WARNING: This may actually upset you, it's nor very pleasant, but I think it needs to be known. This is more for those that were here when we left the old board. If you remember Brorien, you may wish to know about something that has happened to him. He is Brian in this story: http://www.sturgisjournal.com/main....tionID=65&ArticleID=20109&TM=40065.14 He actually posted about going on trial on the stamps forum All I can say that I hope he is actually guilty, otherwise his life has unfairly been very screwed up.
*Shrug* Innocent or not, railroaded in court or not, the creep had kiddie porn on his computer. funny how some people are going to go on defending him to the last, and how some people will suddenly hate him without limit when they were defending him without limit the day before the verdict. it's a madhouse for anyone who was close to him right now, and probably deservedly so... at the end of the day, he was always a dick to us, and he had kiddie porn on his computer. and yet, lest I start to gloat... somewhere in the middle of all this, there's victimized children who may never recover or even be identified to receive help.
*shrug* some of em are sensible folks, pepster. I glanced over their threads, I quite like the touch about changing well wishes to brian to well wishes to the victim. edit: No that was NOT a dig at the people who flipflopped or are still protesting the guy's potential innocence. the court's found him guilty. he had kiddie porn on his computer, and appearantly he was counting his blessings that similar evidence was going to be thrown out. i find anyone who'll still defend his character at this point to be in a world of their own, but there is always a question of proof. on such highly emotionally charged issues as child molestation, people often react to their emotions rather than to evidence. sadly, for brorien, there's evidence. so, to jail with him where i'm sure he'll be karmicly repaid, and fingers crossed for the victim(s). (this edit is not in response to pepster, by the way)
[quote:c9b5a2a6c1="Garner"]*shrug* some of em are sensible folks, pepster. I glanced over their threads, I quite like the touch about changing well wishes to brian to well wishes to the victim.[/quote:c9b5a2a6c1] They were not the ones I was disturbed about. Its those who your post above touched on. You are absolutly right though, defending him or not in the middle of all this there is a child who has had their childhood stolen from them.
You're right there garner. People that at the start of the thread were defending him to the hilt without knowing a thing about it. And then turned on him just as rabidly when the nature of the crime and the verdict came to light. I daresay that even the knowledge of what the crime was before the verdict would have been enough to elicit a less strong defence from those posters, such is the nature of society in regards to that crime. It's one of those crimes that is going to elicit a strong response no matter the result of the trial, Even people that are found innocent are believed to be guilty anyway, that they just got off with it somehow. I can't really think of any other crime that gets a response like that. I can only assume that since the jury was so fast in getting a verdict, that the evidence must have been strong and compelling. They have the facts, and we don't. All we know is that he has been found guilty in a court of law, by people in full possession of the facts and the evidence. And I think that speaks for itself. And of course, it is all too easy to forget the victim in this, as we focus on the person that abused her. Again, a symptom of society. We so often care about the cause of crime rather than the aftermath.
This is awful in many ways. I have read the tread three times and tought. Here are some of them. 1. I don't remember Brorien so I can't say anything about his peronality, but what struck me was that he thought that having childporn in his computer was irrelevant for his case. For me that proves that he is absolutely guilty and doesn't know that he is sick. I hope they have good psychologists in jail who can give him an understanding of himself. 2. Dangers with a board like this. Some of the members there were thinking of the youths on a board like this. We have rather young people among us too, I think. What if some lunatic who seems nice on our board takes contact privately with someone. Luckyly we are wide spread around theworld, but if? 3. He has kids of his own, poor kids how will they cope? What has he done to them?
I remember a friend-of-a-friend sort of situation, the father was abusing his most of his children sexually... all but one of them. no one's quite sure why he didn't abuse that one, but that one grew up with some of the worst emotional scars out of the lot. "why wasn't I good enough to rape", basicly. i remember it took me a long time to get my head around that sort of thing, but it killed off a little piece of my soul once I did. ah well. i don't think we need to debate the jury's motives much. according to the stamps forum, brorien was giving different stories to different people. his lawyers threw out the REALLY damning evidence but child pornography on his computer was submitted. he didn't seem to feel there was anything wrong about possessing it in the first place... I'm prepared to trust the jury made the right decision. now... what about the kid(s) who may spend the rest of their life 'why me?'
