Dennis Claxton wrote:
>> everyone thought and wanted it to be this way (family, prosecutor,
>> defense),
>
>
> People keep saying the family was in favor of the deal. But this
> leaves out that RP's defense attorneys told reporters they were going
> to drag her through classic blame the victim tactics if it went to trial.
That's not at all how it happened. The victim's attorney wrote this to the judge:
> Long before I had met any other attorney in this case, my clients
> informed me that their goal in pressing the charges did not include
> seeking the incarceration of the defendant, but rather the admission
> by him of wrongdoing, and commencement by him, under the supervision
> of the court, of a program to ensure complete rehabilitation. The plea
> of guilty by the defendant [to the reduced charge] is contrition
> sufficient for my clients to believe that goal may be achievable.
>
By the way, everyone is quoting the victim's grand jury testimony as if it were the final judgment of a commission of inquiry, but there were also statements taken from witnesses, the defendant, the arresting officer, etc., which no one has seen, except in brief excerpts in the probation report, which for some reason nobody seems to have bothered to read.
The girl's grand jury testimony was a text created - quite rightly and properly - with only one purpose in mind: to provide the evidence necessary to win an indictment. You would neither want nor expect that document to contain "the whole truth" about the circumstances; it was not meant to provide that and it almost certainly didn't. That's why we have trials in this country, except where there's a plea bargain, or a judge whose flagrant misconduct induces the defendant to abscond.
SA