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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2448 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 20, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Court opinion:

  • In January 2021, a person jaywalks across a road. He is returning to his car from a bakery, carrying "a box of custard cups", so his vision is obscured. He trips over a large pothole (4 ft × 1 ft × 2 in or 1.2 m × 0.3 m × 5 cm) and breaks a hip. Accordingly, he sues the municipal govt.

  • The trial judge dismisses the lawsuit. In a different case, a person sued over a sidewalk that for 18 years had been obviously dangerous and near which the municipal govt. had repeatedly done repair work, and that was sufficient to prove that the municipal govt. had notice of the dangerous condition. However, in this case, the pothole was quite small at first and grew larger only gradually, and it existed for only six years. (Indeed, it was genuinely recognizable as a pothole only for two years, according to Google Street View's photographs.) This is not sufficient evidence for a jury to find that the municipal govt. knew or should have known of the dangerous condition, since nobody reported it until after the accident.

  • The appeals panel reverses and remands for trial. Between 2018 and 2019, the municipal govt. made several repairs immediately adjacent to the pothole. And, between 2018 and 2020, the municipal govt. was seeking to get a grant from the state govt. for resurfacing this road, and was actively inspecting the area for problems to be included in that resurfacing project. All this is sufficient for a jury to find that the municipal govt. knew or should have known about the pothole, even though nobody reported it until after the accident.

(The pothole was temporarily patched in March 2021, and was permanently fixed by the resurfacing project in July 2021.)

Bonus hentai:

  • March 2019: A mother notices something strange about her two daughters, 12-year-old "Kelly" and 13-year-old "Taylor". She brings them to the hospital, and is surprised to learn that they are both pregnant. Taylor gives birth a few days later. In police interviews, the daughters do not provide any leads, and deny that the mother's romantic partner is the culprit.

  • June 2019: Kelly gives birth. The police obtain a DNA sample from the romantic partner.

  • September 2019: The DNA test shows that the romantic partner is the father of both babies. The father is arrested and is charged with fifteen felonies, and then is released on his own recognizance (zero bail; this isn't mentioned in the opinion, but is indicated on the docket).

  • March 2021: Taylor gives birth again. Presumably the father made the most of being out on bail.

  • August 2022: The father pleads guilty to three felonies—impregnating Taylor at age 12, impregnating Kelly at age 11, and impregnating Taylor again at age 13. He is sentenced to 25 years in prison (without the possibility of parole).

WHOOOAAAAA WHAT?

You're going to pair "tweedle-dee-tweedle-dum municipal incompetence" with serial kid impregnator? Damn, homie.

While millions of high SES millenials put off having children because it’s “too early” or “things are too expensive,” hood bro just YOLOs it and knocks up a pair of preteen/teen sisters—one of them twice. Offspring that, like their father and mothers before them, will be subsidized by the tax-dollars of said high SES millenials.

*sighs in modern-day natural selection*

In the prosecution/criminal defense worlds, it is not uncommon for the average defendant to be out-reproducing the attorneys by 3:1, 4:1, or even higher ratios. The r/K divide is real.

Did you purposely intend to have that instinctively read in the voice of the Law & Order intro?

Pretty slick writing, if so.

I just wanted to say that I appreciate your curated collection of legal anecdotes, and look forward to them every week. I did, in fact, find this one bleakly funny, but my sense of humor is darker than my complexion.

Okay are you conducting some sort of social experiment where you gradually push the limits of what is considered acceptable in the Fun Thread before people start objecting en masse? Because if you were, I'd believe it. The topics of these legal cases have escalated dramatically week after week.

This is way more off-putting than anything in the CW thread IMO.

Personally, I find it quite amazing and hilarious that hentai plots can regularly be found lurking in real-life court opinions.

Court opinions are the gateway to a (often horrifying) land beyond imagination.

The second one: someone charged in my state with sex with two minors under 15 would be held without bond or with a million dollar cash bond. Released OR is insane. And they would be looking at life in prison with no parole. When I read stories like that from other states, it's so alien to my practice that it might as well be fiction.

They were a protected species. I spent some time googling the name, all the news articles conspicuously avoided his picture, except a particularly spicy one with copious use of N-Bombs, and then this one that finally gave me a mugshot.

There was some random black podcast clip that went around a few months ago where one of the guys on there was talking about his community needing to clean up it's act. He said something along the lines of "We all know somebody that is fucking kids". Everyone went conspicuously silent and started sputtering denials. But if you've ever listened to any black comedy, the family/neighborhood pedophile in the ghetto is an oddly consistent bedrock of bits.

“People thinking I’m this type of woman who didn’t protect my kids,” she added.

Perceptive lady, knowing exactly what I think.

I have worked long enough in the system that, while I wasn't 100% sure, I would've been comfortable betting a $20 on the race of the perpetrator just from the provided summary. I'm sure reading the opinion would've added details to make me even more confident.

The most unremarked-upon abuse (for people outside the system) among the black community is the "auntie" (perhaps a bio relation of the mother or father, but maybe an adult female friend of the family instead) who takes a male's virginity when he's 11-13. It is so common among black male clients that the uncommon scenario is where a client didn't have it happen to him. Really digging into some of these nested layers of dysfunction make some horror novels feel like light beach reading.

Respectful but enthusiastic request for more anecdotes from your experience.

Someone charged in my state with sex with two minors under 15 would be held without bond or with a million dollar cash bond.

New Jersey court rules appear to recommend bail of 150 to 300 k$ for this crime. I don't know what the judge's rationale was in not imposing bail.

Someone charged in my state with sex with two minors under 15 would be looking at life in prison with no parole.

Under New Jersey law, the maximum sentence for this crime (sex with a minor under 13, or with a minor between 13 and 15 by a parent/guardian/etc.) is life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. In this case, the criminal received the minimum sentence of 25 years without the possibility of parole, running concurrently for all three instances.

This second one? Not. Fun.

Particularly hilarious is that the father's three sentences were run concurrently, rather than consecutively—so he did not receive any extra penalty for the third pregnancy (or, indeed, for the second one).

The sentence imposed was pursuant to a plea deal, so one can't make any judgments about whether it's the same as if there were only two rapes.

The minimum sentence under state law for a single one of these acts would have had the exact same punishment. So it's either no effective increase in sentence for the third (conviction for) rape, or someone who committed enough (almost-certainly repeated) rape of two very young minors, after having been caught by DNA evidence, would have been allowed to plea to a much lesser crime than a single one of them.

Which isn't better.

((On the upside, pretty good chances it's a life sentence, no matter what the court decided! Though from a rule of law perspective, not too happy about Kennedy v. Louisiana ending up there, either.))

Maybe it'll have some marginal impact on parole hearings, but I think NJ's 'mandatory minimums' restrict parole eligibility, too.

You're assuming that if there was only one victim, or one act, he would have been convicted of the same crime. It's possible that, had that been the case, he would have plead to a lesser offense.

I'm pretty explicitly spelling out why the alternative wouldn't be judged much better, given the background and details available.

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