www.dailycartoonist.com
www.theguardian.com
To be fair, the report makes it clear that New Jersey's appellate court has recorded its very clear disapproval of his actions and overturned the ruling:Teen accused of rape deserves leniency because of his 'good family', judge says
Judge James Troiano made remarks while ruling suspect should not face trial as an adult for allegedly raping girl while recording incident on phone
The rapist recorded himself raping his victim and sent the videos to his friends with the tag line "When your first time having sex is rape"
Judge felt that the rapist deserved leniency as he:
Came from a good family
Went to a good school
Had good test results and was probably going to a good college
Was an 'eagle scout'
and also because it wasn't a 'real' rape as a “traditional case of rape” involved more than one attacker using a weapon to take advantage of a victim in a remote location.
Yes it was overturned but the fact remains that judges like this continue to be more concerned with the welfare of the rapist than that of the victim.
actual words of the judge said:
In this case, though, the system worked, in that the prosecutors were able to appeal and the Appellate Court made it clear that the judge had completely overstepped the boundaries of his actual responsibilities in the case. Assuming the US judicial language is like their British equivalents', that whole judgment is completely damning -- this isn't a judge misdirecting himself on a point of law so much as judge making it up for himself as he goes along.
Well the only positive I see is that at least an elected judge can lose their job at the next election. A career judge might be more difficult to remove.
As I see it, it's also a positive that a higher court overturned his ruling in very decisive terms. That suggests to me that the problem is with a particular judge rather than the law or judiciary of New Jersey in general.
Oh, they'd probably try a variety of things to pay as little as possible, or even not pay, whoever it was. They're cheap af.
To be fair, though, if it were something like an antique guitar it would presumably be packed in a special guitar case suitable for carrying valuable instruments and the owner would probably have arranged special insurance.
A modern guitar would too. Most likely a heavy-duty guitar case inside a really tough road case.
My sometime brother-in-law is a very accomplished Indian classical musician, and in particular a sitarist, accompanying his wife, an equally accomplished singer of classical Ghazal (Urdu love-poetry). His sitar is a family heirloom, some 200 years old, and always accompanied them in a paid-for seat when they flew anywhere in the US doing concerts and things, which they used to do a lot -- any big Indian or Pakistani weddings and parties on the East Coast of the USA would try to book them.
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