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Notes -
I guess it's sex crimes week on The Motte. Here is one I've been puzzling about.
How on Earth was Danny Masterson actually convicted?
This has been a slow boil for me. I'd seen headlines here and there about the slow rolling case against him. I totally missed when the first trial went to a hung jury. Then suddenly I see he was convicted on 2 out of 3 rape charges and sentenced to 30 years. Even saw some headlines about Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis getting dragged for writing a character witness letter for his sentencing. But something jumped out at me.
He was being prosecuted for crimes 17-19 years old at the time the prosecution started. Red flag number one, I don't know the specific law in CA, but surely that's pushing the statute of limitations, right? Indeed it is! Statute of Limitations for rape is 10 years. So how did they still prosecute him?
Well there are a few exceptions.. Namely
What appears to have sunk Masterson's SOL is that there are multiple accusers. Now reading the law myself, the reading seems clear to me. The exception requires a seperate conviction. But I'm no lawyer or judge, obviously.
Or
And I believe this is the part pertaining to SOL
So I donno, maybe it's not as clear cut as I think. I repeat, not a lawyer.
Moving past the SOL concerns I have, what was the evidence against Masterson? Near as I can tell none. There were 3 victim testimonies, some expert testimony, and that was it. Zero evidence corroborating the witnesses, zero physical evidence, zero circumstantial evidence. And this is why SOL is so important. It's not a get out of jail free card. It exists so the defense can practically gather some evidence to exonerate their client. After 20 years, most physical evidence will be gone, alibis will be impossible, witnesses will be difficult to find and their testimony will be even more unreliable than already notoriously unreliable witness testimony. All we're left with is he said/she said, and the biases of the jury pool.
This was an idle, principled frustration for me. I honestly could give a shit about Danny Masterson. However, now that figures more politically salient, like Russell Brand, are in the crosshairs, the precedent set by Masterson's chilling conviction are all the more frightening.
There is a second reason for SOL besides fuzzy memories.
I’m not the same person I was 20 years ago. Honestly I’m relatively stupid compared to that person. But biologically it’s not anything close to the same molecules. I have different experiences. I’ve grown and in some ways gotten worse as a person. To prosecute someone for crimes they did 20 years ago is literally punishing a completely different person.
Maybe he did rape these people. His 20 something self deserved the punishment.
The problem with this argument in this case, as in my conversation with Walter below, is that Masterson doesn't admit his sins and offers no evidence of change.
The first step in the argument that "Well I'm a different person now..." is to say "Yeah, wow, can't believe I did that when I was younger, I'm horrified I did that, I'd never do that now!" Masterson has not offered anything like that. If he did, there's a good chance it would mitigate his sentence significantly.
Hell, I never raped anyone, and I can think of a dozen times I did something ten years ago that horrifies me today. I'm horrified at how I treated my girlfriends at 18, hell at how I treated my friends.
But I do see your point, inasmuch as the thirty year sentence is life-ending. Which is why I think we need to bring back punishments like public horse-whippings or locking men in the stockade in the middle of Los Angeles for a day and a night. A basic sense of justice rejects the idea that 40 year old criminal gets to walk free unpunished a public symbol that you can commit crimes and get away with it, a basic sense of justice rejects the idea of locking him away for the rest of his life at the taxpayer's expense. But seeing him publicly degraded, beaten? That satisfies all. It won't ruin his life or the lives of others, it will satisfy the victims that justice has been done. It will be a permanent embarrassing stain on his life.
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