As for the other link you had posted.....I read that article and wondered what that judge who changed the rulings, personal sexual addictions are, if they effected his ruling. Or if his consistently legalistic in his rulings to the letter of the law, that the definition of a word can make or break a case.
(sidebar.....for those of you that do know the law, I will be first to admit I know nothing about "law" as a practice and maybe you could explain why this judges decision was correct......or incorrect for that matter!!)
I'll take a shot at it for you. First of all, there are three layers of courts in most places: the trial court, the first layer of appeals courts, and the highest layer of appeals court (like the Supreme Court). The jury who heard the case convicted the pig, er, I mean man, the first level of appeals court upheld the conviction. But the highest court voted NINE to nothing that the conviction could not be upheld. The lead opinion was written by a woman, Judge Cheryl Johnson.
Basically, the problem was with the law. To convict someone of a crime, there has to be a law on the books pretty clearly laying out that the conduct is a crime. If the law says I cannot punch you and I say something obnoxious which makes you feel rotten, you can't use that law to convict me because I didn't break it. The law in question said that you can't harass someone by making reference to an "ultimate" sex act, and further defined "ultimate" to include only certain things. The defendant was a pig, but what he said to the victim referred to something which was not on the list of "ultimate" acts which the law declared as illegal subjects of harassing comments. So the court pretty much had to throw out the conviction.
An aside: One judge, a man, wrote a separate opinion stating that the law was poorly worded and that the Texas legislature should change it as soon as possible.
Like before Clinton decides to move there.
MD |
