Sometimes I'm reminded that not everyone's on the same page as me:
A California sex offender suspected of abducting a girl in 1991 and keeping her captive for 18 years is suffering from "serious mental illness," defense attorneys say in court papers.
Well, no duh, counselor. Healthy, normal people don't abduct little girls and keep them as sex slaves.
"It appears that Phillip Garrido has been hearing [the] voices of angels for years," said documents filed Wednesday in El Dorado County Superior Court.
The "voices of angels"? Is he sure? Why don't we give him a chance to listen to them again and find out if they're the same voices, or different. Sorta 'kill two birds with one stone', as it were.
If that is my child? I'd find a way to get him suited up for that choir myself (white robe/white sheet, same diff, yes?) and save the people a ton of dough.
ReplyDeleteMight not be the one he's expecting, though...I don't know what kind of hymns they have in hades, but the vocals are probably Manilow 24/7.
BTW, what happens to all the slow girls when they grow up?
AT
"Slow Men At Work" is like "All Men Are Created Equal". I don't do Newspeak Englysh.
ReplyDeleteWell then, if you didn't like the neighbor's dog defense, you're not going to like defense #2: it's my alternative lifestyle!
ReplyDeleteShootin' Buddy
My moral code does not suggest any reason that "hearing the voices of angels" should stop me from slipping a noose around a pederast's neck...
ReplyDeleteSB,
ReplyDelete"it's my alternative lifestyle!"
Won't wash.
He can have all the alternative lifestyle he wants with consenting adults, but he appears to have gone 0-for-2 on those kinda important qualifiers. I prescribe 230 grains of Trepanazine.
The rock (as in, two birds, one stone) is an excellent idea. I prescribe 230 lbs of granite, one dose, applied direc tly to forehead.
ReplyDelete"Rock On! Apply directly to forehead!"
It is comforting to consider that his time in the bin will likely be unpleasant, and with a bit of luck brief.
ReplyDeleteJim
Wonder how his legal "outcome" will differ from, say, Monsieur Polanski's. Different fact cases, I know, but...
ReplyDeleteHey! Just go the modern route.
A tearful apology should suffice, especially if televised.
On Oprah maybe?
"Won't wash."
ReplyDeletePerhaps not now, but as I was told at a NACDL seminar a couple of years ago there will be serious challenges in say ten years. Sodomy used to be against the law in several states too but that was recently constitutionalized (which overruled a prior Supremes decision).
Of course that won't help this defendant right now.
Shootin' Buddy
"Sodomy used to be against the law in several states..."
ReplyDeleteDumb law.
Does that mean married couples get a referee in the bedroom with an annotated copy of the Kama Sutra to rule on which nookie positions are okay and which threaten the moral fabric of our country? Or is buggery only bad when it involves unmarried couples or, even worse, *shudder*... gay cooties?
Look, if it's an adult goat, and it says "Baaa!", then I've got bigger things about which to worry, involving wagons and who's pulling.
Certainly, but it will take incremental change before these statutes are abolished. Larry v. Tejas was a beginning not an end.
ReplyDeleteShootin' Buddy
"Sodomy used to be against the law in several states too but that was recently constitutionalized"
ReplyDeleteYou're comparing apples and purple with that one.
The act is irrelevant, consent, and the ability to give consent are what is at issue. There's a big difference between a willing adult partner and an unwilling, captive, child.
"230 grains of Trepanazine."
ReplyDeleteGood one. And I agree, that the 2 critical criteria are "adult" and "consent," both of which were missing.
I'm having an eerie deja vu experience right now. Weird.
ReplyDeleteIn any case I'm reminded more than anything of the "orca kills trainer, had past record of killing humans" thing; in both cases there was far too much focus on the why of it all and not nearly enough on the dangerous.
"...too much focus on the why of it all and not nearly enough on the dangerous."
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I don't care about motive. If "the voices" "made" him commit one atrocity, "they" can "make" him commit another, and he doesn't belong in society.
We have already determined that "I was just following orders" isn't an alabi.
"Slow Men At Work" is like "All Men Are Created Equal".
