http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=c-xEdbEubjs This happened in the state of Nevada, USA. It is difficult to believe this could actually happen. Basically, the Nevada legislature made a well intentioned, but poorly thought out law, and then the prosecution in Elko County is applying a literal interpretation of that law, even though the legislature would have never intended it to have such an outcome in these cases. Because of court procedure, the jury was never told what the sentence would be. The mandatory sentence was life in prison, but with eligibility to be released after 10 years. The judge seemed rather apathetic about this injustice and was just following the law. As can be seen in the background, there was a long line of defendants waiting in the court room, and it seems like they were just trying to get the case out of the way so it would not take too long. Justice on a conveyor belt, that's what happens with an overburdened court system. These types of horrible injustices are rare, but they do happen from time to time. A combination of poorly made laws can have unintended consequences, and who is there to stand up for justice? The defendant was just a poor woman from a broken foster care system, no family, no friends, no one to care.
http://www.kolotv.com/home/headlines/90976314.html It seems to me that the only clear issue here is the level of the mandatory minimum sentence for a law with such a wide potential scope (though there could be question marks around what legal advice she received about not accepting a plea bargin). That said, I can't help thinking that in not too different circumstances, public opinion could be easily in favour of a life sentence (or worse) for an offence within the scope of this statute. I also wonder, without the context of this case, what the public and media reaction would have been to leglislation to significant reduce the minimum sentence for this law. Incidentally, I'm not convinced YouTube makes for a good news source.
http://jonathanturley.org/2010/06/1...r-old-boy-and-putting-his-hand-on-her-breast/ Michelle Lyn Taylor, 34, was convicted under Nevadas life-for-lewdness law in November 2009 for drunkenly forcing a 13-year-old boy to touch her breast and demanding (unsuccessfully) that the boy engage in sex. Neither the judge, nor one of the original legislative sponsors of the lewdness law, felt the punishment fit the crime. Still, the existence of the mandatory minimum law forced the court to sentence Taylor to life in prison with possibility for parole in 10 years. Part of the reason the punishment was so harsh is probably because the sentencing guidelines were meant to punish men. The legislature apparently had not given much thought to situations where the perpetrator was a woman victimizing a boy. Furthermore, the legislature also appears to have assumed "lewd conduct" was synonymous with sexual intercourse. Thus, a woman allowing an underaged boy to touch her breasts was treated the same way as if a man had had sex with an underaged girl. In the video, when you hear the public defense lawyer arguing that the sentence is unconstitutional, she is referring to the life term mandatory sentencing provision effectively giving sentencing power to the parole board. The defendant is eligible for, and probably will receive, parole before the end of the decade, but no guarantees. For example, suppose hypothetically the defendant does not have good behavior in prison. Then she could be in prison for 15 or 20 years, perhaps even longer. All just for her original crime plus just not having good behavior. Parole could be withheld for reasons rather trivial. It is not surprising why the defense lawyer was so outraged.
All Mandatory minimums are stupid. We can hire computers for judges if that is what we want. But it is telling that if this was a man, forcing a girl to touch him, trying to get a girl to have sex with him, this wouldn't be a story. If the people involved were both of the same sex, there would be calls for this woman's execution.
Why shouldn't a woman get the same punishment as a man go the same crime? If a man forced a 13 year old girl to grope him and repeatedly harassed her to have sex with him, what punishment do you think would be appropriate?
If a man forced a 13 year old to grope him on his breast , what punishment do you think would be appropriate? You talk about female breasts. What do you think the French would do? (I have a feeling it wouldn't have been nearly such a big deal) Let's not forget the woman was drunk, had suffered horrendous sexual abuse as a child, and never actually went through with making the child have sex with her.
There isn't enough information about the prior history of the woman sentanced---but the harsh sentance indicates the justness of it. There is nothing about her past criminal history (probably extensive). Her drunkeness is her responsibility. She was unable to control her drinking habits, and she shouldn't have been let off the hook for that non-excuse. As a pedophile at worst and child endangerer at most, I would have given her only 5 years breaking rocks on a chain gang---if this was her 1st offense. Any prior convictions for sexual assault, I'd hang her.
