A gunbelt notch at the expense of a child (updated)

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  1. I comletely understand your point, but this points to a general issue with our criminal justice system: the victim of a crime has no special status; he or she is, in legal terms, simply a witness for the state in the state’s case against the accused criminal.
    And, if the community has decided that the appropriate penalty for this crime is death, it is the prosecutor’s job to seek that penalty.
    Add to that the politics of all this (nobody wants to have to explain why they didn’t seek the maximum penalty for someone who admitted he committed the crime) and the situation you’re talking about seems inevitable.
    Especially when judges and attorney generals are elected. They have to answer to voters, and that means that they will be quite hesitant not to seek the maximum penalty in a horrific, high profile crime. Personally, I think those who administer justice should be insulated from politics as much as possible, and be appointed rather than elected.

  2. I’ll certainly agree with John on this one. It is a real conundrum. However, my question is that if the Federal case would have been helped by the Guilty plea, could they have sought the death penalty in the Federal courts? If so, then the DA could have explained it as a win-win: help the Feds, put the guy away for good, keep the girl from having to testify.
    One thing John said I’ll take exception too, however:

    the victim of a crime has no special status; he or she is, in legal terms, simply a witness for the state in the state’s case against the accused criminal.

    Not necessarily. If, in fact, the victim is the key witness, s/he has a special role in the case as the accuser, whom one accused of a crime has the right to confront.
    Somehow, it wouldn’t surprise me if the creep’s lawyer doesn’t try to take Shasta apart on the stand — and, despite being ruled ‘competent to testify’, my guess is that emotionally she is one very fragile person.
    ~EdT.

  3. The right thing to do is to eliminate this vermin from the world of the living with as little cost to the rest of us as possible. I agree it is a good thing that we’re sparing the little girl the trauma of confronting Duncan, but I regret the millions we’ll waste trying the scumbag in Federal court and more millions if he beats the rap there. Resources are finite; sometimes we have to make hard choices.
    Regarding John’s comments about insulating judges and prosecutors from accountability, that’s fine until they become so out of touch with reality that their decisions aren’t reflective of the society they’re supposed to be serving, as can be seen with the SCOTUS.

  4. Ed – I’m just talking in legal terms (based on my experience years ago as a victim witness advocate in Massachusetts). I think the victim’s testimony certainly has a big impact on the jury, for example. But the way the system is set up there’s rarely much of a mechanism for dealing with the needs of the victim.

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