This article is about the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback being accused of sexual assault for the second time. I think this ties into the class because the case has been dropped from the DA for the lack of any evidence, so it seems that it is all hearsay evidence. This could be a case where the girl was trying to take advantage of the superstar by accusing him of assualting her, or it could be a case in which the prosecution just didnt have enough evidence to satisfy the burden of proof to convict Ben. Either way he is not going to get in trouble by the law for whatever happened however he may be suspended by the league for violating the players code of conduct policy. Ben has been accused of assaulting a girl before and it makes people wonder if girls are just trying to take advantage of a celebrity or is he getting away with these assaults because of lack of evidence. The prosecution pretty much said in their press conference that they are confident that Ben assaulted the girl but cannot prove without a reasonable doubt to a jury that he is responsible, also it did not help that the girl, for some reason, did not want to press charges. The medicial examiner said they found male DNA but not enough to make a DNA profile. I think this would have come to a different outcome if they were in fact able to get a DNA profile from the sample.The case shows that there is in fact a burden of proof that needs to be satisfied for the DA to persue a case, and do not just go after people to punish them for supposably committing crimes.
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Rodney Williams was charged with sexual assault of a child and like the title says, he was sentenced to three life terms in prison for sexual assault and 720 more years for possessing child pornography. The case involved a 5 year old girl. His wife found a camera with images on it of him sexually assaulting a child and more than 70 images of child pornography on his computer. Now I personally think that this is a little over kill. I mean don't get me wrong, I would put the guy in prison for life too, but 720 years, sounds a little crazy, we all know that he would probably die in like sixty years, so couldn't they just say life in prison without the chance of parole. Does the same thing.
Here's the article explaining the case.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/01/12/scotus.sex.offender.law/index.html
In the article it gives a first hand account of a boy that was kidnapped and sexually assulted that is now an advocate for others that have also been sexually assulted. They support a procedure that many states already have in place and that is a detention sort of program for sex offeneders when they get out of prison and what it does is it serves as a coaching program on how to cope in the world around them now that they are out and they oppertunity is there for them to commit a crime again. The program is state funded and has psychological staff on hand to help these previous offenders fight their urge soon as they are out of prison. But they also get into the other side of things and have previous sex offenders that advocate civil rights and say that the right due process is being over turned. The basic question is, is it legal to hold someone even after they serve their time for the crime they commited? My personal opinion is in the case of sexual predators YES. They not only broke a law but they aslo violated another person against their will. They deserve to be thought how to control those anti-social behavior because jail time alone does not deter offenders from reapting those crime in most cases it simple puts their fantasizes on ice until they get out again.
Some people may not know about this case and others may have heard a little about it. I had never heard anything that I can remember about this case until we were talking about domestic abuse in my night class. My professor then talked about the Tracy Thurman case. What we were told was that she had previously gotten a restraining order on her abusive husband. However he broke the contract several times. She had repeatedly called the Torrington, Connecticut police to inform them of her husband's acts and they still ignored her. On one particular day June 10th of 1983 he stabbed Tracy repeatedly around her chest, neck, and throat, I believe it was close to 17 stab wounds all together.
A police arrived 25 minutes later but did not arrest her husband even after her husband threw their son on top of her and then repeatedly kicked her in the stomach and head.
Because of this Tracy Thurman sued the city of Torrington claiming she was denied equal protection under the law. She won the battle and was awarded 2.3 million. Also because of this it lead to actions such as during domestic abuse disputes a person that is seen as the abuser is taken into custody for the night.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UzpxcbBqe4
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097132/plotsummary
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/01/14/ny.hate.crime/index.html
While looking up hate crimes, I found this article about a gay man who was beaten nearly to death by two men who were against homosexuals. I have not found out if these men were convicted of their crime, but it sure looked like they were going to be in prison for about 25 years.
What really shocked me was that this man had done nothing wrong to these two men. All he did was go to a store to buy cigarettes and when he was leaving, they yelled profanities at him, called him vicious names, robbed him, and severely beat him. Another fact that I couldn't believe was that this man was almost 50 years old. The two men who beat him were in their 20s. Why would someone want to beat up a middle aged man that did nothing wrong? That really upsets me, because young people are always supposed to look up to the people that are older than us. I hope these young men do go to prison just so they can see and feel the torture that they did to an innocent man.