But in our culture, the breasts are a taboo area - basically considered as much of a sexual area as the genitalia. But for a equivalent, we could reverse it. What if a man touched a 13 year old girl's breasts then tried to get her to have sex with him? As for the rest, your past is no excuse for criminal behavior - if it was we wouldn't have any criminals in jail. Being drunk isn't a mitigating factor either - a person is equally responsible for their own behavior when drunk as when sober - if not, then drunk driving couldn't be a crime. As for not actually having sex, in most states soliciting a minor for sex is also a crime. She wasn't on trial for statutory rape, she was on trial for lewd conduct. As such no actual sex is involved - if it was, there would have been another charge against her.
Listening to the video, how they were talking about the crime, there was no suggestion that there were other similar incidences in this woman's history. Prior criminal history is usually off limits in court cases, however. It might be the case that the prosecutor knew something the judge did not. And the defense lawyer seemed genuinely worked up about the unjustness of the penalty, which more likely would not be the case if she knew her client had a history of similar behavior. We really do not know. Your logic seems to be circular. That it could not be an excessive sentence because it was an excessive sentence. You seem to be doubting misjustice can occur in the court system, and thus you think there must be some alternate explanation. Yes, but her drunkenness is still relevant. The available information is that she was demanding (unsuccessfully) that the boy engage in sex. Being that she was drunk, and in fact did not go through with it, it is most likely that she did not really mean what she said. In contrast, if she had not been drunk and was demanding a child engage in sex with her, there would be no reason to doubt that she meant what she said.
Some more articles on the case: Woman sentenced to life for lewdness charge April 14, 2010 ELKO, Nevada — A Twin Falls woman convicted of forcing a 13-year-old boy to touch her breasts was sentenced Monday to life in prison. Michelle Lyn Taylor, 34, was convicted of lewdness with a minor under 14 in November after a week-long trial in Elko County, Nev., District Judge Mike Memeo’s courtroom. With the conviction, Taylor faced a mandatory life sentence, and Memeo set parole eligibility after 10 years, the minimum sentence. If released on parole she must register as a sex offender and will be under lifetime supervision. The district attorney’s office did not offer a plea agreement in the case, said public defender Alina Kilpatrick, who argued the sentence is unconstitutional and doesn’t fit the crime. “The jury was not allowed to know the potential sentence in this case and the Legislature doesn’t know the facts,” she said, alluding to the minimum sentence set by the Legislature in Nevada Revised Statute. Kilpatrick said despite the parole eligibility after 10 years, there should be no mistake that it’s a life sentence for Taylor. “She is getting a greater penalty for having a boy touch her breast than if she killed him,” she said. After he sentenced her, Memeo said he was bound by state statute to impose the life sentence, but said he isn’t sure why the prosecution chose to charge her under that statute. District Attorney Gary Woodbury could not be reached for comment. Taylor, who lived in Jackpot, Nevada, at the time of the crime, kissed a friend’s child, forced him to touch her breast and asked him to have sex with her in February 2008. Taylor claimed she was intoxicated and doesn’t remember what happened that night. She told jurors she roughhoused with the boy, but didn’t force him to touch her inappropriately. Supreme Court to decide on Elko appeals January 25, 2012 The Supreme Court affirmed the conviction of Michelle Taylor, a Jackpot woman convicted of lewdness with a minor. The case went to the Supreme Court in mid-October, at which time Taylor’s defense argued a life sentence for “asking a boy to have sex with her” was “cruel and unusual punishment.” Prosecutor Chad Thompson argued the statute calls for a 10-year minimum with a possible life sentence with the possibility of parole. Thompson, in his argument to the justices, said there was skin-to-skin contact between the boy’s hand and Taylor’s breast. He also said Taylor tried to remove the boy’s clothing and demanded he have sex with her, rather than requested it. Taylor’s defense had sought a review of the evidence in the case; not a re-trial or review of sentencing. However, the viability of the evidence would have had an impact on the trial’s outcome. According to court records, Taylor was arrested for lewdness in February 2008 after the 13-year-old boy’s mother told sheriff’s deputies that Taylor had tried to have sex with her son. Well then, it doesn't seem like this woman was so innocent after all. But I still think the sentence was excessive.
