims. I strongly believe people wrongly accused (like Ezra Levant) should have the option of seeking damages against their accuser. As I stated it, both parties have the option of demanding a court to make a determination of fact.
I do not challenge your implied assertion that the legal process is (often) a weapon wielded with violent intent. I just have a real problem with stipulating outcomes of a process as a means of reducing the consequences of abuse of the process. The abuse itself needs to be addressed instead.
You are convicting the person without a trial. Perhaps you meant to say “an accused who goes untried but would have been found guilty if he had been is likely to repeat the crime, and possibly against another.” But that isn’t what you said.
If the court wants to find the alleged victim incompetent to act in their own behalf, then is the time for a guardian to make that person’s decisions. There are no doubt very many cases where that may be appropriate but is not presently done because the state preempts the individual in all cases anyway. And obviously a dead person cannot act in their own behalf and it is entirely appropriate for their cause to be taken up by a surrogate.
Regarding the intimidation of victims, how many murders are committed by people under restraining orders? I personally suspect that in cases with the expectation of extreme violence, restraining orders are of minimal value at best, maybe SF has some opinions. If somebody is being “intimidated” with threats or expectation of violence the process of justice needs to consider the existence of a genuine threat itself to be a crime in process and worthy of active and ongoing intervention.
If a person (or a guardian acting in a person’s behalf) expresses concern for their safety, that is in itself an accusation of a crime that needs to be addressed on its own merits. If the person is not concerned for their own safety then either the courts should determine if the person is incompetent to make their own decisions or accept the person’s own opinion.
Your entire reasoning is based on a belief that the state always knows better than its subjects. You hold an apparent belief in the incompetence of anyone to make their own decisions; for the greater good, society must make a default assumption of victim incompetence. Needless to say, I disagree.
Incidentally, perhaps you can explain why someone who had a restraining order against him committed a ritual beheading and was only charged with 2nd degree homicide? Oh that’s right, the state knows best.
Our gracious host wrote:
‘Sure llamas and the best way to get a battered woman to cooperate for the good of society is to put her picture in the media for prurient interest.’
A thing I never said, never suggested, and would not agree with at all. Where did this come from? Would you mind perhaps just taking me to task for what I actually said, and not for what you wished I’d said?
What I thought I was saying, until you put me straight, is that, while it might not be the best thing that these images have appeared in the media before any trial, if there are indeed charges and a trial follows, they should be and most-likely would be entered into evidence and made available to the media. The fact that they have appeared in public before any charges or trial doesn’t have too much impact on the trial – and they will most-likely have negative impact on the accused.
Without wanting to get into a complete semantic swamp with alleged’s and maybe’s, let’s stipulate that this woman is indeed the innocent victim of the beating that these images suggest. And let’s stipulate that these images are indeed copies of photographs taken by police investigating the assault.
Ask yourself this question – does the pre-trial release of these images present any danger to the course of justice? Is her attacker more-likely to avoid justice as a result of these images being made public? Is her attacker more-likely to be unjustly convicted of the assault as a result of these images being made public?
If anything, these images are prejudicial to the accused. Apart from that, the timing has no real impact on the course of justice. And they would come out anyway.
I really don’t understand this suggestion that the leaking of these particular images will somehow dissuade future victims from coming forward any more than the knowledge that such images will come out in any trial. Is some future victim going to say to herself ‘I can’t bear the idea of the public seeing these images of me today – but I don’t care if they see them when my attacker goes to trial’? If a victim will be dissuaded from coming forward because she doesn’t want such images of her being seen – what does it matter to her when they would be seen? Today, they’re intolerable, but tommorow, they’re fine?
Coming back to the original allegation:
‘ . . .the best way to get a battered woman to cooperate for the good of society is to put her picture in the media for prurient interest.’
I think I detect a note of sarcasm. . . . So let me turn it around – it seems that what you are saying is that
‘ . . . the best way to get a battered woman to cooperate for the good of society is to keep the evidence of the crime committed against her secret.’
Does that about sum it up?
If that’s what you’re suggesting, then what that means is that there will be ‘special’ crimes, where people can be convicted and put in jail based on evidence that the public is forbidden to see.