I also found a statement that was made from the victim himself. It tells about what he remembers and how he felt now that he has become a victim of a hate crime.
http://www.towleroad.com/2009/10/reminder-vigil-today-for-nyc-hate-crime-victim.html
I was doing research for another class about how people with mental disabilities were being treated after committing a crime. I actually came across a very sad story of a mentally disabled woman tortured to death by people she thought were her friends. This is a very eye opening story and thanks to the new law passed by President Obama, prohibiting hate crimes against those who are mentally disabled, her so called "friends" will be punished as they should be.
She was not only murdered, but tortured prior to her death. Her "friends" did things to her such as making here drink urine and chemicals and writing a suicide note to go along with the idea that is was her who wanted to die. She was also physically abused. She was hit with various objects and her body was stuffed into a garbage can. I actually think that after someone commits these acts towards another person the real question is who really has a mental disability? Jennifer may not have been at the same learning level as her "friends", but she is not the one who felt the need to torture another human being. If I were evaluating the case I would say that her attackers had a serious mental problem that needed to be taken care of.
Here is a link to just one of the sites on the case and at the bottom of the site there are links to other information on the case. I think everyone who believes people with mental disabilities are not positive parts of society should read this article. It is not right for someone to be treated differently because they are different than you.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/02/17/crimesider/entry6216214.shtml
This case is from my hometown and is suprising to me because I personally know this kid and my brother was good friends with him. Bryce Gully was being charged with first degree murder and robbery after supossibly shooting a man during a drug deal and bragged about it and sent pic messages with a gun and money. There are cameras in place in "crack ave." in pleasent valley (down the street from where i live) that the police were using for surveillance on the drugs. It went to court and he was going to be charged as an adult at 15, but was found not guilty. T he reason for this was a combination of things. They had a bunch of kids from the neighborhood come in and say so an so did it and there was no clear descritption between all of them but there was a concensus from the people who were in the car with matt huffman when he was shot. This kid had a long string of criminal charges prior and they found him hiding under a bed. The second reason he was not convicted was because they had a minor error in the evidence and gully kept pushing for a trial since you can never be tried for the same crime twice. He bragged about being unstoppable afterwards until he was later charged with an unrelated crime a felony for stabbing another kid. Hmmm.. I'm pretty sure he has a patern going on here here are some of the links you can find info. on http://www.whotv.com/news/who-story-gully-trial-051209,0,4798942.story http://www.woi-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=11920122 or just google his name . So why do some guilty people go free is it because of other variables such as age etc.. The victims family even forgave him and the jury said they didn't want to possibly put an innocent kid behind bars?
Most of you probably heard about the woman who was assaulted Wednesday on campus between the Presidents house and Maucker Union. She reported that she used pepper spray to get away from her attacker. This report made the local news and newspapers. What some of you might not have heard about is that this woman lied about being attacked. She went into the police station and told police that she had made up the whole story about being attacked. UNI police said that they were suspicious about her report. She reported that she was leaving the library heading to her car parked on Wisconsin Street. She said that no one else was around when she was attacked. The police found this strange that no one would be around, because the library had just closed and a lot of students park their cars on Wisconsin Street. Also a police dog was not able to pick up any scent of pepper spray at the scene. Even though the police thought that the story could be false they investigated it like they would any other report or case. The UNI police said that most people make false reports because they want the attention or they have some type of metal disorder. They do not know the reason why this woman lied about her attack. This woman was arrested and charged with making a false report.
I am glad that she admitted that she lied about the attack. If she had kept quite the UNI and Cedar Falls police would have put time and effort into finding her attacker. If they had found a guy that matched her description, it could have possibly have lead to him being charged with a crime he didn't commit.
Below is the website to the Courier's website that talks about the case:
http://www.wcfcourier.com/news/local/article_955e5b94-17e2-11df-a929-001cc4c03286.html
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