Duke Lacrosse Case Charges to Be Dropped

[johnstown_johnn]

Apparently you have never seen photos of an actual lynching or you would not be tossing the term around so freely. In an actual lynching people are physically tortured and almost always killed. I would suggest that you rent the movie “Rosewood” if you want to learn about real lynchings in this country. These young men may have lost time, money and reputation, but they did not even get physically roughed up in the county jail. They were not kept in jail for over a year awaiting trial as can happen to those who cannot make bail. Not a lynching in any sense of the word.

The Duke students were not wrongly convicted as many people are in this country every year. They did not lose their entire youth serving prison time after being wrongfully convicted or end up on death row. Although they have been harmed, the attention will die down eventually and they will likely still graduate from college, get good jobs and have a real life. They will not even have criminal records due to the lack of a conviction. Who among us would actually remember their names or faces if they came to us for a job after graduation?

We just had several men released from prison in Texas after being exonerated by DNA evidence. They lost many years of their lives in prison. Our justice system has been broken for quite a long time for those without money and power. If not for a non-profit group looking into it, these men could have died in prison after committing no crime.

I have no doubt the Duke students will manage to get sufficient recompense to restore them while other “regular” folks who have actually served prison time while innocent get a pittance from the government and have no one to sue. I doubt that most of us get as worked up for the many people who are wrongfully convicted or take any steps to keep the justice system working properly. How many of us have tried to avoid jury duty, let alone sat in on a trial or followed up on a case that may have seemed badly handled?

So, you’re saying, that because there are other failures in other parts of the U.S. judicial system that another failure because of who these young men are is PERMISSIBLE?

Thankfully, the Duke case is overwith in so far as the criminality aspect is concerned. But , this is only Chapter 1…Chapter 2 is going to be very interesting and the young men will have a large following supporting them. They were wrongfully accused and that strikes at the very heart of all of us ( allowing for some exceptions)

 

[jc-servant]

You seem to be saying that because what you feel are greater miscarriages of justice we should not show sympathy for these young men. No very Christian of you IMO. I don’t know about Texas but in Illinois it is not uncommon for people who have been wrongly imprisoned to be given large monetary stttlements by the state.

I would love to see where in my post you read that I said not to have any sympathy for these students? You apparently have no problem with leaping to a conclusion and making a disparaging remark about my faith based on one post which is less than charitable on your part. You might want to think about why you are assuming the worst about my comments and my faith.

My point was that a lot of people seem really worked up in a case where the harm is reversible and little attention has been paid to men who have lost most of their lives in contemporaneous situations. More of a reality check to the extreme language and emotions being dished out in this case than a statement that they don’t deserve any consideration. Some people’s posts have opined racial components with no evidence to back it up and I don’t see them being named un-Christian for it. I can tell just how stirred up the emotions are about this case by the number of people who jumped on my post as if I was personally attacking these young men.

 

[jc-servant]

So, you’re saying, that because there are other failures in other parts of the U.S. judicial system that another failure because of who these young men are is PERMISSIBLE?

Thankfully, the Duke case is overwith in so far as the criminality aspect is concerned. But , this is only Chapter 1…Chapter 2 is going to be very interesting and the young men will have a large following supporting them. They were wrongfully accused and that strikes at the very heart of all of us ( allowing for some exceptions)

Please don’t assign statements to me by faulty extrapolation of what I actually wrote.

One of my points was that although being falsely accused is bad, being falsely convicted and imprisoned is far worse. It does not mean that I have no sympathy for the situation of these students. I just don’t believe that it is going to end their lives or that it signals some new crisis in our justice system merely because it happened more visibly to some college students instead of in the local news to a less sympathetic person.

I find it sad that in our society must of us cannot get as worked up over cases that don’t turn into a media circus. In this instance the media made this into a “celebrity” case whereas the same thing can be going on at our local courthouse and how many of us even care.

I spent many years in law enforcement including a brief stint as a juvenile prosecutor, so maybe I don’t seem as gushingly emotional about the situation as you might like. However, it does not make me an unfeeling person who cannot empathize with someone who has been harmed.

 

[Lance]

Apparently you have never seen photos of an actual lynching or you would not be tossing the term around so freely. In an actual lynching people are physically tortured and almost always killed. I would suggest that you rent the movie “Rosewood” if you want to learn about real lynchings in this country. These young men may have lost time, money and reputation, but they did not even get physically roughed up in the county jail. They were not kept in jail for over a year awaiting trial as can happen to those who cannot make bail. Not a lynching in any sense of the word.