I joined this forum when I noticed the case was being discussed here. The case became of interest to me when it soon became apparent that the child victim was being lost in all of this to the agenda of individuals who was so fixated on treating a convicted child rapist like a perpetual victim, that they have perpetuated lies and propaganda to achieve that end. Firstly the video itself. Anyone who was actually paying close attention to the video would have noticed something interesting at the 50 second mark: the time-stamping jumps from "4-12-10 03:35:44 PM" to "4-12-10 03:39:24 PM" - a full 3minutes and 40 seconds have been cut from the video! Then there is the dialogue on either side of the cut: Before the cut, the dialogue is as follows On the other side of the cut, it is as follows: Anything to add to what - the 3minutes and 40 seconds where the finer details of the crime were being discussed maybe? But why let the actual facts get in the way of the truth right? However before I go into the full extent of the crime, it's important to understand the statutes which are relevant to this particular crime: Firstly there's the issue of "Lewdness with a Minor Child under 14", which is explained here as follows: An important caveat in light of the facts of the case, is this: In other words, "Lewdness" refers to indecently assaulting or molesting a child, however while it excludes rape, it does include at the very extreme end of its scope, the attempted rape of a child under 14. I will deliberately avoid going into Statutory Rape in Nevada, as further evidence will demonstrate that it's completely inapplicable in this specific case. So what if it had been rape? The sentence for rape is as follows: In other words, the mandatory minimum of 10 years is for attempted rape and/or indecent assault, is less than the mandatory minimum of 25 years of life without parole, which is the sentence for raping a child under the age of 14. But what if she'd killed him? I have highlighted the aspects of this case which would have made it a capital offence. Firstly the victim was under the age of 14, so it's automatically a capital murder case on those grounds alone, regardless of whether the crime still took place within the context of the crime still being committed. However the other aspects also potentially warrant it being a capital offence had she indeed murdered the child - which I will go into shortly. Firstly, luring a child away from their mother under false pretenses in order to imprison them (in this case in her bedroom), it could possibly be considered to be tantamount to have taken place during the commission of a kidnapping, depending on how the prosecutor played it. Secondly, as child sexual abuse is arguably a form of torture, it could qualify in those grounds. Thirdly, if the victim had been killed in an attempt to conceal the crime and prevent them from disclosing the abuse, it could possibly be argued that the murder was committed to avoid arrest. Finally, it would definitely qualify as Taylor was indeed found to have attempted to rape the child. So what evidence is there of all of this. The following article, by way of reporting the allegations of one of the prosecutors during the appeal, sheds some very interesting light on the case: In other words, this was a case of 2 counts of indecent assault and one count of indecent assault by way of attempted rape - the very severe end of the statute which Taylor was tried under. Unsurprisingly the victim was left deeply traumatised by the ordeal, as noted here: Then there's the claims of a pleadeal never being offered - claims which two news articles debunk. As stated here: The reasons for this are elaborated on here: One of the big concerns with child sex offences is always recidivism within the offender - how likely the offender is to simply prey on yet another child at the first opportunity. The fact that Taylor was so determined to avoid registering as a child sex offender under the circumstances, clearly suggests that she is far from honest about herself about being a danger to children and needing treatment. As such, a mandatory minimum sentence is entirely appropriate as both an incentive and disincentive for her to seek treatment whilst behind bars. In short, there are so many ways in which the system got it right here. However there's one question noone has asked in all of this - what the motivations of the uploader are and what biases he is bringing into this case. In fact, there's one other piece of the puzzle that I was privately given by the uploader and it's well past time it was made public. Originally the video listed the uploader as one "Thomas Allen" and did so for some time. However after simply mentioning the uploader in a comment in the video by the name with which they had publicly identified themselves with, 2 things happened. The first was that the uploader name was changed to "sudydude" and the second was that I was banned from commenting on the video. Shortly afterwards, I received a PM from the uploader stating why. I have attached a screen cap from the uploader as I suspect that people here will find it most interesting. For anyone having trouble with the attached screenshot, the PM reads as follows: Quick question, what kind of innocent man, knowingly uploads a deliberately edited video which fraudulently portrays a convicted child rapist as a victim and trivialises the hell with the child victim was put through? Furthermore what crime was he convicted of that he is so determined to have his name kept out of the spotlight? Hopefully this has blown the lid off this utterly twisted viral farce and gets people asking the questions which need to be asked here of those perpetuating propaganda about this case.
simple solution, guys. 2/3 of all "crime" is victimless. dope, guns, gambling, prostitution, and a lot more crime is committed because dope's illegal. Legalize that stuff and 3/4 of "crime" goes away. Which leaves 3x as much more court time, prison space, etc, for swiftly and properly dealing with REAL crimes, (ie, the kind that DO have victims).
