Monday, December 3, 2007

A crime is a crime

I want to take a moment to say thanks for having me here. I hope you find my blogs worth your reading. Comments are always accepted and appreciated. Thanks so much and now on to the business at hand.

I live in Orlando and there is a story here causing quite a debate. When I first heard it on the radio, I thought I must be misunderstanding something because it didn’t make sense to me, some parts actually infuriated me. I was in the middle of writing a post on the paper’s site when I thought this would the perfect entry for my new blog. I have included the link if you want to read it the full article.

A woman was arrested on capital rape charges after a tape of her raping a five year old boy was found by a garbage collector. She was immediately charged and confessed to the crime. She was found guilty by a jury and went on to sentencing. Sounds like an open and shut case, right? Well, wrong!

On the day of sentencing, the judge, not the defense attorney, threw out the verdict and ordered a new trial because in Florida, the mandatory sentence is life without parole. The judge released a statement which in part said:

“The fact that the defendant faces a Draconian punishment for a crime where the victim is alive and apparently living a normal life some eleven years after the criminal act, when criminals who have killed people are released from prison almost daily, makes it even more imperative that the defendant receive a fair and impartial trial "

What the judge is implying and the article is summarizing is that since the child doesn’t seem to remember the rape or suffer ill effects from it, is it really a crime. What kind of rationale is this? Is this the precedent we really want to set? How can anyone say if he will remember the rape down the road, or if he remembers now but is too ashamed to admit it. When I was 16, you would of thought I lived a normal life too. I hid my pain well and the last thing I wanted to do at that age was talk about being raped. Regardless, the little boy in the video deserves justice. Whether he remembers or not, a crime is a crime.

Let's take a moment to examine this thinking a little further. How far can this be taken? If I am drugged or beaten before I am raped and I can't remember the details, does that mean I wasn't raped? If I am in a car accident and the impact erased my memory of the event, does my insurance company not have to pay for the repairs. If I am asleep during a surgery, did the surgery not happen? It is basically the modern day version of, “If the tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound.” I say yes and if the child doesn’t remember, it is still a crime. However, unlike the tree, someone was around to hear it. They are called jurors and they saw the video. Now I want to hear the sound of justice.

One last point to ponder, if this child was a 5 year old girl, and the rapist was a 21 one year old male, would there be a discussion at all?

2 comments:

(Wo)Men Speak Out said...

Excellent post! This judge obviously knows very little about the destructive nature of abuse. Underlying his decision is this ignorant attitude that abuse is somehow less significant, less impactful for a boy than it is for a girl. These are the people making decisions that affect us all.

Chris
WSO

Anonymous said...

oh this just makes me raging livid. unbelievable.