Post by Juggs on Jan 17, 2015 16:10:46 GMT -5
This story involves sexual assault of a minor and the trial of the man found guilty of doing it. If you find that topic inappropriate to discuss, this is you warning not to read.
William Ruscoe was a police officer from the town of Trumbull Connecticut. He served there for nearly 20 years up until his 2013 resignation and arrest for second degree sexual assault.
Ruscoe was involved in an initially non-sexual relationship with a teenage girl for many years, on good terms, from what I understand of reading about the case. The two were friends and she described Ruscoe as a role model in her community, that is, up until the incident.
Ruscoe began writing the teenager love poems and describing the sex acts he wanted to do to her. He planned out exactly what he was going to do before hand, and showed up at her home one night drunk and unannounced. She resisted him entirely, but he attempted to grope her before she ran out of the house and effectively ended the incident. They were friends, and since she knew Ruscoe struggled with alcohol, she decided to not report the incident. Soon later, she would regret that choice.
Ruscoe came to her house again in a separate incident, sober the this time. He threw his firearm down on her parents kitchen table and threatened her if she did not follow him upstairs to the bedroom, where he handcuffed and raped her.
This time, she did report him. I'm not exactly sure how this went down, but eventually Ruscoe was arrested by fellow police officers and tried in a court of law. This was historic, because in the United States, 99.6% of police officer indictments do not result in prosecution, despite 99.% of indictments on regular citizens resulting in prosecution.
As you might expect, the trial was a complete farce. The state prosecutor (who worked side by side with Ruscoe's police chief and other co-workers), offered Ruscoe a plea bargain. This is not totally uncommon in a rape case. If Ruscoe aggreed to plead guilty, he would have rape in the first degree brought down to sexual assault of a minor in the second degree. He would still go to prison and he would still have this on his record, which pretty much ruins his chance of getting a decent job ever again.
What was uncommon about the plea bargain was the severity of the sentencing guidelines. The prosecutor asked the judge for just a 72 month (6 year) sentence. Plea bargain guidlines in rape cases average between 13 and 19-to-life, with 13 usually being an enforced minimum. That minimum was totally ignored here, because Ruscoe was a police officer. Ruscoe received less than half the minimum sentence. Any good judge would have thrown that out and fired the prosecutor for violating state law. Instead, the judge agreed.
The trial then consisted of the only witness, the girl, testifying the terrible things done to her by the friend and role model who she said "betrayed her." The testimony was treated as hostile and the girl was clearly campaigning for Ruscoe to go away for life. No doubts about that.
Ruscoe's testimony was what changed the case. In his plea of guilty, he said the following, and they proved to be the only facts that mattered in the whole trial, "“Please show [my children] that the justice system their daddy worked to uphold for nearly 20 years is also fair and compassionate,”
His excuse for committing a rape that he admitted to was that he had been a good police officer for 20 years.
The judge not only agreed, he more than cut in half the sentence that had already been more than cut in half.
The 13 year minimum to lifetime maximum had originally been reduced to a ridiculous 6 years. Then the judge decided that due to good police behavior, this rapist of a teenage girl would serve just 30 months, 2.5 years in prison, roughly equivalent to mandatory minimum sentences dealt in Brooklyn New York every day for possessing marijuana.
The judge made a final statement to the rape victim as she exited the court room:
"I know you have really been traumatized by this situation. But I ask you, when you walk out of this courtroom, leave it here. There is a path forward for you and you have what you need to go forward.”
The rape victim didn't need to do anything. She didn't need to find a path forward, she didn't need to forgive anybody, but this judge decided that he was the moral abritrator of the universe and decided to add a second slap-in-the-face lecture after his slap-in-the-face sentencing.
The judge asks the girl to forgive her rapist and move on with her life. I say, "how can she?" Her rapist will be a free man out on the streets roughly by the time she starts college.
Police officers in the United States effectively cannot be treated fairly in this country's legal system anymore. Having a badge and a blue uniform now comes with an extra set of rights that makes you invincible to the law. Any regular citizen who did what this man did would have earned a life sentence, and in some states, even the death penalty. Instead, William Ruscoe spent just 2.5 years in a special prison designed to be of high quality, specifically for law enforcement officials and white collar criminals.
The problem is that judges are sympathetic to police officers automatically because of their profession. An even larger problem is that prosecutors don't aggressively pursue charges against their coworkers. This is because prosecutors rely on police officers in their day-to-day jobs and are biased towards helping them. This would be like if Tom Brady were accused of a crime, and Roger Goodell asked Rob Gronkowski to come up with how long his suspension should be.
Even in cases when cops do terrible things like rape and steal and kill, they have an automatic sympathy card, and the only person powerful enough to prosecute them is on their team and in their corner. This system needs fundamental changes if we want our police officers to stop getting away with heinous crimes.
