If you were on the jury...

This story reminded me of a much less extreme version of the John Grisham book "A Time to Kill". Obviously we don't know the details or the specifics and that should all be hashed out in due process, but the general theme of it makes one think...

Alleged assault spurs woman to stab teen
http://www.postcrescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070818/APC0101/708180545/1003/APC01

SHEBOYGAN — Police are considering charges against a woman for stabbing a 17-year-old boy several times with a kitchen knife after being told he was caught sexually assaulting her 8-year-old daughter.


Vigalantism is wrong but, as a mother, I sure could understand the instinct to seriously go medieval on someone who did that to my 8 year-old kid.

....I could understand how a mom would feel if this happened....but this was NOT the thing to do. The last thing the daughter needs at this time is to have MORE trauma in her life.

I will be interested to see what charges the DA persues. She must be tried, what she did was completely wrong. I hope this boy is held accountable for his actions. Just sad :(.

...an over reaction...to what the bastard did to her child.

However, at this time, the LAST thing the child needed was to have more awful shit in her life and mom needed to control herself.

However, I do think that because of the emotional shock that the system will and should go light on her. This needs to get handled so she can get to her child and take care of what needs to be done.

But sentencing is where you can exercise understanding for the situation.

that's what I guess I'm saying. It just made me think. I don't think I could do anything like what she did, I just understand the primal instinct.

Grishim's book included extreme violence and racism as well as an aquittal of the men while in this case, the criminal prosecution path had not even been persured. That book affected me in a big way.

If the woman had caught the teen in the act, as it were, and had stabbed him to stop the assault on her daughter, it would be justified, imho. What amazes me is that the man who DID stop the assault might be charged--that I don't understand at all. What was he to do, call 911 and let the 17 year old rape the little girl? I can understand why the mother did what she did, even though it was after the fact, as it were. Since the 17 year old has a record of sexual assault on children before, he should be locked up for at least the 25 year sentence. As for the mother--unless she had a record of assaulting people with knives, I would find her innocent because her actions were understandable. I know some mothers that would have cut something other than his arm.

Edited to add: I would never be allowed on a jury dealing with rape, because of my strong feelings about it. I think a rapist who is assaulted or killed by his victim or the victim's family got what was coming to him. Yes, that is not civilized, but it comes from what has happened to members of my family, when nothing was done by the justice system about the assault--something that I think went on a lot years ago--the shame was all put on the girl, not on her attacker.

Obviously, the 17 year-old committed a hienous act. However, take note of the fact that he was awaiting trial for a similar offense in the recent past. By "trusting" him and allowing him access to her daughter by spending the night, the mother was being very irresponsible about protecting her daughter. My sense of things is that the aggressiveness of her attack was fueled by unacknowledged guilt. Let me just say that there is a deeper emotional tapestry here than meets the eye. I could be quite specific about what I suspect to be the nature of that tapestry, but it would be nothing more than speculation in the absence of more concrete information.

Bad situation all around.

I'm somewhat used to looking for & finding the deeper patterns in events of this sort because I've done maybe 2,000 psych evaluations of offenders, 4 or 500 of them of sex offenders. In a case like this, based only on the information given, I could make some pretty reasonable and fairly detailed guesses about the personalities and dynamics involved, with maybe 80% accuracy.

Edited to add:

Ask yourself a quick question: Who was the 30 year-old man? What was he doing there?

She was out with her boyfriend and left her 8 yr old with a 30 year old man and a relative who was a sex offender. Was the 30 year old also a relative? Or a friend of the family. Lots more to this story.

A 30 year-old discovered him assaulting the girl.

This indicates that the teen was related to someone who lived in the apartment:

http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1368378.html

The teen, who is related to some of the people who live in the apartment, was arrested last fall for having sex with a child under age 16, detective Matt Walsh said. He received a deferred prosecution agreement that would likely be voided if he was charged with another crime.


The teen would then be convicted of second-degree sexual assault and could be sentenced to up to 25 years in prison for the 2006 incident.