I agree with Garner and what Trollmother said for number 1. I'm not all that surprised at the turnaround attitude of most of the posters on the stamps forum, just natural human sheepness really. Probably the only thing that struck me as a particularly retarded thing to say was this: [quote:45a677e249="rentawitch"]It doesn't look good BUT we cannot know what happened. For instance, it is not ideal for someone of 30 to have a sexual relationship with someone so young BUT there are sexually precocious 12 year olds. It doesn't make it right but it is possible that it might be understandable. an 18 year age gap would be less considered if say the younger were 18 and the older 36. I have to admit that the presence of child pornography is bad but then, what IS child pornography by definition...[/quote:45a677e249] Still, I can't help feeling a little bit proud/pleased about the fact the he didn't fit in with us, even if it was only luck and not our sense of when someone's a wrong'n, as my gran used to say.
mm. in his case, he was an unpleasant chap to many of us, but that didn't hint in any way shape or form at him being a rapist. as for sexually promiscious 12 year olds... i've got a dear friend who gave her virginity away to an older boyfriend when she was eleven. she's had a life that could read like a raunchy smut novel, or a horror story depending on how much detail you seek out. you're a child at that age, even if you've already had your first period. now, by 18, plenty of women are ready for marriage while plenty of men are ready to be isolated and confined in concentration camps for their own well being. but children aren't in a position to give consent in the way that an 18 year old is, or a 30 year old is. most people, by 18, at least have some idea of what the repercutions of their actions might be. most people by 30 damn well ought to. a 12 year old, even a very mature one, should NOT be having sex with a thirty year old man. honestly, i don't think they should be having sex at all.
It's a very human situation, really, to want to believe that people you declared harmless on your inner screen are, at first, defended. Its also kind of natural that once you get how wrong you've been about them, you feel more revolted than a person that has been neutral to start with. Also, most of them didn't get the fact before page 2 or something - i.e., they didn't know the accusation. That does not excuse at all someone saying something stupid, and sickening, like rentawitch. *sigh* I know far too many of these stories. I was really very, very tired after thinking about this for a while. Edit to add: There is, well, second hand information on the stamps board that the girl was seven. Supposedly, that's what Brorien himself told one of the guys on yahoo.
You know, up till now, I was afraid I was too much of a pottymouth, knowing way to many bad words and such. Right now I feel like there aren't enough expletives in the world.
valid points... honestly, if one of our group said he was going to court for something that might ruin his life, i'd like to know WHY this trial might be so severe before i jump to their defense. i would STILL jump to their defense so long as i had reason to believe they were innocent, but with something like child molestation or rape, people will tend to shun you just for association with such a vile crime - as has already been mentioned. i dunno. it just seems niave on the one hand to defend someone before you know what they're accused of, more pack mentality than actual rational thinking. but it's also a little gauche to shun them just because they're accused of something particularly nasty. i remember back in my highschool years, 'sexual harassment' and 'stalking' were two of the guaranteed effective ways to get someone to leave you alone if you were a girl. annie wanted to break up with jay, but didn't have any valid reasons to do it, so she told everyone he was stalking her. kate had half a shot of alcohol at one of my parties, and later got topless. friends of hers said we tried to rape her while she was drunk, because kate was embarassed at what she'd done. it doesn't matter how baseless the claim is, until everything comes to light you're at risk of being presumed guilty... of course, if jay had been caught tresspassing on annie's lawn in the middle of the night or following her around town, things might have been different. kate's friends claimed I locked her in my room, which didn't even have so much as a door handle, much less a lock. brorien had kiddie porn on his harddrive, didn't think that was wrong, and the REALLY bad evidence was thrown out? the accusations are bad... especially when bandied about irresponsibly by someone who doesn't realize the damage they might be doing... but in this situation, it doesn't sound like brorien is a victim at all
[quote:904f5ab334="Trollmother"] He has kids of his own, poor kids how will they cope? What has he done to them?[/quote:904f5ab334] He said on the Stamps forum that his wife is divorcing him. Hopefully, they have been living apart and the kids have been living with her. Then again, I don't know what kind of person the wife is. She could be an abusive mother, for all we know.
