Re: 2002 murder suspect located via MSN Map search

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

Having said that (and well said, indeed), there are some crimes
that simply by being accused of wrong-doing can mar someone's
integrity forever in the court of public opinion.

Take for instance the "The Affaire d'Outreau, Judicial
Shipwreck" in France recently:

[snip]

The "Affaire d'Outreau" [pronounced doo-tro] was just a blip on the radar screen when I first read about it. Seventeen 
people were accused of child molesting in northern France and after a three-year investigation they came to trial in 
2004. I had a hard time believing so many people, especially women, were involved in a ring of child molesters.

It became clearer that some of the people were guilty-- as it finally turned out, two couples had been abusing their 
own children, and one had made wild accusations left and right to incriminate people who were not involved. Those 
innocent people now went through a waking nightmare for three or even four years. Their children were taken away, they 
were treated by the jailers as known child molesters, and the evidence that they were innocent was ignored.

Right before Christmas, about two months ago, the twelve surviving accused in the d'Outreau case were acquitted of all 
charges. The French Minister of Justice then gave a press conference to apologize to the accused. At the time I 
mentioned the case in a short note at the bottom of a post. 

[snip]

 http://www.ruerude.com/2006/01/the_affaire_dou.html

Not ethe use of the word 'surviving' in the account above -- some
of the people accused of involvement killed themselves bacause of
the shame of being accused of involvement.

It was a travesty of jurisprudence.

- ferg


-- Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu wrote:

On Sun, 05 Feb 2006 12:16:51 CST, Paul Schmehl said:
> So why did the suspect hang himself in prison?  Didn't like the food?

In feudal Japan, hari-kiri (ritual self-disembowlment) was the proper response
for losing face over much less important matters.

And in today's society, an amazing number of people put a bullet through their
head just because they get fired from their job and are looking at financial
ruin.  It's not at all surprising that getting arrested pushes some people over
the edge while they're sitting in a jail cell for something they didn't do,
with no idea how they were going to afford bail, much less a competent defense
attorney (which can easily get into the hundreds of thousands of dollars very
quickly), and knew that even if they *did* beat the rap they'd still be
followed by whispers for the rest of their life...  Suddenly, doing something
creative with their belt starts looking reasonable....

If the guy hanged himself, it's not a confession of guilt (unless he left an
actual signed confession) - it only proves he couldn't deal with the fact that
he was accused....


--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg () netzero net or fergdawg () sbcglobal net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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