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Harshest Penalty for Alleged Rapist Was For Using a Computer To Arrange Contact With Teen
An anonymous reader writes: Today in a nationally publicized case, an alleged rapist from a fairly elite boarding school was convicted of a number of related misdemeanors, but the jury did not find him guilty of rape. According to the New York Times, his lone felony conviction was "using a computer to lure a minor." In effect, a criminal was convicted of multiple misdemeanors, including sexual penetration of a child, but the biggest penalty he faces is a felony record and years in jail because he used a computer to contact the child, rather than picking her up at a coffee shop, meeting her at a party, or hiring a fifteen-year-old prostitute. Prosecutors have these "using a computer" charges as an additional quiver in their bow, but should we really be making it a felony to use a computer for non-computer-related crime when there is no underlying felony conviction?
What is interesting is a few years earlier they could legally have sex. Then for a couple of years it's a felony. Then it's legal again.
Incorrect, barring any recent legal changes in the State of New Hampshire.
Felonious Sexual Assault: II. Engages in sexual penetration with a person, other than his legal spouse, who is 13 years of age or older and under 16 years of age where the age difference between the actor and the other person is 4 years or more; or
If he was 17 and her 15, that's only two years, well within NH's 4 year 'R&J' exemption. Indeed, by the way the statute is constructed, once legal they're always legal.
Though the second article says 18 and 15, but even at 3 years and change it shouldn't have triggered statutory rape charges by the letter of NH law.
Lacking statutory rape, they'd have go go for 'actual' rape charges, IE it was against her will, and browsing news articles, that's what they did. They simply failed to make that case.
I don't read AC A human right
He was 17, she was 15 when the sex occurred. He didn't rape her. She regretted it afterwards, and either cried rape or was forced to cry rape by her parents.
18, not 17. It's in the article:
But at its core, the case was about an intimate encounter last year between a 15-year-old girl and an 18-year-old acquaintance, and whether she consented as it escalated.
And he was convicted because his story wasn't credible. He (now) claims he suddenly saw the light, seconds before penetrating her. And yet, for days afterwards she was texting him to ask whether he used a condom, and she went to a pharmacist for emergency contraception. Are those the actions of someone who wasn't penetrated? Add to that the fact that he repeatedly changed his story, and it's very easy to see why a jury didn't believe him.
And yet, despite all that, they didn't convict of rape. So you're right on that count, Anon. So why all your crying and attacking the victim?
http://nypost.com/2009/09/18/t...
Danmell Ndonye, 18, who had accused five men of gang rape, admitted the truth only when prosecutors confronted her after learning of a cellphone video that captured the whole sordid episode and showed she had willingly participated, officials said.
She created her outlandish tale when her boyfriend, a Hofstra student whoâ(TM)s been dating her since the semester began a few weeks ago, demanded to know where she had disappeared after a wild frat party early Sunday.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
On advice from his lawyer, Banks had pleaded no contest to raping his childhood friend on campus 10 years ago, reports the Associated Press. He served five years in prison for a rape he didn't commit, and then spent the next five years on parole.
To his surprise, Banks received a Facebook friend request from Gibson after he got out of prison. During their first meet-up, Gibson confessed that she faked the rape accusation and expressed a desire to help him. It was music to Banks' ears -- except for the fact that she didn't want to face prosecutors with the truth for fear she would have to return settlement money her mother had won from the school.