Rush to judgement on the Richmond, California, gang rape case?
Michael Snyder
Has there been a rush to judgment in the case of the gang rape of a
16-year-old girl outside her homecoming dance in Richmond, California?
The incident took place on October 24. Six young men are in custody
for the crime. The suspects are facing potential life sentences.
Sarah Kunstler is the 33--year-old daughter of the late civil rights
attorney William Kunstler, who represented one of the defendants in the
Central Park Jogger case.
She told the San Francisco Chronicle, that lesson of the Central Park
Jogging case is that we should not rush to judgment and "not to let our
horror at the crime blind us to the rights of the people charged," she
said. "That's when mistakes happen. That's how innocent people end up
spending their childhoods in prison."
Five men were convicted in that 1989 New York case based on their
confessions that they said were coerced. But the convictions were later
overturned after a man confessed in 2002 to committing the rape alone.
DNA evidence confirmed the man's confession. The district attorney's
office said the confessions of the original five defendants were
inconsistent and didn't match the facts of the case.
Sarah Kunstler told the Chronicle that she doesn't know the details of
the Richmond gang case, but added, "I know that my father would have
been concerned that the young men arrested would have been convicted in
the court of public opinion before they ever made it into the courtroom.
I think it's one of the hardest moments, when you have to suspend
judgment and have patience and look for the truth."
Kunstler was in the San Francisco Bay Area to promote a documentary
about her father, "William Kunstler, Disturbing the Universe," which is
playing at the Opera Plaza Theater in San Francisco and Shattuck Cinemas
in Berkeley. Kunstler co-directed the film. A video trailer of the
film is below.
robbielynn
Well the phone videos should help convict some and the "watchers"
will spill names in hopes that they can redeem themselves in a
small way.