You hear about people convicted of murder and sent to death row who are later proven to be not guilty of that particular crime. The thing is that in almost all of those cases the guy is a real bad ass who deserves to be in prison for whatever other crimes he has committed. Many years ago a friend of mine was an assistant DA. One night he was researching for a case he was prosecuting the next day. The defendent was a professional criminal and was charged with armed robbery. My friend said they knew the guy didn't do the robbery because at the time the robbery was happening the defendant was committing a murder for hire hit on somebody, but they knew they couldn't convict him for the murder but they could convict him for the robbery
Has a person/pedophile done anything wrong by looking at pictures (not distributing) of underage children? I understand its illegal and contributes to the industry by clicking on a webpage. But do we assume the worst due to our sensitivities toward children and emotional disgust for pedophiles? did they know the modified date, time etc can be altered?
if your wife dies some sort of natural death unexpectedly or unexplained, you (the husband) are guilty until proven innocent.
Yeah, the whole wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death thing bugs the shit out of me. As for the other, the DA has to turn over any evidence s/he has that might exculpate the defendant. Not doing that is a big enough deal to have a conviction overturned and the DA in moderately deep shit. You pose an interesting question. I know some people will point to studies showing that viewing child pornography is something of a "gateway" to later abusing children but I think those studies might be getting causation and correlation mixed up with each other. I know the date etc can be modified. I don't know what they know. That is, unfortunately, absolutely true.
I guess what got me started on that tangent was the dude who was framed by his ex with child porn. I would think it would be unusual for an ex to go to those lengths. From what Ive seen, they'll normally make an abuse accusation on one of their children, instead of d/l images and placing them on their spouses machine.
The mere act of clicking is a contribution to the crime being committed against the children involved and as you said, contributes to the illegal distribution. One can't innocently obtain such a photo without participating even in the smallest of ways. It's really no different than Peeping Toms. That crime is based on privacy invasion and sexual deviancy.
You might be aware of this case I was watching on CNN's Death Row stories. Dude spent 13 years on death row for a crime that he not only didn't commit, but the DA had exculpatory evidence showing someone else comitted the crime and they never disclosed it. Instead, they PAID a witness to lie about the defendant. When he was finally proven innocent, he sued NOLA DA for $500K, which was like $40k a year for every year he'd been behind bars. They appealed to US Supreme court that voted 5-4 in favor of the DA, so dude didn't get a dime, other than the pocket change they gave him upon his release. The whole thing was so infuriating..
I would think that law enforcement, in an effort to speed an investigation, is relying on evidence to support that idea. "Of females killed with a firearm, almost two-thirds were killed by their intimate partners. The number of females shot and killed by their husband or intimate partner was more than three times higher than the total number murdered by male strangers using all weapons combined in single victim/single offender incidents......Of the almost 3.5 million violent crimes committed against family members, 49% of these were crimes against spouses. 84% of spouse abuse victims were females, and 86% of victims of dating partner abuse at were female. Males were 83% of spouse murderers and 75% of dating partner murderers. 50% of offenders in state prison for spousal abuse had killed their victims. Wives were more likely than husbands to be killed by their spouses: wives were about half of all spouses in the population in 2002, but 81% of all persons killed by their spouse." I would suggest that society would benefit more by making divorces easier to obtain and less punitive to male partners. For instance, I know that in some states, if a man fails to make a support payment, he can have his driver's license revoked. That is counter-intuitive. How is a man supposed to "get right" with support if they can't drive to a job? Plain facking stupid. No wonder a man might consider removing the source of frustration.
It is possible to innocently obtain such photos or videos. I once downloaded a movie and the file name was the name of the popular movie that I wanted. When I looked at it the movie I thought it was supposed to be turned out to be porn. Regular porn but it could have just as easily been child porn
Just this last week, there was a similar case in CA. " A 59-year-old California woman who spent 17 years in prison for murder was ordered freed on Friday by a judge who said she was wrongly convicted on the basis of testimony by a woman known to be a habitual liar, the Los Angeles Times reported on Friday. The case against Susan Mellen, who was found guilty in 1998 of killing her ex-boyfriend the year before, was thrown out at the request of Los Angeles County prosecutors after an investigation by local attorney Deirdre O'Connor turned up major credibility issues with the trial's star prosecution witness." http://news.yahoo.com/california-woman-freed-17-years-declared-innocent-murder-232805044.html 17 years. She has been surprisingly forgiving in her post-release comments.
