Anyone else find this shocking?

[bubbaray]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,371344,00.html

From the article:
Rep. James ***an, a Democrat, made the comments during debate last month on the state House floor.

"I'm gonna rip them apart," ***an said of young victims during his testimony on the bill. "I'm going to make sure that the rest of their life is ruined, that when they’re 8 years old, they throw up; when they’re 12 years old, they won’t sleep; when they’re 19 years old, they’ll have nightmares and they’ll never have a relationship with anybody.”

***an said as a defense attorney it would be his duty to do that in order to keep his clients free from a "mandatory sentence of those draconian proportions."



OK, so I totally get now why people hate lawyers. Because I read this at work today and wanted to throw up.

I really hope the voters in MA send this jackoff a message.

ETA: How ironic, the system deleted his name -- its F a g a n

[Tammy]

That's terrible. It's too bad that our justice system devotes so much time to those who don't deserve it. I hope he gets what he deserves.

[hwin708]

Shocking, sure. But I think that's the point.
It seems like his comments are being taken somewhat out of context. He was making the point that if defense attorneys are fighting to keep their clients from very harsh sentencing, they will likely stop at nothing to do so. Even tearing apart the young victims on the stand. And it's a fair point - it's a horrible job, but it IS their job. To defend their clients. And they WILL do it.

Now, I definitely disagree with his stance on harsher sentencing guidelines for child rapists, as I am very much for it. But his description of what goes on in the courtroom is still true. I don't think there's any value in sugar coating it and painting a fairy tale picture instead.

[doberbrat]

There is more to the story.

There are another couple of sentences that would clarify the whole quote that come afterwards but his point is that a defense attorney’s job is to keep his client from being convicted.

He was on a talk show I was listening to this am on the way to work. The way things stand now, a prosecutor can offer a lower sentence plead down if there is a 30yr mandatory sentence, then a defense atty will have to fight to make sure his client is not convicted.
And sometimes, (often?) that means going after the victim.

He did apologize this am for using the words he did stating he feels passionate about protecting the children and does not want to see it come to this.

I understand his pov. I don’t think I agree, b/c not many perps plead guilty and the defense atty’s job is going to be to avoid conviction whether its 5 yrs or 30 but I understood his point. He also stated that he never meant for his comments to get out, it was just before a vote in session etc.

[tarabenet]

This read like a typical Foxnews misrepresentation to me. The network calls itself "fair and balanced" and somehow a lot of people think that means it actually is reporting honestly. It doesn't.

If you quote someone in print, you can take away all of the nuances and make him sound like he, personally, is the monster. I notice they aren't running the video of the speech, because then people might discover that Rep. ***an didn't mean that he himself wants to make victims of sesx crimes suffer even more for the rest of ther lives. What he was trying to get at was the defense attorney's mindset of doing watever ws necessary to provide a client the strongest possible defense. That is the way our criminal system is set up: we allow both sides to make their best possible case, and then a judge and/or jury decides what to do about it.

The fact is, that with the system we have, which still seems a better and more just than others I've learned about, what he described is, indeed, what will hppen to children who testify. But in truth, it already does. We all know the "blame the victim" thing that goes on. All Rep. ***an is saying is that he fears it will be worse with such steep mandatory sentencing. I think that is an important part of the whole policy debate. We have to figure out how to balance all the likely consequences of our laws.

[KBecks]

The comments are awful.

I understand the difficulty of trying to have a fair trial in a child rape case, and perhaps he was trying to illustrate the vigorous attacks that some defense attorneys would use, but, those comments are gross and mean and he could have found a better way to express himself if he wanted to.

[ThreeofUs]

Well, I'm not really happy with the Fox coverage, but his comments were inflammatory - I'm glad he apologized.

Honestly, though, some people are pretty upset at the idea that the kids in child rape cases can be subject to such tactics. I'm one of them, having seen such a trial in action.

[bubbaray]

Well, maybe my view is somewhat skewed -- I no longer live in the US and I'm a practicing lawyer. It is NOT necessary for competent defense counsel to "rip apart" child witnesses, to make them vomit, psychologically scar them for life, etc. in order to defend their clients. Nor is it inevitable that that type of lawyer behavior happen with mandatory sentences.

For example, in Canada we have pretty tight rules on what lawyer conduct is allowed in court and I can tell you with 100% certainty, if I tried to rip apart a child witness, I would be tossed from the courtroom by the judge so fast, my head would spin. The judge and/or the crown prosecutor (like a DA) would most likely file a complaint with the law society (our governing body that disciplines lawyers). In fact, our criminal code was amended a few years ago to allow child witnesses, particularly in sexual assault trials, to testify from behind a screen (so that they don't have to look at the accused) or via video from a separate room. An accused is generally not allowed to cross examine child witnesses if they are acting as their own counsel (you can imagine what that would do to a child victim). There are all sorts of checks and balances that have been put in place to ensure that the accused has a fair trial, but that the child victim is not re-victimized by the process.

On a personal and professional level, I am completely comfortable with stiff mandatory sentences for child sexual assault. I do not think that the American public has to just expect that defense counsel can treat witnesses any way they want just so that the accused gets a "fair" trial.

Lawyers are held to a much higher standard of courtroom decorum in most other common law jurisdictions (England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, along with the US, are all considered common law jurisdictions).

Frankly, I don't care if this Representative was quoted out of context -- he's a politician and should know better. He was speaking in public, not in a private meeting, and should have had the intelligence to know that his comments would become a sound bite or out-of-context quote. Further, I am completely astounded that an officer of the court would speak in such terms about child victims. Really, I'm shocked. IMO, that type of and tone of speech brings the whole court process into disrepute.

Ack. Off my soapbox. I'm really sickened.

ETA: I'm completely aware that Fox is on one end of the political spectrum, CNN is towards the other. Still, this guy had to have known that his comments would end up in the media somewhere.

[eliasmom]

Having prosecuted several cases of this type, I can tell you that "ripping apart" a child witness doesn't go over very well with most judges and jurors. The very best attorneys manage to raise doubt without doing a complete smear job on the child victims.

Yes, it is important for everyone to have good legal representation and, yes, some defense attorneys will pull out all the stops to try to get their client off, but the type of extreme tactics he used as an example tend to backfire, IME.

[bubbaray]

CNN's picked it up too.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/cri....rape.rant.cnn