I remember Brorien - for some reason I had a solid impression that he was in his early teens :? (style of writing, style of avatar, his Boardfic etc) I wish there was a way to know what REALLY happened . I'm extremely hesitant to call someone a monster (because, well, if he IS guilty, then that's what he is) unless I'm certain that the evidence wasn't planned, or misrepresented, or that the jury wasn't threatened by an outside party, etc. I can easily think of people as being temporarily jerks, but it's hard to accept their permanent evil-ness!
he had child porn on his computer. he KEPT child porn on his computer. if he tried to act like it was no big deal, that's just general brorienness... tell him he did something wrong and he'd act like it was your problem. but this is child pornography. you don't keep that stuff. you delete it as soon as you find it in your inbox, you contemplate formating your computer, you maybe even call the FBI, but you don't bloody keep it on your computer and you don't act like it wasn't wrong to have it in the first place.
[quote:0d3eaf54e4="Garner"]he had child porn on his computer. he KEPT child porn on his computer. if he tried to act like it was no big deal, that's just general brorienness... tell him he did something wrong and he'd act like it was your problem. but this is child pornography. you don't keep that stuff. you delete it as soon as you find it in your inbox, you contemplate formating your computer, you maybe even call the FBI, but you don't bloody keep it on your computer and you don't act like it wasn't wrong to have it in the first place.[/quote:0d3eaf54e4] Exactly - if it had been accidentally downloaded, maliciously transferred by a hacker, or just links in spam - deleted or not (remember that deleted information can often be recovered with the proper tools) - he would have said so - he just seemed to see it as irrelevant - which does seem to indicate a certain lack of logical thinking, apart from anything else. As with any accusation of this type, it is one person's word against another's for the actual offence, but other factors such as the kiddie porn can make an accusation much more believable - there is also the point, of course, that practically everywhere, possession of kiddie porn is itself a jailable offence! Assuming these were downloaded images, and not digital photos he had taken himself (which would be a whole other can of worms) he presumably must have paid for them somehow - recently, paedophiles have been tracked by financial records - credit cards etc. - it seems to me that the prosecution would have made some effort to have evidence of deliberate access to this material by that means.
I agree with Garner, any child pron he had he should have deleted immediatly. I think it's wrong that child ########### is so readily available but it shocked me that someone I talk to quite regulaly would becharged of such an offense. He told us that the #### wasn't his and that it had been thrown out as evidance anyway. To me that doesn't matter, the fact is that he had it and he hadn't deleted it. That doesn't stand him in good sted considering the offense. When he first told us that he was in court for a capital offense that he hadn't commited we all felt sorry for him, I don't think he even told us what the acusation was. Of course when we found out we all felt sorry for him and that this girl must be pointing the finger for the piss. When he was found guilty we all changed our minds to a degree. Personally i would prefer not to think that he has done this and that this was her just pointing the finger. But on the other hand he [b:8211c05070]did[/b:8211c05070] have child #### and he didn't tell us exactly what he was up for. I'm not sure who to feel sorry for now, the girl or Brian
Sadly, child pornography is far more easier to find these days. Filesharing programs, mIRC... I recall a few months ago some folks tried to force the owners of Kazaa to reveal the IP numbers of users who spread child pornography over the network, and they refused. The owners of Kazaa may have lost the trial regarding the many issues their peer-to-peer software caused, but they didn't do so due to child pornography. Anonymous identity won in that one. So you can find child pornography on peer-to-peer networks. You can find child pornography on mIRC. Usenet groups are, pardon me, flooded with it. With a bit of effort, you can find it on the net proper. To sum it up, we live in world that's very, very sick. The average sicko doesn't pay for child pornography. It's the