ReplyDeleteOh. Well, you know we WCM's are always lookin' for a slight.
And as for this case, this promiscuous society has made minor girls into tarts who are just begging for the attention of innocents like this poor man who have been conditioned to respond. He is the victim. Like the whales, he is simply responding to training and reward, and maybe he got carried away with his play. Not his fault.
Does that wash?
AT
Depends on the jury and how said alleged tart presents at trial.
ReplyDeleteMixed results for me. If no video, can work. (Video tapes rarely help the defendant and send the jury recoiling in their seats at a 60 degree angle).
Shootin' Buddy
Trying to figure out how the sweet bleeding hell consenting adults bringing the My Little Strapony into the bedroom is in any way even remotely relevant, either morally or practically, to someone forcibly kidnapping a girl and keeping her chained up in the basement for 18 years is going to puzzle me for the rest of the afternoon.
ReplyDeleteThanks, SB. I was wondering what to do with the free time.
AT,
ReplyDeleteCan't check for rabies without shippin' Ol' Yeller's head off in a ziploc, and that's all I've got to say about that.
Lessee now. There was a time back in the early Eighties when my friend Dave R. took me for a ride on I-285 in his absolutely cherry, low-mileage Buick Electra 225 from, I believe, 1963. It was a hardtop, with none of yer sissy gear like seatbelts and padded dash, etc.
ReplyDeleteIt was a cool evening, and I was wearing shorts and t-shirt. Dave had the thing up to well over 90 mph (most others doing 70-something) while smoothly illegally changing lanes. All the windows were open, it had the "panty-cloth" upholstery which didn't help when the suspension floated me up off the seat, and yes there were the sharp pointy metallic decorations on the dash.
I think I was beginning to hear the angels sing, a bit, before I persuaded him to back off.
It took some diplomacy to do that, as I didn't want to piss him off and make hime drive faster.
P.s. They were definitely singing "Nearer, my God, to Thee."
ReplyDeleteWV: vicent. Back Shadow?
But, Tam, "Baaaaa" means "Baaaaa"!
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah, almost forgot about the sex part. As I think I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm polymorphously pervy enough to have at least entertained a proposition from Arthur C. Clarke for quid pro quo in exchange for help with the math homework, when I was 9. (I had just read "Earthlight" in lieu of paying attention in 4th grade.)
ReplyDeleteI was young and ignorant. At that time I did not know how silly and absurd yer average old wrinkled grownup looks when he's nekkid. Shirley Temple famously avoided molestation by a producer by laughing at him, he being very pitiably sorry-looking when nekkid. She does carry a pistol, though, to this day.
Kidnapping and slavery, well, I knew that was bad, even then, and, yeah, git a rope.
"So, the Ark is a transmitter to communicate with God? How would you like to see him personally, right now?"
ReplyDeleteSomehow, I don't think the voices were angels...
ReplyDeleteI have often said that an insanity defense should make the death penalty MORE likely rather than less. Mental illness severe enough that a person thinks it's ok to kill, or in this case, enslave young girls for 18 years, isn't curable. The guy's brain is BROKEN and there is no way to fix it. If we pat him on the head and send him off to the looney bin it is just a matter of time before some inattentive orderly lets him escape or some idiot doctor decides he's all better and lets him go. Then we have a monster loose on society once again.
ReplyDeletes
Stuart has the right of it. I think Heinlein said it best:
ReplyDelete"[S]uppose, [...] that he was so crazy that he had never been aware that he was doing anything wrong? What then?
Well, we shoot mad dogs, don't we?
Yes, but being crazy that way is a sickness -
I couldn't see but two possibilities. Either he couldn't be made well - in which case he was better dead for his own sake and for the safety of others -or he could be treated and made sane. In which case [...] if he ever became sane enough for civilized society ... and thought over what he had done while he was "sick" -what could be left for him but suicide? How could he Live with himself?
And suppose he escaped Before he was cured and did the same thing again? And maybe Again? How do you explain that to bereaved parents? In view of his record?
I couldn't see but one answer."