I wasn't saying you did, I was saying you seem to.
Oh, my mistake. Just so you know I am not saying it has to be random coincidence, and indeed may have a sexual angle to it.
Having sex with kids would be over the line in my opinion. I'd draw the line at sleeping with them.
I'm sorry but I actually don't understand, do you mean draw the line such that adults cannot sleep (even with no sexual contact) with children, or that you draw the line such that adults can?
I'm not really interested in what you opinion is on whether having sex with kids is over the line as you continually refuse to state criteria for this or examine evidence on the topic, simply restating your premise... and thus show yourself to be as bigoted as any antigay person.
The only reason I am interested in the sleeping part as that would move on to affect many people. Are you suggesting creating a law to forbid adults and children from sharing beds?
This "extortionist" family hasn't filed any sort of civil action against MJ, so you can't make the case that they were trying to extort anything from him. But why is the family's extorionist past relevant, especially if MJ's previous behavior isn't relevant?
You have to be clear about this, I'd say MJ's past could be relevant if it at least could be substantiated to some degree. In this case you have the alleged victims defending him. Things like that should never have made it to the court.
As far as the family goes, they are the accusers and have a pattern of interacting with celebrities and others in quite the same manner. In a court you are innocent until proven guilty of a specific crime. You may throw doubt on the validity of your accusers by showing repeated fallacious or irrational activity, but one cannot (or should not) be able to throw "guilt" on a defendent based on other crimes, or alleged crimes.
I'm not sure why this does not make sense to you. Even if he had been known and convicted of multiple child rapes, that would not make this case any more real. If one has the evidence, then the other cases are irrelevent. When an accuser is using a hesaid/shesaid prosecution, then their own credibility is of the essence, specifically if they have the past which was shown.
On the issue of his celebrity, I believe it gets him special treatment by the court, but I don't believe it gets him a not guilty verdict.
I agree.
If the kid was harmed by having sex with MJ (or anyone, for that matter), is there any way to prosecute MJ other than a trial at which the kid will necessarily be abused again (and I agree with you on this point, it is abuse) by prosecutors and attorneys?
That's just it. These kids were not raped by MJ, nor harmed by MJ. These kids were used by adults, and harmed by them, for there own purposes. Isn't that pretty clear at this point?
This is almost similar to those satanic and nursery school abuse cases of the 80-90's, except without the justification of a wholly mistaken field of pseudoscience backing them up.
I can still grant that MJ might like kids sexually and even act on it from time to time. This certainly did not seem to be a case of that.
I'm afraid you're the one who's not thinking clearly. Show me the word 'innocent' in this verdict. The jury said 'not guilty'; they didn't say 'innocent'. MJ was NOT found innocent. End of story!
Tell you what, I'll concede this point if you concede AOC laws and the laws MJ was just accused of violating are morals laws and in no way based on harm, indeed not even "rape". I believe I pointed out to you the exact wording of what he was being charged with and then you went mum.
That may be, but in this sort of case if the accusor's past is relevant then so should be the accused's past.
This should ring bells to you that something is wrong. This kind of stuff is considered unacceptable in other cases, but now allowed by a special law to be acceptable if the accused might have sex with children. If this had been true for cases against gays, wouldn't you agree that it was a wrong law and should be fought tooth and nail?
In any case, even if one were to accept the law in general, it should still have limits so as not to act as a way of loading on blame that will overtax the defense. There were issues here that simply were not credible as accusations or suggestions about his character. As such they should not have been allowed in.
You realize that the defendent has to pay lots of people to dig in to each and every case, and then make decisions of how much to defend against other cases so as not to lose sight of the current trial? You put the defendent at risk, both financial and personal by allowing this.
I might add that it is sort of against the spirit of the Constitution and not being tried twice for the same crime. This is an obvious circumvention of that RIGHT.
All I'm saying is that from the very start there were a number of built-in advantages for MJ that are directly related to his celebrity. There's nothing wrong with recognizing that. It's an important point.
It makes such trials different, but I'm very skeptical about how important a point it is. If anything it seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. People expect it and so create it.
If this had been some average Joe, it is unlikely the charges would have seen trial, and it is further unlikely you would have cared to pursue watching it.
Once the fame was attached to it, everyone started acting differently. My only question is on how much it affected the verdict, based on looking at what happened at the trial. In this case it didn't seem to do much, and any negative effects were offset. Thus I cannot see complaining.
It should have worked as a vindication for the justice system, with perhaps a few pointers on how it could improve.
This message has been edited by holmes, 06-17-2005 05:14 AM
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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