specializing ones, those that belong to vast world wide sicko networks that pay for it. They order custom-made pics, mostly from each other. More often than not, the kids are kidnapped, horribly abused, and murdered. Owning child pornography doesn't just make it possible that you're a pedophile, it also makes you an accessory to so many crimes in so many countries that it makes my head ache. And you can't try them for most of those crimes due to international laws as they stand. It's a bit difficult to put someone on trial for ordering the rape and murder of some poor child in a state where the police is too easy to buy off, where the kid comes from a poor family, or just somewhere where nobody really cares. Locating the country from which the pictures originate is a whole nightmare in itself. Getting someone there to start a joint investigation... But I digress. Brorien didn't have a problem with child pornography. It doesn't matter if it was planted, though you can hear me snerk at that supposition. What matters is that he didn't see it as a problem. It wasn't an issue. It was okay. It meshed with his world view perfectly. The rest of the world holds a different view. So he didn't have a problem with where the pics on his computer come from. That's a man with an unacceptable moral code. Such a man is not just likely to put to practice what he watches on his computer screen, he's almost certain to do it if he believes he can get away with it. And you know... there's many crooks of many shapes and forms out there, committing an assortment of crimes that also come in many shapes and forms. Those people have moral codes of their own. In the vast majority of cases, what Brorien did is where the line is drawn. Even the tough gangster who's doing three life sentences will be shocked at child rape more often than not, and so will the two-bit burglar. Each of them has his own moral code, and we put them in prison because it doesn't mesh with our own. And in that particular society, justice is brutal, swift, and almost always fatal. Pedophiles don't survive prisons in most cases. Not if it's known why they're there. The mass-murderer and the two-bit thief, they have their own kids, you see. That, and paedophiles signify the very worst a man can go to. [i:c00297daed]"I ain't like that."[/i:c00297daed] That's usually the thought that signs the pedophile's death sentence in the prison halls. You can be a thief, a murderer, a cop-killer, a white-supremacist, [i:c00297daed]but you ain't like that.[/i:c00297daed] And the truth is... I don't find myself shedding any tears. [/i]
[quote:e8c29b60d9="Pixel"]Assuming these were downloaded images, and not digital photos he had taken himself (which would be a whole other can of worms) he presumably must have paid for them somehow - recently, paedophiles have been tracked by financial records - credit cards etc. - it seems to me that the prosecution would have made some effort to have evidence of deliberate access to this material by that means.[/quote:e8c29b60d9] The 15 minutes it took for the jury to find that he was guilty shows that there is evidence beyond accursations, material evidence. Sadly its is quite possible if not probable he was either caught in the act or took photo's/video for such a quick trial to take place. Or he arrogantly decided to represent himself in court without the aid of a lawyer, but I think this would have been mentioned in the article.
... Dane, are you 15goingon5 on the stamps forum? and Pepster, I don't think many judges in the states will LET you represent yourself these days.
I did not know that but it makes sense, lawyers make a mockery out of the courts enough as it is. Still I did consider it as something borien would be enough of a fool to do, or a contempteous outburst at the jury if it comes to that.
[quote:14c251a488="Pepster"]I did not know that but it makes sense, lawyers make a mockery out of the courts enough as it is. Still I did consider it as something borien would be enough of a fool to do, or a contempteous outburst at the jury if it comes to that.[/quote:14c251a488] I can see him doing it, yes. I can't see him getting any evidence disqualified while doing that, though. He could have just lied about that, mind.
Still as we unlikely to ever know the specifics it is largely a moot point. Which leaves us with a court turn around of 15 minutes, swift doubtless justice.
Indeed. And taking everything else into consideration, Brorien doesn't look like a victim at all. He looks like a pro-death sentence ad, as a matter of fact.