How long do you suppose that powers like that, in the hands of the state, will be limited to the worthy goals that you have in mind?
I’d also like to call on someone – anyone – to address the glaring doube standard that’s self-evident here – namely, that everyone is up-in-arms about these images of an alleged victim, it’s just outrageous, harrumph, harrumph! – and yet noone here (expect for me) has expressed the slightest concern that the alleged attacker has been freely named and accused in the media – on the basis of precisely nothing. In other words, it’s just fine for the media to freely publish the name of an alleged abuser, and for posters here to speculate freely about what he did, and what his motives were, and why this woman might be his victim, and how he might have done this to her before – but heaven forbid that we see pictures of what he is alleged to have done. That might be (gasp) humiliating!
Who’s been humiliated more so far, would you say?
All this discussion clearly points to the fact that most people have been pre-conditioned to a specific narrative when it comes to DV – the woman is always the innocent victim in fear of her abuser, the man is always a dim-witted drunk who talks with his fists. It’s not suprising – this has been the exclusive narrative for decades now. I think what has so many people mad (in part at least) is that some people who actually have first-hand experience in these matters have raised the possibility that it isn’t all so black-and-white, and that this simplistic narrative and its simplistic outcomes is not a good way to run a criminal justuce system.
I gotta go for a day or two. Anyone else want to misrepresent me or cuss me out? Do it now or you’ll have to wait.
llater,
llamas
I posted a brief comment fairly early in this thread, but since then I’ve been content to ride on Llama’s estimable coattails, since he’s been doing a fine job of articulating the position. His latest post was excellent, and I’m in complete agreement.
It is not my position (and I believe Llamas would agree) that the release of these photos at this time was a good thing. The person responsible should be appropriately punished. But the primary reason for this is that the photos are prejudicial to the rights of the defendant (i.e., his ability to receive a fair trial). They will come out anyway, so the timing is essentially irrelevant to Rihanna. Unless, of course, she was intending to use them to coerce her attacker into a lucrative monetary settlement, and was using the threat of criminal charges as a bargaining chip. In other words, blackmail. The problem with that, however, is that threatening someone with criminal prosecution in order to extort some form of compensation is itself a crime.
Midwesterner:
Attempting to make the two exactly the same thing doesn’t always work so well. I think laws should have at least some basis in shared morality or values, but that’s a dangerous door to open and a very long discussion, probably for another time.
If this is in relation to secret evidence: I don’t have a problem with two parties voluntarily seeking arbitration and closing that proceeding to everybody else, when the dispute in question is their own private matter. Their argument, their rules. But I still draw the distinction between ‘civil’ and ‘criminal.’ A private civil wrong is a fit subject for private mediation or arbitration. A crime is not.
The line from Ecclesiastes about the ‘race not being to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but time and chance happeneth to them all’ describes things a little too well for my taste. Sure, the side with both the law and the facts on its side is usually the best bet to prevail, but there have been enough high-profile exceptions that you’ll not catch me doing Pangloss with our justice system. It’s like Microsoft code: you usually can’t fix one thing without breaking a half-dozen others.[1]
Again, I think either you’re not seeing the distinction between ‘civil’ and ‘criminal’ or you’re suggesting that such a distinction should not be drawn.
And intimidating a victim or witness is already a crime. Strangely enough, here it’s called “Intimidating a Victim or Witness.”
As for protection orders…they’re great for protecting victims from violators who are stupid enough to get caught. In some jurisdictions they help to establish the paper trail so that when the victim shoots the offender and claims self-defense, everybody knows that she feared harm from him. But I think of them as being one component of a layered defense, along with a support network, good locks on the doors, a big dog, a cell phone, an expensive piece of Swiss hardware on the nightstand, and not having the SAOAFR. Anybody who considers one a complete answer is an idiot^H^H^H^H^H optimist.
Are you suggesting that filing a false complaint or other abuse of process should be a tort like slander? I think it already is in most states. And I agree: the guy who had his name dragged through the mud because of a false accusation should have a means of being made whole from that harm, and there should be a punitive deterrent to making such false accusations. Now go tell that to the victims of false reports to quit muttering into their beer and the lazy-assed prosecutors who always nolle false-reporting cases. They won’t listen to me.
