John Grisham says child porn sentences too harsh
- Thread starter Displaced Bama Fan
- Start date
I actually heard this on a Charlottesville radio station this morning (Grisham spends a good bit of time in Albemarle County). Apparently, he had a friend, an attorney, surfing the web while drunk (so he said) who made some bad clicks. He got 3 years in prison.
Not much of an excuse, if you ask me.
I'm a little surprised. Grisham in his heyday would do interviews with reporters dying to get something exclusive from him, and he'd always deflect the discussion to how his son's Little League team was doing. He wanted to get the word out that his whole life's mission was to coach his kid's team and writing books was well...just something to keep him busy.
His sympathies toward child pornographers doesn't mesh with his Dadness.
His sympathies toward child pornographers doesn't mesh with his Dadness.
Put me in the camp that thinks there should be zero penalties for possessing text or imagery of ANY kind.
I think sentences should be based on some common sense. If someone has 400GB of porn, and they find one pic of a 16 yr old, then obviously he isnt a child pornographer. However under current law, he will be treated the same as a guy with 400GB of all child porn. So I'd say there needs to be a little bit of discretion used in destroying someone's life over a mistake versus a willingness to break the law.
From a wider perspective, the law is currently being used to destroy people over frivolous or fairly minor transgressions and allowing the connected to get away with much more with a slap on the wrist.
ie: grisham's buddy getting 3 yrs in prison for a few pics on his computer or that 17yr old kid getting some business from a 15 yr old and then getting sent to prison for it versus nothing happening to barney frank for having a child prostitution business in the basement of his house.
From a wider perspective, the law is currently being used to destroy people over frivolous or fairly minor transgressions and allowing the connected to get away with much more with a slap on the wrist.
ie: grisham's buddy getting 3 yrs in prison for a few pics on his computer or that 17yr old kid getting some business from a 15 yr old and then getting sent to prison for it versus nothing happening to barney frank for having a child prostitution business in the basement of his house.
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I can buy that. But, I'd add that the penalty for putting child porn on the 'Net in the first place should be something extremely dangerous, painful, and lengthy.
I can't readily think of anything that's illegal to create yet legal to own.
Nor can I imagine any reason that anyone should legally be allowed to possess pornographic images of a child.
Here's the problem with that, Brad. I can think of a couple of times when I've clicked mindlessly and got a real shock at what showed up. You can delete it, but that doesn't matter. It stays on your hard drive unless you go through a rigorous overwriting process. (And know how to do it.) There have been a couple of local cases here where people were found guilty for a single latent image on a hard drive. That whole area of the criminal law has been turned into an area of "strict liability." IOW, no excuses, no defenses. That is what Grisham is trying to point up. Three years behind bars and a lifelong sentence as a sex offender is too much for one single careless click and lack of knowledge of how to erase it. BTW, prosecutors love these kind of cases. They do a lot of prancing around and press conferences...
Oh, I get it - I think they need to address laws in such a way that this sort of accidental thing isn't punished. Ai free 100% on that. I'm simply replying to the notion that ANYTHING should be legal to own images of. Something that's stuck in your browsing cache (or has the header erased and is awaiting you eventually over-writing that sector of the disc) shouldn't be an issue.
Hey, it can be crazy.... my daughter was searching for an image of Marilyn Monroe to put on an assignment for the 1960s....and hit google images - and you have no idea of what crazy stuff showed up there. She was really frustrated by it too -- I can totally see how something accidental can show up.....
Crazy
Crazy
Here's an article from the conservative Washington Times that supports what Earle is pointing out about Grisham:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/16/john-grisham-international-author-calls-for-lenien/
And it said ‘16-year-old girls,’ so he went there. Downloaded some stuff — it was 16-year-old girls who looked 30. He shouldn’t have done it. It was stupid, but it wasn’t 10-year-old boys. He didn’t touch anything. And God, a week later there was a knock on the door, ‘FBI!’ “
I don't know how many of you have ever had to deal with the media but if you have then you know they make it all the more sensational (look at the Ebola non-crisis; I have some news from work on that later tonight). But having been victimized during my memory interviews last year, I tend to try and side with the subject of the interview rather than the reporters who: a) sometimes fudge for effect; or b) don't have a damn clue what they're talking about.
Some of you may recall I did an interview on NPR last December with Alix Spiegel. She was very sweet and professional over the phone and asked MANY clarifying questions. There should have been NO misunderstandings as it was nearly an hour interview.
But now go look at what I'm quoted as saying in the transcript:
But Bill Brown, another person with HSAM, says that he's been in touch with most of the people in the group, and that everyone he has spoken to has struggled with depression. He says that very few of them have been able to maintain a long-term marriage — the rumor is only 2 out of the 55.
Okay, let's deal in factual errors:
1) I NEVER said I've been in touch with most of the people in the group. I have the recording. What I said was that I had met three other persons with HSAM in California for the "60 Minutes" interview (remember - we had to keep that under wraps because it had not yet aired and we had no air date) and ALL OF US - the FOUR of us, not all HSAMers....struggled with depression. It's true that "everyone" I had spoken with acknowledged depression (in a comforting though, we have each other now, which has made it easier to live with).....but this implies I've been talking to "most" of the group. That is simply untrue.