[quote:f6eae7d274="Garner"] and Pepster, I don't think many judges in the states will LET you represent yourself these days.[/quote:f6eae7d274] This case involved a man respresenting himself in a trial for multiple murder, against the advice of lawyers.
[quote:a639136310="Marcia"][quote:a639136310="Garner"] and Pepster, I don't think many judges in the states will LET you represent yourself these days.[/quote:a639136310] This case involved a man respresenting himself in a trial for multiple murder, against the advice of lawyers.[/quote:a639136310] "He must be insane because he didn't plead insanity" - would pleading insanity have proved him sane? I'm surprised the article didn't mention Catch-22! As for Brorien, expanding my earlier comment, he seems to have a mind that is deficient in making links - if he cannot see the link between kiddie porn on his computer and an accusation of child molestation, then maybe he can't make the link between his own desires and the harm to the child - or even worse, can see the harm but cannot link this to decent human morality. The longer he is kept away from the world the better - thank gods his wife is divorcing him - this is a case where custody of the children is clearcut - although as long as he is in jail it is a moot point - unless some authority with more compassion than sense gives him parole over Christmas!
Although slightly vexing on the other forum..i thought some of the las point were significant... It really does bring to light some of the horrors surrounding us. People can be sick, they can be cruel, and they can be disturbing. And one of them used to be on this forum...you can't help but wonder the pesky 'what if...' It's a good wake up call in many ways...
The jury system is not perfect a guilty verdict by a jury is not to say that the person is 100% guilty but that 12 people thrown together because they had nothing better to do and who want to get out of there as quickly as possible haven't been given information that would instil reasonable doubt... After being a juror you realise how flawed the system can be and the amount of information that could prejudice a jury either positively or negatively that isn't allowed to be heard in trial is truely staggering... From my 2 weeks as a juror I spent most of it in a room with my fellow jurors as the lawyers and the judge argued over what we could hear and couldn't... As for Borien, he was an idiot and I think people turn on their friends when they do wrong than when its a stranger... Its a bigger betrayal of trust. But he was found guilty and in the knowledge of the system pronouncing him guilty people will run with that and exact a little of their own revenge... It depends on which state he's in cos I heard that in some states the sentence could be as liitle as a couple of years for child molestation... He's not going to be executed and he's definitely not going to get life. Is it enough? :shrug: Probably not for the victim.
Er... It's a capital crime, Spiky. That means the death penalty is a definite possibility. Life at the very least. Not that it matters. Once he's in prison, he'll be found dead soon enough.
I don't know if rape is a capital crime (and then there's the question of statutory). But, it's moot as his state has no death penalty.
Some cases of child molestation in the US have received sentences of 2 years for first offenses. But this varies state by state. And not everyone is killed in jail for it, their lives might be made a living hell but they live... There is no mob justice in prisons there is just a lot of bad men learning how to be badder from each other. What a great system :roll:
I am amazed at this. I generally only have board access during the week while at work and was amazed to come in this morning and see this topic. As was stated before I thought he was a bloke in his late teens when he was posting – he used my name as one of his characters on his boardfic – I guess you really don’t truly know anyone’s real nature when corresponding on message boards- it makes me feel kinda sick… My thoughts are with the abused.
[quote:1a6bf64667="spiky"]Some cases of child molestation in the US have received sentences of 2 years for first offenses. But this varies state by state. And not everyone is killed in jail for it, their lives might be made a living hell but they live... There is no mob justice in prisons there is just a lot of bad men learning how to be badder from each other. What a great system :roll:[/quote:1a6bf64667] Yes and no. Child rape is, for the vast majority of people, the last red line. Even the Neo-Nazis will be trying to get him, Spiky. Mob justice is such a rare animal that most folks only find it in books, but there is such a thing as united in hatred.