You can read more about this case that was totally ignored by the national media here:
thefreethoughtproject.com/officer-rapes-handcuffs-rapes-teen-explorer-program-judge-orders-downward-departure-sentencing-plea-deal/
www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/sentencing_manual/s1_rape/
www.ctpost.com/local/article/Trumbull-cop-pleads-guilty-to-sexually-assaulting-5861839.php
William Ruscoe was a police officer from the town of Trumbull Connecticut. He served there for nearly 20 years up until his 2013 resignation and arrest for second degree sexual assault.
Ruscoe was involved in an initially non-sexual relationship with a teenage girl for many years, on good terms, from what I understand of reading about the case. The two were friends and she described Ruscoe as a role model in her community, that is, up until the incident.
Ruscoe began writing the teenager love poems and describing the sex acts he wanted to do to her. He planned out exactly what he was going to do before hand, and showed up at her home one night drunk and unannounced. She resisted him entirely, but he attempted to grope her before she ran out of the house and effectively ended the incident. They were friends, and since she knew Ruscoe struggled with alcohol, she decided to not report the incident. Soon later, she would regret that choice.
Ruscoe came to her house again in a separate incident, sober the this time. He threw his firearm down on her parents kitchen table and threatened her if she did not follow him upstairs to the bedroom, where he handcuffed and raped her.
This time, she did report him. I'm not exactly sure how this went down, but eventually Ruscoe was arrested by fellow police officers and tried in a court of law. This was historic, because in the United States, 99.6% of police officer indictments do not result in prosecution, despite 99.% of indictments on regular citizens resulting in prosecution.
As you might expect, the trial was a complete farce. The state prosecutor (who worked side by side with Ruscoe's police chief and other co-workers), offered Ruscoe a plea bargain. This is not totally uncommon in a rape case. If Ruscoe aggreed to plead guilty, he would have rape in the first degree brought down to sexual assault of a minor in the second degree. He would still go to prison and he would still have this on his record, which pretty much ruins his chance of getting a decent job ever again.
What was uncommon about the plea bargain was the severity of the sentencing guidelines. The prosecutor asked the judge for just a 72 month (6 year) sentence. Plea bargain guidlines in rape cases average between 13 and 19-to-life, with 13 usually being an enforced minimum. That minimum was totally ignored here, because Ruscoe was a police officer. Ruscoe received less than half the minimum sentence. Any good judge would have thrown that out and fired the prosecutor for violating state law. Instead, the judge agreed.
The trial then consisted of the only witness, the girl, testifying the terrible things done to her by the friend and role model who she said "betrayed her." The testimony was treated as hostile and the girl was clearly campaigning for Ruscoe to go away for life. No doubts about that.
Ruscoe's testimony was what changed the case. In his plea of guilty, he said the following, and they proved to be the only facts that mattered in the whole trial, "“Please show [my children] that the justice system their daddy worked to uphold for nearly 20 years is also fair and compassionate,”
His excuse for committing a rape that he admitted to was that he had been a good police officer for 20 years.
The judge not only agreed, he more than cut in half the sentence that had already been more than cut in half.
The 13 year minimum to lifetime maximum had originally been reduced to a ridiculous 6 years. Then the judge decided that due to good police behavior, this rapist of a teenage girl would serve just 30 months, 2.5 years in prison, roughly equivalent to mandatory minimum sentences dealt in Brooklyn New York every day for possessing marijuana.
The judge made a final statement to the rape victim as she exited the court room:
"I know you have really been traumatized by this situation. But I ask you, when you walk out of this courtroom, leave it here. There is a path forward for you and you have what you need to go forward.”
The rape victim didn't need to do anything. She didn't need to find a path forward, she didn't need to forgive anybody, but this judge decided that he was the moral abritrator of the universe and decided to add a second slap-in-the-face lecture after his slap-in-the-face sentencing.
The judge asks the girl to forgive her rapist and move on with her life. I say, "how can she?" Her rapist will be a free man out on the streets roughly by the time she starts college.
Police officers in the United States effectively cannot be treated fairly in this country's legal system anymore. Having a badge and a blue uniform now comes with an extra set of rights that makes you invincible to the law. Any regular citizen who did what this man did would have earned a life sentence, and in some states, even the death penalty. Instead, William Ruscoe spent just 2.5 years in a special prison designed to be of high quality, specifically for law enforcement officials and white collar criminals.
The problem is that judges are sympathetic to police officers automatically because of their profession. An even larger problem is that prosecutors don't aggressively pursue charges against their coworkers. This is because prosecutors rely on police officers in their day-to-day jobs and are biased towards helping them. This would be like if Tom Brady were accused of a crime, and Roger Goodell asked Rob Gronkowski to come up with how long his suspension should be.
Even in cases when cops do terrible things like rape and steal and kill, they have an automatic sympathy card, and the only person powerful enough to prosecute them is on their team and in their corner. This system needs fundamental changes if we want our police officers to stop getting away with heinous crimes.
You can read more about this case that was totally ignored by the national media here:
thefreethoughtproject.com/officer-rapes-handcuffs-rapes-teen-explorer-program-judge-orders-downward-departure-sentencing-plea-deal/
www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/sentencing_manual/s1_rape/
www.ctpost.com/local/article/Trumbull-cop-pleads-guilty-to-sexually-assaulting-5861839.php