The Duke students were not wrongly convicted as many people are in this country every year. They did not lose their entire youth serving prison time after being wrongfully convicted or end up on death row. Although they have been harmed, the attention will die down eventually and they will likely still graduate from college, get good jobs and have a real life. They will not even have criminal records due to the lack of a conviction. Who among us would actually remember their names or faces if they came to us for a job after graduation?

This shows very little sympathy for the young men wrongly accused.

We just had several men released from prison in Texas after being exonerated by DNA evidence. They lost many years of their lives in prison. Our justice system has been broken for quite a long time for those without money and power. If not for a non-profit group looking into it, these men could have died in prison after committing no crime.

I have no doubt the Duke students will manage to get sufficient recompense to restore them while other “regular” folks who have actually served prison time while innocent get a pittance from the government and have no one to sue. I doubt that most of us get as worked up for the many people who are wrongfully convicted or take any steps to keep the justice system working properly. How many of us have tried to avoid jury duty, let alone sat in on a trial or followed up on a case that may have seemed badly handled?

Did you miss my post about the people in Illinois who get compensated for being wrongly convicted?

You have every right to your feelings and to express them about these young men. Just don’t disparage those of us who have more compassion for them than you do. If you want to find out how we feel about the people in Texas who were wrongly convicted start a thread about them. Don’t throw them up a straw men here, they have absolutly nothing to do with how I or others feel about this case.

Your comment about how they will be compensated seems rather smug. You obviously don’t trust our justice system to always find the crooked cop or prosecutor who will lie or withhold evidence just to get a conviction so would you be willing to go through what they did in order to get a few bucks?

I can not say about others avoiding jury duty, I never have. The last jury I was on found the man not guilty because of poor police work. We all thought there was a good chance he did the crime but it was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt due to shoddy police work i.e. no finger prints taken, no follow up on his alibi, etc.

 

[johnstown_johnn]

I would love to see where in my post you read that I said not to have any sympathy for these students? You apparently have no problem with leaping to a conclusion and making a disparaging remark about my faith based on one post which is less than charitable on your part. You might want to think about why you are assuming the worst about my comments and my faith.

My point was that a lot of people seem really worked up in a case where the harm is reversible and little attention has been paid to men who have lost most of their lives in contemporaneous situations. More of a reality check to the extreme language and emotions being dished out in this case than a statement that they don’t deserve any consideration. Some people’s posts have opined racial components with no evidence to back it up and I don’t see them being named un-Christian for it. I can tell just how stirred up the emotions are about this case by the number of people who jumped on my post as if I was personally attacking these young men.

Isn’t this just a wee-bit of a diversion to the subject at hand? The falsley accused Duke LaCrosse players, that is?

What does those other injustices have to do with the three young men in question? Shouldn’t that be on another thread?

very flippant of you.

“Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

 

[jman507]

Isn’t this just a wee-bit of a diversion to the subject at hand? The falsley accused Duke LaCrosse players, that is?

What does those other injustices have to do with the three young men in question? Shouldn’t that be on another thread?

very flippant of you.

“Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

Come on now. She didn’t say what happened should be permissible, she just said it wasn’t a lynching.

 

[Thekla]

I wish that I saw the same level of outrage for men who have been wrongfully imprisoned for decades. This case is an example of how the system works so much better for people with resources.

 

[jman507]

I wished that people who would go out and make big public spectacles would come back and make a big public apology.

I wished that the media who seem to come on so fast and quick, would go with that same speed against themselves when they are deemed to be wrong. What did they know and when? Oh wait these stories are complex and are hard to be sure of the accuracy of the immediate speculation.

 

[estesbob]

I wish that I saw the same level of outrage for men who have been wrongfully imprisoned for decades. This case is an example of how the system works so much better for people with resources.

Really? The men went through a year of pure hell. The ONLY reason they were charged is becuase they were wealthy white males. That fit them into the stereotype of everything that is evil as far the Left is concerned. The moment their finacial status,gender and race were revealed they were tried and convicted by the liberal establishment. can you imagine how they felt when the Elite faculty at their own school took out a full page ad condeming them?(and to this day refuses to aplogize for) Now that they have been cleared the Left still derides them “as rich white boys”.

 

[johnstown_johnn]

I wish that I saw the same level of outrage for men who have been wrongfully imprisoned for decades. This case is an example of how the system works so much better for people with resources.