2) This quotes me as saying that very few of the 55 known HSAMers have had a long-term marriage. I never commented upon this at all because I had no idea at the time about it. (Also.....with my pending divorce and that of another person married 22 years and divorcing.......it might actually be ZERO now, I don't know).
This story has me commenting upon the mental health of people I never met and the marital status of people I knew nothing about!!! Neither is true in any way, shape, or form. As noted - I did say all of the four of us had bouts of depression but know this: I'm friends with these people and cleared what I would say with them beforehand. To read that I commented upon something I never did really sickens me.
And regarding "60 Minutes".......there is a link out there where someone is commenting about how struck she was by the joy of the four of us at dinner. Fine and good......except for the fact that she: a) was not even at the dinner and did not make the observation attributed; and b) could not possibly have viewed the videotape as she walked into the room about 20 minutes before the sit down interview after the plane was delayed.
Ok, this is not about my memory (though I'm a narcissist) but it IS about the media and the stories. And they do stuff like this all the time. All Grisham is saying is something that's true - have some perspective in this stuff. Don't be sentencing people to life sentences over obvious honest mistakes - that's what I got out of it. And I'm not a Grisham fan at all.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/16/john-grisham-international-author-calls-for-lenien/
And it said ‘16-year-old girls,’ so he went there. Downloaded some stuff — it was 16-year-old girls who looked 30. He shouldn’t have done it. It was stupid, but it wasn’t 10-year-old boys. He didn’t touch anything. And God, a week later there was a knock on the door, ‘FBI!’ “
I don't know how many of you have ever had to deal with the media but if you have then you know they make it all the more sensational (look at the Ebola non-crisis; I have some news from work on that later tonight). But having been victimized during my memory interviews last year, I tend to try and side with the subject of the interview rather than the reporters who: a) sometimes fudge for effect; or b) don't have a damn clue what they're talking about.
Some of you may recall I did an interview on NPR last December with Alix Spiegel. She was very sweet and professional over the phone and asked MANY clarifying questions. There should have been NO misunderstandings as it was nearly an hour interview.
But now go look at what I'm quoted as saying in the transcript:
But Bill Brown, another person with HSAM, says that he's been in touch with most of the people in the group, and that everyone he has spoken to has struggled with depression. He says that very few of them have been able to maintain a long-term marriage — the rumor is only 2 out of the 55.
Okay, let's deal in factual errors:
1) I NEVER said I've been in touch with most of the people in the group. I have the recording. What I said was that I had met three other persons with HSAM in California for the "60 Minutes" interview (remember - we had to keep that under wraps because it had not yet aired and we had no air date) and ALL OF US - the FOUR of us, not all HSAMers....struggled with depression. It's true that "everyone" I had spoken with acknowledged depression (in a comforting though, we have each other now, which has made it easier to live with).....but this implies I've been talking to "most" of the group. That is simply untrue.
2) This quotes me as saying that very few of the 55 known HSAMers have had a long-term marriage. I never commented upon this at all because I had no idea at the time about it. (Also.....with my pending divorce and that of another person married 22 years and divorcing.......it might actually be ZERO now, I don't know).
This story has me commenting upon the mental health of people I never met and the marital status of people I knew nothing about!!! Neither is true in any way, shape, or form. As noted - I did say all of the four of us had bouts of depression but know this: I'm friends with these people and cleared what I would say with them beforehand. To read that I commented upon something I never did really sickens me.
And regarding "60 Minutes".......there is a link out there where someone is commenting about how struck she was by the joy of the four of us at dinner. Fine and good......except for the fact that she: a) was not even at the dinner and did not make the observation attributed; and b) could not possibly have viewed the videotape as she walked into the room about 20 minutes before the sit down interview after the plane was delayed.
Ok, this is not about my memory (though I'm a narcissist) but it IS about the media and the stories. And they do stuff like this all the time. All Grisham is saying is something that's true - have some perspective in this stuff. Don't be sentencing people to life sentences over obvious honest mistakes - that's what I got out of it. And I'm not a Grisham fan at all.
And like that, the NS board contingency is googling Marilyn Monroe. For research purposes.
There have been some really crazy cases, and it's great politics for the DAs. Nobody really pokes behind the facts. Once they see "child porn," all sympathy disappears into votes for the current prosecutor...
Exactly - this guy DESERVES what he gets - he deliberately searched for child pornography. I don't care if they looked 80, he intentionally looked for child porn. People like him are precisely why children are abused all over the world, so I've got zero remorse for the guy.
If the guy clicked on "16 year old girls", then he knew what he was doing. It does not matter if he was drunk. (This is why Earle tells us at the start of every game thread not to post while drinking). Now, if he googled "Hawt naked babes" and an image of 16 year olds showed up, that isn't entirely his fault.
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