Legal Excuses?

[Sing_Sling]

It amazes me when I read the papers - real ones like the SMH or ST - and find articles about people being in court for whatever and their defense teams coming up with utterly moronic reasons for diminution of the sentence.

My wife is a lawyer, a corporate one however, and feels the same.

Two cases just today:

Sydney Morning Herald

He (the barrister) said Wijaya picked up an iron bar lying in the middle of the road and never intended to use it. "He … tripped over a small hedge and fell forward towards the victim. The bar struck the victim.

Police said the victim lay in an induced coma in hospital and had lost feeling in the left side of his body and all motor skills. Still imbedded in his brain are bone fragments from the alleged blow inflicted.

The second youth suffered a fractured skull that required the removal of bone to be replaced with a metal plate, police said in opposing bail. Wijaya's mother wept from the public gallery.

Wijaya was also charged with causing bodily harm to a third boy, 16, who suffered lacerations.

So, did this thug fall over three hedges with the piece of iron he happened to have found lying in the middle of the road?

Number two from Singapore where a man convinced his wives that the Qu'ran regards children as the father's property to do with as he wishes. He told the wives when to bring one of their daughters into his bedroom and then raped them, the youngest being 13.

Several abortions had to be conducted over the years.

The lawyer tried to mitigate the crimes by saying that the father thought the daughters were going out fooling around with boys, so he wanted to satisfy them sexually so they wouldn't be tempted outside of the home.

<deleted>????

Seriously, do lawyers believe that a judge will accept such obvious nonsense? In the first case the judge dismissed the claims as

Magistrate David Heilpern said the excuse given by the 18-year-old Rushcutters Bay barman was an "improbability".

and in the Singapore case the only question is how many 20-year sentences the guy will get and how many strokes of the rotan (cane) will be administered for each time he raped his daughters.

Edited April 14, 2006 by Sing_Sling

[cdnvic]

Off topic for this board.