This just shows how much power prosecutors have. Defendants very often get coerced into plea bargains, because if they do not plead guilty they face the possibility of a huge excessive sentence, even when the crime is not really that terrible. And let's remember that all this is based on the story of a child. I'm sure what the child told police is true in this case, but sometimes children can make things up, or lie about critical details.
Actually what your quote is more revealing of here is the fact that when it comes to child sexual abuse involving a male victim and female child predator, that society really is, collectively, a pack of child predators, child predator sympathisers and child predator apologists. While it is certainly true that it is better for x number of guilty people to go free than for one innocent person to be wrongly imprisoned, it is equally true that the entire point of the legal system is to ensure that injustices are corrected. When it comes to injustices, they do not get much more heinous than child abuse. In addition to, at least ethically, fitting the definition of torture, has the known, added effect of delaying and sometimes irrevocably damaging the psychological development of a child - scarring them for life as adults. It is for that reason that all child abuse is that serious, regardless of where on the scale of abuse it falls. Yet when it comes to female-on-male child abuse, that crystal clear view of justice becomes replaced with a gendered pantomime narrative on the nature of victims and abuser and chauvinistic assumptions whereby a penis is equated with arbitrary and enthusiastic consent, even the penis of a child. In the case of female abusers, the reality of their role in these heinous crimes, is replaced by a view of automatic victimhood, whereby a pantomime narrative automatically casts them into the roles of damsels in distress invoking a call to arms to every "good man" in society to come to their aid. Suddenly child abuse "isn't that serious"; suddenly the outrage lies with the fact that the child predator was even held to account for their actions to begin with, rather than with the abhorrent crime they committed to begin with. Contrast this with the same approach towards male-on-female child abuse, where the same individuals have an automatic response of wanting the male child predator from the nearest tree. People can cite superficial reasons for it, however the main reason for it is entirely to do with the genitalia of the child predator when said predator is female. In that regard, society, collectively, are a pack of child predator apologists. Worse still are the attitudes towards the victim themselves when the victim is male. Western society has, since time immemorial, view the penis as a physical manifestation of perpetual sexual consent. Not only is it presumed that a man will always want sex, but he his shamed and ridiculed if he doesn't. When a man is raped by a woman (which the actual data of the 2010 NIPSVS- Tables 2.1 and 2.2 - revealed occurs in 40% of all rape cases), then the automatic response by society is that he "got lucky" and that "there must be something wrong with him" (ie "he must be gay") if he even remotely dares to feel violated by the ordeal. It would be abhorrent enough if these attitudes simply remained with adult rape victims, however they also extend to child rape victims. Where an underage girl being raped is rightly regarded as a tragedy and a travesty, an underage boy being raped is regarded as a "rite of passage" and responded to in the same manner that adult male rape, involving a female rapist is responded to. Worse still is how this manifests itself in the legal system. In several US States, if an underage boy is raped by a female child rapist, whereby she falls pregnant, gives birth and has custody of a child, resulting from that child rape, the child rape victim is legally obligated to pay the child rapist child support. There have been countless cases of this - including child rape victims as young as 12 being victimised in this manner. Yet where is the collective social outrage at this barbaric and twisted status quo? They're either non-existent or drowned out by a mix champagne corks being popped because the child victim has a penis between their legs and outrage over the perpetrator being held to account because they have a vagina between theirs. Such a culture towards child rape victims not only collectively makes society a pack of pedophiles and pedophile sympathisers, but at a systemic level, turns society into a glorified pedophile ring and child slavery ring. No doubt such hard truths will be incredibly uncomfortable for many people reading this to accept, however that is what the are, accurate and truthful indictments on society as a whole. That is a completely false. It was based on, amongst other things, multiple testimonies and even the woman's own admission of guilt by way of a text messaging conversation with the predator. Furthermore there has been ample psychological evidence of not only the fact that it occurred, but that the victim is still significantly suffering from the effects of that ordeal to this present day. Once again though, such a response in its baseless and false assumptions regarding this case, has nothing to do with the facts and is instead grounded entirely in society's collective refusal to recognise the fact that it is entirely possible and common for someone to abuse others, including children, when they have a vagina between their legs. It is certainly admirable to want a just legal system. However such a just system can only happen when we truly recognise others as human beings, rather than gender archetypes and truly address the nature of each offence and deal with it properly. In the absence of such a gender neutral view of crime, any calls for a just legal system are made from a position that is utterly hypocritical.
