Well its official

[Lew]

And I know this is going to sound obvious, but I hope to God that my hypothetical poor black mom from OTR does not leave her kid in a car to die. Aside from the obvious, it would put the city in danger. If Joe were to prosecute, it could lead to a volatile situation like what we had in 2001. But if he doesn't prosecute, then we really are sending a message that it's ok to kill your kid so long as you didn't mean to. As much as I despise Joe, it's a situation I hope he (and therefore the rest of us) doesn't have to face.

Of course, there would have been no danger of this happening had he gone to the grand jury in the first place.

And look, I know the NAACP often likes to stir crap up for the sake of stirring crap up, but I'm going to agree with Smitherman in this case. The people who most wanted Joe not to prosecute are the vintage Hamilton Co conservatives who keep people like him in office to begin with. Do not even think for one moment this didn't come into play.

[jumper69]

Being a new father, the thought of leaving my daughter in the car for 8 hours and then reliving in my mind how horrible and savage her death would have been....well..lets just say I couldn't live with myself. Emphasis on "live"

I look at my daughter and just the thought of her dying the slow, drawn out, brutal and unbelievably cruel death that Mrs. Edwards child did makes my skin crawl and brings tears to my eyes.

That there are going to be no charges brought against her in unimaginable in my mind. A complete and utter travesty of justice. Its been said before and it bears repeating. We have discovered a way to legally kill a child.

[Lew]

And the thing is, Jumper, that I don't doubt for a second that you'd feel the way you said you would if it happened to you.

But there are two aspects of criminal punishment- deterrence, which is what I speak of the most, but also retribution (i.e. justice for the victims) that Reason often alludes to.

In the case of these babies being left to die in cars, I don't know that criminal punishment offers us much in terms of deterrence. I think we all agree that (in most of these cases) the parent certainly did not ever intend for their child to die, ergo I'm not so sure that the thought of potential punishment is anywhere on their radar screen.

But, in terms of retribution, in terms of justice for the baby, we can't let people get away with this sort of thing. It completely trivializes the life of the baby.

Let's face it- you drive off with $10 worth of gas, society will punish you far worse than if you leave a baby to die in a car. Yet the guy who does the drive-off....his argument is that the oil companies won't miss that $10 (which, obviously, they won't). But we, as a society, still have to punish him. Granted, mainly as a deterrent so he (and others) won't keep doing that. But still, the message sent is very clear- it's wrong to steal gasoline, and if you do, you will be punished.

Here, it's like it's not even "wrong" what happened, it's just a tragic accident. Well again, maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

And you know what? It's not like Joe couldn't mail it in in front of the grand jury. You know, get up there, go through the motions, and not really care if he got an indictment. No, that's not how you should practice law, but even then, at least he could say he "tried."

ANd let me clear-up my earlier point- I brought up race, but as I've posted on here so many times before, social and economic status are the primary driving factors. I don't doubt for a second that if a prominent black mother left her kid to die in the car, there would still be no charges filed. Likewise, if we're talking white trash, here comes the indictment.

And yes the Slaby case was worse, because in that case you had Brenda retaining the boss of the prosecutor to be her lawyer (and the prosecutor insulting all out intelligence by acting shocked at the very suggestion that there could possibly be a conflict of interest). But this case is yet another sad example.