i have to say, i disagree with some of what's been said about how you can or can't know a person online. in general, we were always able to smell a rat before it was chewing through the walls. let us not forget that buzzfloyd and I met online, as did maljonic and marcia. even tony and swreader, who truely deserve each other. many of us have formed solid and unshakable friendships online. look at kenny and rinso... separated at birth, one raised as a giant and a car thief, the other raised as a graham norton impersonator with a rat beard. we know each other. most of us knew each other before we ever met in person, and meeting in person didn't change a thing. in happy cases, it just cemented the friendships that were already there. now, some day doors WILL be arrested for bothering sheep, kenny WILL be nicked by the cops as he tries to steel yet another car, and rinso WILL prove to be camper than mclaren, but these aren't things that we could never have guessed from knowing them online. also, it's not like knowing someone in person gives you any assurance that they're not into latex and bondage behind closed doors. ultimtely, it comes down to trust. we TRUST that most people are decent human beings, and because we're adults, we have a very wide margin for what qualifies as 'decent'. but the trust is there. its what keeps us functioning together in a society. you break that trust, you get isolated from society. but if you can't trust others, or get worried because your trust was broken in the past, you have to isolate yourself or just go mad from paranoia. sure, i *could* be an axe murderer... but you know me, and you have to trust that i'm not. being human beings being at risk for being hurt or betrayed. luckily, most of us don't betray each other in big ways. it's easy to forget at times, MOST people don't try to have sexual relations with children. not everyone who does is going to rely on the internet to do it (there was no implication, in what i saw, that brorien had been an online predator, for example). it's a fucked up world at the end of the day, but you just have to wear your heart on your sleeve and hope for the best or pack it all in. frankly, i'll choose to go on trusting humanity in general even if quite a few individuals strike me as lost hopes.
I agree, thanks for posting that. The thing is that people are just people, being online or not online doesn't make any difference. There's just as much chance, or little chance, of someone you work with or pass in the street every day being a criminal as there is of meeting such a person online. People online aren't special or different, they just other people with computers.
Yes that's true Garner. I think the point I'm trying to make is that friendships like you've made here are also intensified (not the right word) through correspondence, which isn't necessarily on these boards eg instant messages etc I don’t always think its’ the case of being ‘able to smell a rat before it was chewing through the walls’. Many of the people not on these boards were sensible and interesting posters (and indeed friends) before they went awol- at what point do you ‘smell the rat’? I think naively because this is the first time I have encountered someone in an online chatroom behaving in this way. Well, to be fair this is the only one that I’m part off, and yet I agree that most people here know each other without having ever met but I think that it’s made me think a little more about the nature of posters and indeed the person behind the post!
I can't really disagree with what Garner just posted - apart from someone being camper than Dale - impossible! I [b:4330117812]do[/b:4330117812] know a lot of people on this board. Half of them I haven't even met. In terms of on/offline friends, there's probably more online friends who know me very well and I know very well as offline friends. When meeting them in person, it's not really different from meeting them on msn. Apart from the fact that you can physically see, hear, smell, touch and/or taste (if you're that way inclined) them - it's the same speaking to them but with extra senses added in. I only knew Brorien from the posts he made on the old board. Frankly, he annoyed me on there and whilst I would never have imagined that he was a kiddy-fiddler (for lack of a better term), looking back retrospectively, the cap isn't so tight that it wouldn't fit him. Having said that, the news that he was did shock me and upset me to a certain degree, in an unquantifiable way. I guess it's just hard to accept that people who you meet through a common interest could be capable of something so bad. I will, however, continue to treat people in the exact same manner as I always did, for the same reason as Garner.