Have a link handy? Speaking only for myself, I’d hate to speculate. At least, not in public. There might be a good reason, or it might turn out to be really, really stupid. But I’d need to be bribed (preferably with a six-pack and a bucket of wings) in order to go there without more information.
Llamas:
Give me a little bit of credit.
I only saw one person actually being out of line. If you think she’s worth the time and effort…well, I don’t. FIDO.
[1] Not to be confused with iJustice from Apple, where you can usually get a good result but you’ll have no idea how it happened, or GNU/JusTux, where the Slackware judge will make you handwrite all of your briefs (in pencil on newsprint) and the Ubuntu judge will not let you do your own arguing at all, and GNU/Judge RMS will hold you in contempt if you don’t scatter random GNUs in your pleadings.
I was waiting for the magic “blackmail” claim to be made but I didn’t expect it from Laird. Morally speaking, blackmail is when you have information that is not your own and use it to extort money from somebody else. Secretly taken photos of an ex are an example. To call out-of-court settlements “blackmail” you have to first agree that the (alleged) victim, without having filed any charges, is not entitled to her own privacy. If she is entitled to her own privacy, then it is her’s to negotiate as she sees fit. If there is any blackmail occurring in this case, it is the alleged perp who would hope the threat of publicizing the photos would prevent her pressing charges. It is not inconceivable that the DA finds this event a convenient way to force her hand. She has little reason now (and much public pressure) to press charges that she may otherwise have elected not to. Before throwing around ‘blackmail’ it pays to look more closely at the nature of the information under negotiation.
These pictures will not come out anyway if no charges are pressed. At least they should not. They should be public record only if a complaint pressed. Do you really believe that everything the police gather in their work is public record? If you believe there was an unauthorized withdrawal from your checking account and the police receive a copy of your transaction register to assist the investigation, is it public property? No. Say you found the theft was by a family member and you didn’t want charges brought. Is your check register still public property? It is evidence of a crime. There is a difference between being ‘public property’ and ‘in police custody’. Your check register only enters public domain if there is a trial. Or it least it should. People’s check registers might be worth a lot on the market. It is necessary for police to be able to retain evidence in custody without it becoming public property.
By claiming a payment would be “blackmail” one is claiming that the alleged perpetrator is entitled to keep the pictures of the victim secret. Using that reasoning, non-disclosure agreements between engineers and inventors are “blackmail”. After all, the engineer knows something the inventor has done and is taking an extra sum of money for keeping it secret. But that mistake is the natural progression of denying the (alleged) victim ownership of information about herself.
Your entire understanding of this (and llamas) seems to be based on the idea that this is not a crime against the person who was (again ‘allegedly ‘) attacked but rather a crime against ‘society’ or against the state. It is not. It is a crime against an individual.
Sunfish, the more important distinction is whether the criminal justice system exists to protect individuals, and treats the benefit to the larger society as an added value, or is it the other way around.
Chiclet keys on borrowed laptop in conference room far, far away – but still on the case!
Midwesterner – see what Sunfish wrote.
Sunfish – you are right, my bad. You did speak to the issue of the rights of the alleged abuser.
Funny that the only people who seem to have any such issues are a) a current JBT and b) a former JBT. I thought we were the ones only-too-anxious to railroad innocent citizens into the pokey on trumped-up charges? I thought that Libertarians were all concerned about the rights of the individual? Only some individuals, it seems.
Midwesterner wrote:
‘Morally speaking, blackmail is when you have information that is not your own and use it to extort money from somebody else.’
Wrong, wrong, wrong. A blackmailer may well use (often does) information or resources which he/she has every right to – photographs, other records of all sorts. It is completely misleading to suggest that the information used for blackmail is not the property of the blackmailer. A blackmailer may also extort all sorts of things other than money, including silence, compliance and a host of other outcomes.
As to this statement:
‘Your entire understanding of this (and llamas) seems to be based on the idea that this is not a crime against the person who was (again ‘allegedly ‘) attacked but rather a crime against ‘society’ or against the state. It is not. It is a crime against an individual.
