by Victoria Tiegert

Created on: April 01, 2008

Three years ago, I was unfortunate enough to get to see our legal system in action in a child sex abuse case. I was, prior to that, fairly uneducated on how the system worked...or failed to work. I had many things explained to me over the course of the investigation and trial that I needed to become educated on, whether I wanted to or not.

One of these things was the issue of mandatory sentencing in my state. This is a set of guidelines that disallows jurors and judges from deciding what punishment serves the crime. In theory, this is a great idea. Jurors are not required to incorporate their "emotional response" to particular defendants. It is just a matter of deciding if he or she is guilty or not.

The guidelines apply to 21 particular crimes, sexual abuse being one of these. It applies to offenders who are 15 years of age and older. These sentencing guidelines have brought longer sentences with no time off for "good behavior." No probation, no parole, no early release. The initial reasoning for putting this set of standards in place was to keep criminals off the streets longer. I don't think there are many people who would argue that logic.

The sentencing is strict and harsh for violent crimes against society. This I do not disagree with. My problem lies in the fact that jurors are aware of these guidelines, yet are expected to pass judgment as if they are not. They are instructed to not consider the possible penalty as they deliberate and hand down their verdict. Is this really possible? It may be for a few of us, but I think that for the vast majority, it is not. We are people with emotions and at times, it is difficult to force reason to take precedence over those feelings.

When we are looking at an obviously crazy "Charles Manson" type, it may not be so difficult. When we are looking at a case with solid evidence, it probably won't be difficult at all. However, in crimes like in-family sex abuse, the offender may not look crazy and there may be no eyewitness. Unless there was intercourse and disclosure was made immediately, there will be no DNA. So, what are we left with? A child, possibly one who has had some behavior problems resulting from the mistreatment. A family, again one who may have some issues going on. The grooming process will not leave them untouched or unchanged.

In our case, we had those issues, but it went a step further than that. We also had a defendant we will call Darren. Darren is not the sort of man that everyone would see and think

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