Law & Justice: September 2003 Archives

A Cincinnati woman was jailed for contempt of court when she failed to show up to testify against a man she accused of raping her.

Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Patrick Dinkelacker charged the North Fairmount woman with contempt of court Friday, saying he wanted to send a message: Not showing up for court - even if fearful of retaliation, as the woman claimed - makes the justice system useless.

The woman said she was dragged into woods near her home and raped by a stranger in July.

Michael Lindsey, 25, of North Fairmount, was charged, but when the woman failed to show up for three hearings, Dinkelacker dropped the charges. Lindsey's attorney says his client is innocent.

Prosecutors and police will talk to the woman about the case after her release from jail.

"It is up to the victim; this is not a case we can prove beyond reasonable doubt without her testimony, which is typically true in rape cases," Allen said.

Considering the social stigma that follows even the accusation of rape, I think it's critically important that the legal system work to protect alleged perpetrators from false, or frivolous, complaints. Rape is a very serious crime that carries more negative connotations even than murder; it's difficult to prove and difficult to disprove, and I suspect that wrongful rape convictions far outnumber wrongful murder convictions.

The "reasonable doubt" standard is often hard to make when it comes to rape, even when all parties involved know that the man in guilty. Prosecutors are often left with little more than evidence of arguably-consensual sex, and a he-said she-said story; in certain circumstances, it may be obvious that the accused is guilty, and prosecutors may spin insubstantial evidence to a sympathetic jury to get a conviction that isn't justified by the law.

On the flip side, when a man is cleared of rape charges, there's always the suspicion that he was let off on a technicality, and his reputation is irreparably tarnished.

In such a climate, it makes a lot of sense for men and women to choose their acquaintances, friends, and romantic relationships very carefully. As I've mentioned before, I work with children at my church, and I'm doubly careful to be very conscious of who I allow myself be alone with.

(Also via Drudge.)

I don't know anything about Salman Sharif other than that he ran a violent resistance group that planned and executed a nearly-successful assassination of a prominent politician. Doesn't sound like a very nice guy, does he? Well his target in 1996 was Uday Hussein.

It was obviously against the law of his country for Sharif to attempt to kill Uday, but I have a rather hard time condemning his actions; Uday was responsible for thousands of deaths in the past, and would certainly be responsible for thousands more in the future. Uday hadn't broken any laws -- his word was the law -- nevertheless, I believe that an attempt to kill him was morally justified. It wasn't attempted murder, it was attempted justice.

Someone please help me make a distinction between Salman Sharif, and Paul Hill. I want to be able to, but I'm having trouble. Yes, it sounds like Paul Hill was a little crazy, but let's isolate his intent from his motive. He may have been motivated by "God telling him what to do", but his intent was to kill people responsible for murdering babies, so that they couldn't murder any more.

[Note: even if you're pro-choice, consider how you could draw a distinction without resting on your belief that an unborn baby is not a human.]

Yeah, it's not a pleasant subject. The federal government is finally taking some legislative action to curtail the widespread epidemic of rape in the American prison system.

The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which drew bipartisan support and was passed unanimously by Congress yesterday, establishes a system of grants and reforms that will cost $60 million a year. The centerpiece is an annual survey by the U.S. Department of Justice that will be the most sweeping study ever made of sexual assault in prisons, congressional sponsors and criminal justice experts said.

"It's been a long, strange battle, but I think everyone has come to understand that a prison sentence in the United States should not include rape as added punishment," said Rep. Frank R. Wolf, (R-Va.), a House co-sponsor of the bill, along with Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (D-Va.).

Well, it's a start. The reason I'm posting about this, though, is because Canada has a different take on the issue.

Mackintosh said yesterday the province will consider purchasing flavoured condoms for prisoners some time in the future after first consulting with health officials. The majority of the contraceptives, he argued, would be given to inmates when they are released.

"If there's clear and convincing evidence this type of condom is an effective part of an AIDS strategy, I'd be ill advised to overrule the health experts and jeopardize the health of Manitobans," Mackintosh told The Sun. "The department is going to work with public health to look at this further."

Nice spin, but any way you look at it, some of the fruity flaves would still be distributed to cons behind bars.

Maybe I'm missing something, who knows. Are convicted murderers allows conjugal visits in Canada? Maybe the condoms are for that purpose, but if that's the case it seems like the woman coming to visit could simply bring her own condoms. The only reason to hand out condoms in jail is to facilitate prison rape.

(Via Best of the Web.)

I've been asking Eugene Volokh to write about property rights and intellectual property for months, and he's finally done it! He argues that intellectual property rights are just as valid a concept as tangible property rights. That's not to say that the existence of intellectual property is good policy, but he thinks the idea is reasonable.

On the other hand, I think that in the digital age intellectual property can be reduced down to the allowing of ownership of pure numbers. For that reason, I think that intellectual property is ultimately doomed.

For my musings on the subject:
1. Ownership -- how can anyone "own" digitally-encoded information? Anything encoded digitally is just a binary number, and how can anyone own a number?
2. Ownership 2 -- more on the same topic.
3. Common Law and Copyright -- can "everyone is doing it" justify violating copyright laws?

Paul Hill was scheduled to be executed at 6pm Eastern time for the deaths of John B. Britton, an abortion provider, and his security guard, James H. Barrett. [He was executed at 6:08pm.] I find myself in a moral quandry, which is unusual.

I generally see the world as fairly black-and-white, and I don't often have trouble formulating an opinion that I can support with facts and reason. However, with regards to this case, I'm unsure. I've written about abortion before, and I believe that an unborn baby is a human being. That belief and understanding leads me to view abortion as "killing", and as such abortions may only be morally justified in the same ways that other killings are -- self-defense, for instance, if the pregnancy threatens the mother. Abortions of convenience are equivalent to murder.

That being the case, I find it hard to condemn Paul Hill's act, even though I want to do so. It doesn't seem wise for pro-life advocates to gun down abortion providers, but I can't help feeling that they deserve it. Not only have abortion doctors callously committed murder for profit in the past, they are incredibly likely to murder again in the future, by their own profession.

The murder of unborn babies is legal, and this must play into my reasoning somehow. It's not my place to execute judgement on anyone; that role belongs to God, and he has delegated much of that earthly authority to the government. But if our government fails to act justly, then what? Hypothetical analogies are easy to come by: if you saw someone being raped or beaten, would you feel morally justified in going to their aid, even if the law prohibited it? Of course you would, but it's a strange hypothetical because it's hard to imagine that such a heinous crime would be legal, or that rendering aid in such a case would be illegal.

Additionally, violence isn't the only potential solution. Being that we're in America, pro-lifers have the option of pushing their agenda through legal, non-violent means; we clearly have that responsibility, but does such action abrogate or mitigate our responsibility to protect those who are being murdered?

I concede that the issue of punishment is best left to God and the government, and should be handled through the legal and political system. However, the other side of the coin is the moral imperative of preventing the murderers from claiming more victims. Is it morally sufficient to throw my hands up and be content with the the status quo and whatever slow political change can be wrought? Or, when faced with the prospect of countless millions of future murders, do my beliefs compel me to more direct and immediate action (not necessarily violent)?

Update:
Here's an interesting legal hypothetical. Suppose Paul Hill had been sentenced to life in prison rather than death. What if a Constitutional amendment were ratified in the future that made abortion legally equivalent to murder? Could Paul Hill then appeal his conviction and sentence based on the idea that he was preventing future murders? What if he had killed Britton while Britton was in the act of performing an abortion?