Phoebe Prince 15 kills self over bullying, 9 MA teens charged

Gonzo wrote:I am certainly not and I am sure Andres is not, talking about everyone at WS but if you spend any time there you certainly know WHO we ARE talking about and I would say they do make up the MAJORITY of the place.

Yeah, I don't mean ALL WS members are like that. I'm talking about the extreme, the loud, the ones that attend trials and harass or insult the attorney, the ones that stand outside the houses of the accused screaming, the ones that post detailed fantasies about the suffering of people accused of crimes, etc.

As my best friend in Nashville would say, "sugar, don't run me hot"...

No you did not say ALL but you DID say average...
Members count: 26,033 - if even only half that number are posters that is a very unsubstantiated estimate of what the average poster may be like and I think it is the same as saying the average defense attorney is a scumbag. Both of those accusations are based on limited experience (say following 10 threads out of hundreds) and are based on emotional responses and personal experiences.

I think there have been plenty of bad decisions rendered by the highly educated in the legal system. True, you may assert that it is a difficult and complicated system that only the highly educated could possibly understand, but there will be those who are in charge of justice that have and will continue to be lenient in sentencing to the detriment of the public despite their expensive pedigrees. The common man may not have your level of education, but I should hope you would defend him as stringently when he asserts his free speech right as you would your criminal client when he asserts his right to due process. In addition, the length of sentencing sometimes is left to the discretion of a judge and the people have a right to question his decisions without being put down as being uneducated and ignorant.

I could assert that thou dost protest too much due to inner struggles with what thou must do in his obligation to defend the constitution in one’s job – which would be the same armchair psychiatry in the comment on the vitriol amounting to self loathing. Just sayin.

ziggy wrote:As my best friend in Nashville would say, "sugar, don't run me hot"...

No you did not say ALL but you DID say average...
Members count: 26,033 - if even only half that number are posters that is a very unsubstantiated estimate of what the average poster may be like and I think it is the same as saying the average defense attorney is a scumbag. Both of those accusations are based on limited experience (say following 10 threads out of hundreds) and are based on emotional responses and personal experiences.

I think there have been plenty of bad decisions rendered by the highly educated in the legal system. True, you may assert that it is a difficult and complicated system that only the highly educated could possibly understand, but there will be those who are in charge of justice that have and will continue to be lenient in sentencing to the detriment of the public despite their expensive pedigrees. The common man may not have your level of education, but I should hope you would defend him as stringently when he asserts his free speech right as you would your criminal client when he asserts his right to due process. In addition, the length of sentencing sometimes is left to the discretion of a judge and the people have a right to question his decisions without being put down as being uneducated and ignorant.

I could assert that thou dost protest too much due to inner struggles with what thou must do in his obligation to defend the constitution in one’s job – which would be the same armchair psychiatry in the comment on the vitriol amounting to self loathing. Just sayin.

They can say whatever they want. And I can say its ignorant. Because it is.

My characterization is of the WS members that want to scream in the threads about how people accused of crimes should be raped and tortured and injured and suffer, etc. I still think it's accurate. I said nothing about the average WS member.

My point is I don't understand where people who don't understand our legal system, our penitentiary system, or are privy to the intimate particular details of a case think that their opinion of sentencing is somehow more correct than people who are well-versed in all that information. I also don't understand why they care. I think their point is that they want everyone accused of every crime ever to get the harshest punishment possible. Our legal system doesn't work like that for good reason.

This is what I was implying with the self-loathing comment: I wonder how many of these people have run into trouble with the law themselves.

ETA: re: members count -- isn't there some dispute as to whether that's been, ahem, overstated a bit?

Often people have an emotional reaction that is far different from what their logical reaction. Some times when I hear of a horrible crime in which the victim was brutalized, particularly a child (think Jessica Lunsford), I feel like the accused should be tortured to death and made to suffer as much as the victim. However, my opinion minus the emotion would not be the same.

Some good news: Because of this case a girl got help and was possibly saved from a similar fate:

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/36686284/ns/today-today_people/

If this keeps starts a conversation about how to do things better that is something positive that can come out of it.