The nature of the crime you mentioned here does sound extremely severe, but it does not surprise me that a popular football player would be let off by a judge. The problem is, that these athletes usually have legions of supporters who attend every one of their team's games and enjoy following the progress of each player, and if a particularly good player of theirs ends up in trouble after committing a crime, it threatens to put the progress of the whole team in jeopardy. Therefore a judge has far more pressure when deciding a punishment for such a high-profile criminal in court - does he want to risk upsetting thousands of fans of the team that player is in, and possibly receiving threats from them for sending one of their team's players to jail for several years, or will he just let the guy off with the optimistic hope that having his crime brought to court will discourage him from committing any more? I agree that it's outrageous how celebrity status can work such a great influence over the course of justice - personally, I'd see to it that every criminal got their just desserts no matter how famous they may be, but sadly, in a high-profile case where the accused has got support of many fans who don't want to see him go down, this just puts the judge under more pressure. Yes, there are fans who would go off a player if he committed such a serious offence like this Tucker guy, but there are also die-hard fanatics who will stick with him no matter what. And many judges nowadays just buckle under the pressure of knowing that they'll upset many fans of the team the guy plays for and possibly affect the team's progress in their future games, and just decide to let the player off. Sadly, this has been the way for many years and it will continue to be this way for the foreseeable future. No matter what sort of offence they commit, it is likely that a celebrity will receive a lighter punishment than your average Joe. I've seen it happen before many times over here. It's not fair, I know, but fame and fortune have their ways of making the world FAR easier to manipulate.Earl wrote:Regarding the beating case, did Ryan Tucker spend a single day in jail? NO! The judge let him off, despite the fact that the doctors treating the victim at one point had expected him to die. You could say that our hypothetical rape victim (Incidentally, there are such victims in real life) and our real-life beating victim had sports shoved down their throats in a rather painful way. Do any such acts of gross injustice disturb Cyclo the self-professed "progressive"? I doubt it.
I'm surprised to hear Cyclo is a liberal myself. Based on his aggressive tone of voice and derisive attitude to those with different opinions to him on a certain matter, he sounds much more of a hard-line conservative to me. Doesn't seem to have much sympathy for victims of bullying either... which is especially poor from him, as he claims to have been bullied in the past at school. He should understand how it feels. I expect his sympathies for the sports cause for most of his life have kind of worn away his memories of being bullied. Dare I say, he seems to have adopted the tough-talking and unsympathetic tone of his former aggressors now.
Best regards,
i_like_1981