You mischaracterize – me, anyway. Sunfish can speak for himself. But it’s not one, or the other – it’s BOTH. It’s crime against an individual AND a crime against the state. And sometimes, the state’s interest in finding and punishing a criminal – to protect the rest of us – outweighs the desires of the victim. IMHO, anyway.
You asked:
‘Incidentally, perhaps you can explain why someone who had a restraining order against him committed a ritual beheading and was only charged with 2nd degree homicide?’
Sunfish is circumspect, but not me! I’ll give you some suggested answers.
In New York, where this alleged homicide occurred, first degree homicide is defined with ‘special circumstances’, which include (IIRC) killing a police officer, killing a witness, multiple killings and some other special cases. In NY, second-degree homicide is the ‘all other premeditated homicides’ charge.
I suspect that the initial charge is 2° homicide because the prosecutor doesn’t yet know whether he killed her by beheading her (which might well kick it up to a ‘special circumstances’ homicide) or whether he stabbed her to death (as some news accounts have suggested) and then beheaded her corpse. I think the prosecutor has the premeditated part covered, so if there’s any change in the charges, I suspect that it will be up the ladder and not down.
I hope this addresses your questions. In this case, the state appears to be holding its cards WRT to charging until all the facts are in, otherwise known as ‘only charging what you can prove’. The state most-certainly knows a whole lot more about the circumstances of this case then you do. Your apparent disapproval of the prosecutor’s current choice of charges (which can be changed, of course) is based in emotion, not in fact. I prefer charges based on facts.
llater,
llamas
Sunfish,
Perhaps ‘moral’ is the wrong word to use. I definitely do not mean ‘moral’ in the sense of “God told me. . .” By ‘moral’, I mean consistent with the principle of the individual right to life, liberty and property. I consider ‘privacy’ to be intrinsic to those rights.
A quote from Ecclesiastes and MicroSoft bashing in one short paragraph; you totally pwn the style trophy.
And I am deeply offended by the “six-pack” reference. I thought I had made clear in the past that the day any beer changes hands between you and me is the day you tap the home brew. “Wings”? Yeah, sure. In any case more seriously, read this, this and here it says he was charged with “second-degree murder”.
Re criminal v civil: You picked up something I was going to leave as OT but maybe it isn’t. I do definitely have a problem with the concept of crimes against the state. The idea that murder is a crime against ‘God’, ‘The Church’, ‘The Crown’, ‘Nature’, The State, ‘The People‘ or whatever justification the authoritarian rulers of the day are claiming is fundamentally wrong. It is a crime by a person against a person.
The accretion of precedent has ameliorated some of the more egregious usurpations by collectivist forces who wrap themselves in the robes of authority, but that doesn’t alter the fundamental flaw in the concept.
Perhaps right or wrong, but would a tort lawyer, that is a prosecutor chosen by the wronged or their surrogate, have handled the case against Simpson better than the politicians did? I think in a world where the prosecution of interpersonal ‘crime’ was supervised by a plaintiff would almost certainly bring a better quality of justice. Particularly in light of the often spectacular abuses of prosecutorial immunity. The founders were rather strong an the grand jury system. I think with good reason; it off-sets some of the problems with the system.
Alisa:
Was this to what I said about deterrence? IMHO The whole purpose is to protect individuals, but how it protects individuals isn’t always immediately apparent. I don’t see ‘society’ as having an independent moral existence. Again, IMHO, it’s not a meaningless word but all it is, is the total of all of the individuals and their interactions with each other. Using it to refer to some abstract group is a useful shorthand, but that’s all it is.
But anyway, I see the role of the CJ system as protecting individuals by enforcing[1] the boundaries on individual behavior by establishing negative consequences for individual behavior that endangers other individuals.[2]
Quoth llamas:
Cut the guys a little slack. I don’t think most folks thought of that at all. The average person here has never had to prepare a case for court and then worry about whether it’s a winner or loser. If I had to guess, I’d guess that there are a lot of guys here whose only interactions with the CJ system happen when they counter-reported traffic accidents and stolen bikes. It’s not hypocrisy, It’s just that they didn’t even think about it because it’s not part of their world.
I didn’t know about the quirk of NY law. When I think of the distinction between 1o and 2o murder, here it depends on whether the guy acted with specific intent and after deliberation. And I was holding out for the wings and beer.