It’s off topic.

 

[johnstown_johnn]

Really? The men went through a year of pure hell. The ONLY reason they were charged is becuase they were wealthy white males. That fit them into the stereotype of everything that is evil as far the Left is concerned. The moment their finacial status,gender and race were revealed they were tried and convicted by the liberal establishment. can you imagine how they felt when the Elite faculty at their own school took out a full page ad condeming them?(and to this day refuses to aplogize for) Now that they have been cleared the Left still derides them “as rich white boys”.

It’s a 100-to-1 that those professors will be sued. It might be three separate lawsuits or a collective…whichever empties their bank accounts. They are in deep, deep trouble.

They should have had more sense than to scandalize the young men before at least one shred of evidence was offered. They may be men of letters but they fail Wisdom 101.

 

[Thekla]

It’s off topic.

How is it off topic? I said that this case is an example of how the system works so much better for people with resources. The system worked for them. The charges were dropped and they were not wrongfully convicted. I don’t see how that is off topic.

 

[mary_bobo]

I wish that I saw the same level of outrage for men who have been wrongfully imprisoned for decades. This case is an example of how the system works so much better for people with resources.

I believe you would see it if it were as well known as the Duke case. Most of the wrongly convicted never draw that much media attention.

 

[johnstown_johnn]

I believe you would see it if it were as well known as the Duke case. Most of the wrongly convicted never draw that much media attention.

Those convicts that were found not guilty through DNA to their good fortune were set free. At the time of their trials/convictions there was some evidence of some kind to connect them with crime(s). DNA was in its infancy during those years. So the time was not in their favor.

DNA, nonetheless, had them set free…fortunately, the DNA, or absence thereof, was the stroke of justice for both, the Texas group and the Duke lacrosse three.

It’s a anachronistic set of events that ended well for all. It never was PRIVILEDGE. Were it so, the Duke fellows never would have been indicted. They were indicted BECAUSE OF WHO THEY WERE…or so it seems. All’s well that ends well.

 

[whatevergirl]

I would like the see the District Procecutor (more like Persecutor) be brought up on charges. This should of been over in a week.

Yes–I agree with that. He obstructed justice, and had a breach of ethics throughout this ordeal. He should at the very least, lose his license to practice law.

 

[johnstown_johnn]

How is it off topic? I said that this case is an example of how the system works so much better for people with resources. The system worked for them. The charges were dropped and they were not wrongfully convicted. I don’t see how that is off topic.

It is off topic because of the different points in time. Decades ago, DNA was not a tool in proving guilt or innocence…it is now and criminology has made great advances.

Decades ago some medical conditions were diagnosed as terminal…today, the same diseases are treatable and extend life greatly…

It is not logical to draw a comparison between then and now. So, it is irrelevant as far as the faulty convictions decades ago. It has absolutely nothing to do with “resources.” To dwell on “status” is a fixation and unhealthy.

“Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” and that applies to every living person with or without “resources.”

 

[johnstown_johnn]

Sometimes I get the feeling I am debating one person with at least two pen names. Even the thoughts and phraseology seem to come from just one person rather than two.

Coincidence that mindsets are so in line with each other. Amazing and bewildering as well.

 

[Thekla]

It is not logical to draw a comparison between then and now. So, it is irrelevant as far as the faulty convictions decades ago. It has absolutely nothing to do with “resources.” To dwell on “status” is a fixation and unhealthy.

Nobody is dwelling on status. But you cannot honestly believe that status cannot buy you better justice. If it didn’t, everyone would get their legal representation from the cheapest lawyer they could find.

 

[Thekla]

Sometimes I get the feeling I am debating one person with at least two pen names. Even the thoughts and phraseology seem to come from just one person rather than two.

Coincidence that mindsets are so in line with each other. Amazing and bewildering as well.

Perhaps after you have been here for more than 5 minutes, you’ll learn who people are.

 

[johnstown_johnn]

Nobody is dwelling on status. But you cannot honestly believe that status cannot buy you better justice. If it didn’t, everyone would get their legal representation from the cheapest lawyer they could find.

Those that were released in Texas through DNA; did THEY have staus? If not, they were exonerated just the same.

The one case that sticks in everybody’s minds is the OJ trial . I really cannot say whether it was staus or some other esoteric reason. The DNA was there to convict but it wasn’t enough.

So far, DNA seems to be heavyweight in finding guilt or innocence.