Also here:
http://www.postcarescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070818/APC0101/708180545/1003/APC01
In a text message to WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee, the woman said the teen was "a relative that I trusted that was staying the night."


The fact that she "trusted" an accused offender is odd.

Edited again to add that we don't know the details of the 2006 case. It could have been a girlfriend that was 15 with an aggressive DA. Or it could have been criminal. Given that he's 17, there's a real possibility that it may not have been as bad as it would appear on the surface.

I am saying that she left her child with a 30 year old man and the teen who had a hx of sex offenses.
Did she know the 30 year old well? Was he also a relative? I am coming from the place that I would not leave an 8 year old with two men.. period. I am wondering about the relationship of the 30 year old to the family.

Does not really provide "Justice" for the victim anymore.

In lashing out against a child, who had crossed an un-crossable line with another child. So if a father had made a fist and landed a deadly blow, would it be any different?

And I think it's an intersting topic to discuss because I do see both sides of the argument.

There are some issues in this case discussed upthread that need to be explored - like whether or not mom knew that this 17 y/o was accused of sexual assault in the past when she "trusted" him with her daughter.

How do we know he was actually doing what she was told he was doing? She didn't witness it herself. So she was wrong to do what she did.

So, yes, I would vote to convict.

Not planning on seeing the movie (I am not a vengeance junkie) but the plot is that a man's wife or family (or something) is killed and the perpetrator gets off on a technicality. So he goes on a vengeance streak and sets off some sort of mob war.

Our society is so predicated on vengeance=justice. And that is sickening to me. Vengeance does not undo the damage done. It doesn't even teach a lesson at that point in a person's life. Justice should be setting the treatment of the criminal such that it rehabilitates them and can reintroduce them to society in a productive manner. In the case of this woman such a sentence would be lite as her case was the result of an extreme emotional condition. But for a career criminal this would result in a great deal of time spent undoing the damage.

But that is unlikely to happen. Just take a look at what passes for justice in our entertainment system. Extreme retaliation and violence meted out to all who get in the way of an individuals sense of justicevengeance.

It seems that people have very extreme feelings - either very vengeance driven or very much against.

I imagine lesser charges will be pled out.

It is predicated on the notion that incarceration (a form of torture) somehow makes things better. It doesn't.

Our justice system is actually part of the problem we have with the Middle East. As burdened with a sense of vengeance as ours is the Middle East is older still in their approach to justice. We delegate the state to exact vengeance in our name and thus remove it from our hands and trust the state to carry out justice. But in the Middle East this is seen as abandoning the responsibility of justice. A person wronged by another bares a burden of justice and must see it answered personally. Some state official proclaiming that justice has been served does not satisfy their responsibility in the matter. And thus we see the end result. An endless series of vendettas carried out for generations.

Vengeance sucks.

It's the kind of discussion I was hoping to have on the topic.

(or maybe not so lucky) she didn't have a gun.

I will say this. I oppose the death penalty in general, and I especially oppose the death penalty if there is not even a trial. Murder is murder, and if I was on a jury in which it was clear the defendant murdered someone rather than dealing with them through legal means then I would almost certainly go with a guilty verdict. I don't know all the details on this specific case though so I don't want to pretend I am on the jury here, I am just making it clear what my opinion is on this matter in general.

But I will still say it is wrong to stab a person who poses no immediate threat no matter what that person has done. There is a legal system that deals with the type of crime that boy allegedly committed, if we excuse people for violently assaulting someone in one situation where is it going to stop? If they make an exception in one case then other people might think they can go stabbing people who did them wrong as well.

She wasn't defending her daughter. Her duty, at that point, was to comfort her daughter and get her to a doctor.

I'm a mother, and I would not hesitate to assault anyone attacking a child. The purpose, though, is to protect the child, not to indulge in a revenge-driven rage. The child is the point, and when you defend a child from a physical assault, when the assault is stopped, you care for the child.