And (not just you) take a deep breath and take a break. You two are better than this.
[1] I use the term ‘enforcing’ here in order to separate the law’s enforcers from the lawmakers. I don’t think they should be the same people, for reasons that I hope are obvious.
[2] Yes, I know it’s gone far beyond that point. Drug prohibition and licenses for indoor cats and adult helmet laws were not my idea.
llamas,
Geez, the JBTs are piling on. Ain’t it always the way! I better hide the dogs. 🙂
RE the blackmail topic, you are describing how blackmail is defined, I am idealizing how it should be defined. Those two positions are not reconcilable. When ‘blackmail’ is defined as any use of confidential information to influence the behavior of another, that leaves a whole barrel of worms that require many patches to fix. Whoever ‘owns’ in the LLP sense the information is entitled to barter as they see fit. If blackmail is suspected, the route of attack should be through examining the ownership of the information, not how it is being used.
RE state v civil, you make a good pragmatically argued case, but so do socialists. When the priority is toward society, the execution is always vulnerable. I do not contest your goals for peace, safety and the restraint of persons from causing harm to others. But I do strongly contest any system of statecraft that puts the collective rights ahead of individual rights. That always ends in tears. Or worse.
Thank you for some clarification of the charge in New York. I left my comment to Sunfish re that in the previous comment but really want to see that pursued as premeditated murder. And yes, in spite of my (long) past career aspirations, I do not think killing an agent of the state should be a special case. . . For reasons already addressed in this comment.
I too was wondering about the attack of the giant JBTs. My dogs are afraid to come out from under the bed, Mid.
Sunfish:
Herein lies the problem. I am minding you footnotes, and what you may be missing here is that [2] is a mere symptom of the much larger problem. Simply put, and in my truly humble opinion, any kind of comprehensive crime prevention is not the role of the state. The only kind of crime prevention that the state has a role in is one that is based in individual cases, i.e. if Rihanna’s boyfriend has a good reason to believe that she is about to assault him, police should do their best to prevent this from occuring (and this is not just to pacify llamas: on her videos she does project some subtle quality I wouldn’t mess with).
Midwesterner, you are now reduced to idealizing everything. You want to change the definition of blackmail to something related to “ownership of the information”, but that isn’t the law. Moreover, your approach doesn’t deal with the circumstance where I lawfully own and properly could, if I so chose, publicly disclose information about you which you would consider embarassing, detrimental to your career aspirations, etc. And you also want to blur the distinction between criminal prosecutions and civil actions. Sorry, that’s just not the way it is. The prosecutor can decline to press charges even if the victim swears out a complaint, and likewise he can bring the case even if the victim won’t cooperate (as long as there is other evidence). As I said way back in this thread, the victim is not a party to the criminal case, merely a witness. If he wants to bring a parallel civil suit that’s his perogative (which, in fact, is what happened in the OJ Simpson case; the families of the victims have an uncollectible monetary judgment against him). The legal fiction is that the crime is committed against society as a whole, even though it manifested itself in damage to one individual. That’s the way anglo-saxon law has been for the last millennium or so, and by and large it’s not a bad system.
By the way, I only mentioned the word “blackmail” in explaining that threatening criminal prosecution is itself a crime; I did not mean to imply that I thought either party was doing so in this case.
Laird:
True, but all the while (or at least for the past…many years) the underlying unspoken assumption by a layman has been that in cases not involving controlled substances/prostitution/financial law, the state acts on behalf of the individual. Maybe this assumption should no longer remain unspoken.
Laird:
True, but all the while (or at least for the past…many years) the underlying unspoken assumption by a layman has been that in cases not involving drugs/prostitution/financial law, the state acts first and foremost on behalf of the individual. Maybe this assumption should no longer remain unspoken.
Indeed. Or it should no longer remain the assumption. “Ignorance of the law . . .” and so forth.
Only to note that reports are now surfacing that allege that Rihanna was the aggressor who started the altercation which led to her beating by striking (whatever his name is) with a phone and then with her fists, as well as verbally abusing him.