Perdita, the Internet is a place of masks, like it or not. Those who feel they need masks to hide themselves behind will use them, because it's relatively easy to start using one. But, there's this thing about masks... Pratchett said it perfectly in Maskerade, I think. Masks can reveal far more than they hide. There's usually tell-tale signs that something's not right. As for treating people with more suspicion that you have before... Keep an open mind, that's all I can say. Don't be too trusting, but don't be too suspicious, either.
mm. the crime is shocking in and of itself. that stands alone irrespective of how you knew the person, or even IF you knew the person. as for people you meet online being the same as other people, true enough. these days, the internet is less and less a world of furry-toothed geeks and is actually fairly representative of a global society. we can go crying our eyes out about how dismally we've failed to conquer prejudice and racism on the internet later, though. there's something else that's worth pointing out right now... studies show that you form bonds online faster than you do in person. people seem to let their guards down, both with others and with themselves, online. everybody's got some sort of mask they wear, day in day out, and you can leave that mask off online, if you're so inclined. or you can just put another one on. i like to think that i'm fairly well the same person online as i am offline, when all's said and done, but i don't find social interaction to be the same online as i do offline. bonds, of all sorts, form faster. i'd be curious what sort of collariaries you might find with pen-pals of a snail-mail fashion, but i think the speed of the internet allows for an immediacy that more traditional text based communication lacked. and, add to that, lots of people spend time on the 'net late at night when the brain's dropping its defense shields left right and center. but anyway. we bond faster, for good or ill. this can mean becoming best friends with someone who'll turn out to be unspeakably hideous, at which point you suddenly have to question WHY you were able to be friends with them... as much as i hate to say it... criminals are human, too... and even child molesting scumbags probably have a decent side to them that they can show the rest of the world.
cross posted with romano. glad to see i wasn't the only one thinking of the various implications of 'masks' though.
Personally (and I'm sure it's not just me) I find it much easier to be open and honest on the internet. Partly because I have a nice blank white space to justify myself on, and partly because I know that I never have to meet any of you unless I want to. My internet friends know a lot more about me than most of the people I've met face-to-face. As has already been mentioned, you could drink with someone in your local pub every evening, meet his wife and family, and have long discussions on a regular basis and still not know that he has a yard full of dead bodies because, let's face it, he's not likely to tell you, is he? It's just one of those horrible but true things.
[quote:bda430e02c="Garner"]i KNEW there was something shifty about gareth...[/quote:bda430e02c] Heheheh...
This is strange. The article clearly says it's a capital crime, but there's no death penalty in Michigan, meaning that it's impossible to commit a capital crime there. Very odd.
First degree murder, often with aggravating circumstances, is the only way to get the death penalty in most states that have it. The only state where sexual assault of a child is Louisiana, and it has to be aggravated rape of a child under 12. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=144&scid=10
Indeed. Which is why it's odd that this is described as a capital crime. By definition, there are no capital crimes in Michigan, let alone this one.
[quote:06567c48f4](b) Capital Felonies [FC]. Capital felony cases, in which life sentence is possible and a larger number of peremptory jury challenges is provided.[/quote:06567c48f4] From the Michigan Supreme Court Case File Management Standards Perhaps they keep the terminology in case they ever re-introduce the death penalty? Sadly I also found the definition of the crime he was convicted of. It makes horrible reading, so [color=red:06567c48f4]be warned [/color:06567c48f4]you may find this upsetting. Software can't format the url because of the brackets, so here it is to cut and paste http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(ytkprl45uopwefr4tm5blu55)/mileg.aspx?page=GetMCLDocument&objectname=mcl-750-520b&queryid=12144459
It's just not a capital crime if there's no execution. Capital means head. Capital punishment originally referred to the removal of said appendage. So, having capital punishment one lives through... Well, it seems a bit weak.
Capus, yes. It's still colloquial for crimes as murder in the German language, too, and might have been used in such a way by the journalist of a local newspaper.
Hi everyone have you heard the good news about Johnny and the bomb (hope its better then Johnny and the dead by chanal 4 in 1997) and the Childrens BBC and how it has been made in to a drama that looks so cool im so happy that terry pratchetts books are finaly being reconised by the big tv chanals.
Thanks sleepy_sarge, I went looking for that yesterday, but it wasn't there then. It seems a very strange sentence, 6.5 to 20 years.
