Author: rbchatelle

Chris Pizzello / Invision/AP “Is Kevin Spacey a criminal sexual molester? I don’t know. Neither do you, unless you were actually molested by him, or, it seems, unless you’re the Boston Globe. ‘This Was A Criminal Act,’ the Globe headline blared, repeating former local news anchor Heather Unruh’s claim that Spacey groped her son at… Continue reading What Jury Found Kevin Spacey Guilty?

vermont digger Dalton pointed to a 2013 literature review from the U.S. Department of Justice that included research on the stress that correctional officers face. The review found, in part: In 2011, about 31 percent of correctional officers reported “serious psychological distress,” twice the rate of the general public; In 2012, 27 percent of correctional… Continue reading Vermont corrections officer of the year dies in apparent suicide

“Our communities deserve effective public-safety measures that are based on facts and sound research, not wasteful and counterproductive measures born of fear. We all want to be safe. We have to demand our legislators pass laws that work and actually keep us safe.” Read the article by Miriam Aukerman in The Hill.

Tim Gruber for The New York Times “Few issues in education today are as intensely debated as the way colleges deal with sexual misconduct. Women’s groups and victims’ advocates have deplored Ms. DeVos’s moves, saying they will allow colleges to wash their hands of the problem. But a growing corps of legal experts and defense… Continue reading Mothers Defend Sons Accused of Sexual Assault

“A pair of sex abuse cases from Elko County demonstrates what a sham mandatory minimum sentences are, especially in light of the continuing national debate over U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to use these one-size-fits-all punishments more frequently.” Two major dysfunctional features of our criminal-justice system — mandatory minimums and plea bargaining — are… Continue reading Elko sex cases show folly of mandatory minimum sentences

“Sexual predator” isn’t a clinical term that means anything to criminologists or sex-crime researchers. Instead, it’s a media construction created after horrific cases of rape and murder in Washington State in the early nineties, as criminologist Jacqueline Helfgott points out in her 2008 book Criminal Behavior: Theories, Typologies and Criminal Justice. Helfgott notes that the… Continue reading Two Great Pieces by Steven Yoder

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard University “Rosario was convicted based in part on a confession, but the high court accepted a late-arriving medical diagnosis of “delirium tremens” (drug or alcohol withdrawal, the “DTs”) to undermine the credibility of that confession. He was convicted based in part on forensics, but the high court applied new fire science to undermine… Continue reading The Weakest Link Standard

(J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press) “[T]he State may not enact this complete bar to the exercise of First Amendment rights on websites integral to the fabric of our modern society and culture. It is well established that, as a general rule, the Government “may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech.” …… Continue reading Supreme Court unanimously overturns North Carolina’s ban on social-media use by sex offenders

“Viewed in retrospect, it seems that otherwise sensible people quite simply lost their minds. Social workers, therapists, prosecutors and cops joined a fruitcake crusade that ruined people’s lives, based on the coerced claims of vulnerable little kids.” Read the editorial in the Dallas Morning News by Jacquielynn Floyd.

“The Kellers were not the only ones to face outlandish charges; in the 1980s and early ’90s, a phenomenon that has since become known as “Satanic Panic” was sweeping the nation. A confluence of societal factors led to widespread hysteria about Satanists who were hidden in plain view and running clandestine, national child sex abuse… Continue reading Couple Exonerated in ‘Satanic Panic’ Child Ritual Abuse Case