Sunfish, on a related note, I was looking at some evidence pictures yesterday and I saw a thing I’d never seen before – a colour chip, in the corner of the picture. It had maybe 6 colour stripes on it. Guy told me that this is now SOP for CSI photographers, allows the colour to be standardized if there’s any question about how ‘real’ the image is. Is this a common thing now?
llater,
llamas
Heh, told you.
So it’s gone from a he-said she-said DV to a self-defense or mutual-combat[1] DV. Even without them being celebrities, What a mess.
I’ve not heard of using sample colors like that.
We put a scale (ABFO #2, usually) and an 18% Neutral Gray sample card in most of our photos. The first frame in a series of frames with consistent lighting between them gets one. By doing that, we can adjust for bad lighting when the pictures are developed. Or at least supply the standard with the pictures, so a judge and jury can see how the scene was illuminated.
Is the color chip something like a TV test pattern? We haven’t done that, that I know of, but it sounds like a good idea. With that chip, someone with Photoshop could have a standard to adjust the colors in the picture back to normal[1] to compensate for bad lighting, and someone without could still look at the picture and at least have some idea of what the colors would be in ordinary white light.
[1] For the lay reader: Normally, in DV cases we’re expected to identify and arrest the ‘predominate aggressor.’ That’s normally the person who, but for his actions, there wouldn’t have been a violent crime committed. Where a party claims ‘self-defense’ we need to do at least some evaluation of whether (s)he was reasonably in fear of harm. “Mutual combat” is where the two had a fight, almost as though by agreement. That means that we couldn’t figure out who started it. Unsurprisingly, prosecutors hate it when we bring them cases where it’s not crystal-clear who the bad guy actually was.
[2] That is, if correcting a picture would even be allowed. Right now, we don’t allow any image manipulation or correction at all. It’s academic for me, since all of my photography is still 35mm anyway. It’s easy to produce the negatives to prove that the print hasn’t been tampered with, but inability to correct for bad light is a problem sometimes.
This is like a card, maybe 1 x 3, with 6 coloured stripes on it. I remember seeing a red and a green and blue. There was also the standard B&W scale. These were images of a wrecked auto.
This fellow is actually a commercial photographer, not a police officer, who does contract photography for various local departments – not crime scenes (usually) but autopsy pictures, images of the remains of the cars, and pictures for reconstructions and storyboards for use at trial. I will see him again next week – I will ask him.
I think – and you know what that’s worth – that this is done because of the use of false-colour images that are made so easy with digital photography. This may be a quick and easy way to say ‘the is a true colour image, or close enough, anyway.’
Interesting stuff.
Around here, given the local political climate, ‘mutual combat’ is shorthand for ‘arrest him anyway.’ There’s an image that’s now located in a desk drawer of a local NIKA, of a man with the perfect impression of a dinner fork in his face – all four tines made full contact. It’s a booking picture – he got arrested.
Tx,
llater,
llamas
Llamas Surely if you are treating celebs the same as everyone else then you should not be stealing images from them and selling them to the highest bidder.
And if that happens then the purchaser should be prosecuted receiving. If the image becomes public domain legitimately that is one thing but this is another.
Oh, and if she had been raped and beaten and they took pics for evidence of her injuries and they showed her breasts and such, are you saying these should be in the papers?
Moggs T wrote:
‘Surely if you are treating celebs the same as everyone else then you should not be stealing images from them and selling them to the highest bidder. ‘
You cannot ‘steal’ an image of someone from them in the criminal sense. An image is the property of the person who made it. These images (if they are evidence photographs) are public property and so belong in the public domain unless the interests of justice dictate otherwise.
If there is a crime here it may be the selling of public property – but it would be virtually-impossible to prosecute.
‘ . . . and if she had been raped and beaten and they took pics for evidence of her injuries and they showed her breasts and such, are you saying these should be in the papers?’
If such images are used as evidence by the state then they should be in the public domain. They are being used to (potentially) deprive another citizen of life or liberty under colour of law, and anything used to do that needs to be unambiguously available to the public, so that justice can be seen to be done openly.
Should such images be in the papers? If it were up to me – no. I guess I would say that that would be up to the publisher of a paper to decide whether or not to publish such images.
llater,
llamas