Reply #78: NOPE [View All]

[sui generis]

Good GAWD do not presume to speak on behalf of the public's "good" - unless you feel like telling some people who they can't get married to, for their own good of course.

Zix. This is not the right reason. Laws, particularly laws that can be prosecuted both as criminal and civil (for depriving someone of a civil right), exist to protect people from having someone stomp on their civil rights.

It's kind of dexterish to have to ask why absolute law doesn't work - why law must have a reason to continue prosecuting in order for the process of law to remain valid.

I'm not a lawyer, but I do know that the circumstances 30 years later are not the same any more. At the time, it was absolutely wrong to take advantage of someone by spiking a drink. It was also irresponsible to not question someone's age, regardless of how "old" they looked outwardly.

But to prosecute someone for raping an underage partner should require intent as part of the equation. Raping an adult partner - not that much smarter, but the difference is an adult can withdraw testimony. The "victim" is now an adult and cannot, because the prosecutor has a hard on for a crime that under any other circumstance would have expired under statute, but can be prosecuted only because the victim was a child at the time. I'm uncomfortable with our laws being stretched for political gain this way - and uncomfortable that we always seem to find a way around the basic protections that the law should afford to the victim.

Now SHE is required to go back to court over something she's been done with for a long long time. How is that in her interests? Or do you care? That's why it seems wrong to me, even though I hate the crime and don't particularly think much of Polanski anyway.