Oh, no question, I don't think he's the bad guy here. Sure, he's guilty, guilty, guilty, but under a law that makes owning quite a lot of material that really isn't evil, criminal. It's just criminal that they'd prosecute him under such a sloppily-written law.
Nor am I screaming, "prosecutorial misconduct!" like in the Rugby Boys' case last(?) year. I'm screaming "legislative overzealousness!" Also, "damn the Man!" Because this law is garbage if it gets someone put behind bars for buying comic books which are perfectly legal in Japan, and perfectly legal to import into the US...but not to own and possess. That is clearly a badly-drawn distinction on its face.
And a lot of the "if x then y" depends on the jury instructions, which of course won't signify since no jury will need to be impaneled for Mr. Handley. If he'd been lucky enough to get "his" instruction read for the jury, then they might have had quite a bit of leeway indeed; if the prosecuting attorneys got their way, it'd almost certainly be a "just the facts, ma'am" scenario presented to them, and the facts are that under this crappy law, he is most certainly a guilty man.
It's just sad that it had to play out at all. "Community standards" for which laws we use to protect our children (which laws we "need" to protect our children) seem to get weaker every time another yahoo burns a flag. We need Brennan back, to rail against his own opinion in Roth, dammit.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2009-06-07 03:39 pm (UTC)Nor am I screaming, "prosecutorial misconduct!" like in the Rugby Boys' case last(?) year. I'm screaming "legislative overzealousness!" Also, "damn the Man!" Because this law is garbage if it gets someone put behind bars for buying comic books which are perfectly legal in Japan, and perfectly legal to import into the US...but not to own and possess. That is clearly a badly-drawn distinction on its face.
And a lot of the "if x then y" depends on the jury instructions, which of course won't signify since no jury will need to be impaneled for Mr. Handley. If he'd been lucky enough to get "his" instruction read for the jury, then they might have had quite a bit of leeway indeed; if the prosecuting attorneys got their way, it'd almost certainly be a "just the facts, ma'am" scenario presented to them, and the facts are that under this crappy law, he is most certainly a guilty man.
It's just sad that it had to play out at all. "Community standards" for which laws we use to protect our children (which laws we "need" to protect our children) seem to get weaker every time another yahoo burns a flag. We need Brennan back, to rail against his own opinion in Roth, dammit.