We recently discussed Fred Martens case, described by Australian federal MP Bob Katter as “without doubt, the worst case of flagrant and provable injustice that I can remember.” In the case, the father was in the middle of a custody battle and the false sex crimes charges were apparently orchestrated by his ex-wife. Katter says, “It is clear-cut that he is innocent…The people involved should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.” To learn more, see my blog post on the case here.
There’s another thing which really struck me about this case. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the case is as it appears — the ex-wife, as part of her custody dispute with Martens, arranged for him to be framed up on the sex crime charges. Given the extreme poverty of Papua New Guinea, I don’t imagine that it would be hard to pay a 14-year-old New Guinea girl to lie in front of the court.
But think about it this way — this crime (meaning the ex-wife’s crime) took place over a long stretch of time, and continues to this day. Think of it — if a person murders another person, or commits a serious crime against them, it’s usually something that was planned and perpetrated over a very short period of time. Even if the crime was premeditated and well-planned, it still occurred over a fairly short period of time.
Contrast this with the ex-wife’s crime here. Not only did she go through extraordinary measures to have her ex-husband put in prison in 2006, but she has known ever since what she did and has allowed it to stand. Meaning that from 2005, when she probably began, up until now, the middle of 2008, she has been aware of her crime, could have acted to end it, but chose not to. Meaning that for three years she has been perpetrating this crime.
To me this multiplies the crime considerably. There are plenty of men who might get in a bar fight and stab somebody and regret it later. This is a despicable crime for which they should be imprisoned, no doubt. But think of this — this crime occurred not only with extreme premeditation, but also with years of, for lack of a better word, “post-meditation.”
Is this legally considered to be an aggravating circumstance? Is this something that the law pays significant attention to? If anybody knows, particularly some of my readers who are lawyers, I invite you to weigh in.
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3 Responses
I would go further, Glenn. Not only is it a post-lie long-term event, but we have raised a generation of women who are USED TO having the knowledge of the ability at the back of their mind as they walk down the aisle.
I may well find myself in a very awkard position of having to defend myself in a pub. But I do not entertain the idea that I have carte blanche to kill someone and understand with reasonable justification that the police and the courts will bend over backwards to support my claims that some thug (or innocent) ‘looked’ at me and that was sufficient. But women are in no doubt at all that their false accusation will be treated with initial belief and that little or no effort will be made to determine the truth by those who are paid handsomely to do so.
Posted on August 7th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Well if we had females going to prison because of males making false allegations, then of course it would be an aggravating circumstance, maybe a guy would get charged with a separate count for each day he allowed it to continue, and maybe he would get a rape charge for every time she was raped in prison. The death penalty would be too good for him.
But since the reality is the reverse, no, it’s not a problem. It’s a freak occurrence when a woman is prosecuted, let alone actually does any time, for using the courts as her pawn as she takes her vengeance.
Take Crystal Gail Mangum as an example. Imagine a man using the judiciary to put three women through hell for all of the time she used her vagina to hold the justice system over the Duke Lacrosse boys. Such a man would never see daylight again, but instead we look for a male to blame, and of course in this case that was Nifong.
Posted on August 7th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
DcFather - while I agree that Mangum is scum and needs to be rotting away somewhere, I soooo don’t agree that Nifong wasn’t to blame.
That bastard is the reason things kept on and kept on. When he learned that Mangum was lying (say on the third or fourth day after the party) he should have arrested her and publicly exonerated those boys. But being the dishonest leftist he is, he put his re-election over young men’s lives.
He’s no better than Mangum, and in some ways worse - he sold out his own for thirty pieces of silver.
Posted on August 7th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
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