re: #11 steve_davis

I came in here to make a similar unpopular point. I know of an elderly father of a friend who was a victim of a scam. He was about 70 and could not afford more than a public defender when 2 men in their 30s, with a drug habit, approached him. If I remember the story right, they and this man’s son were all boy scouts and the dad was a troop leader 20+ years ago. They told him to hand over some enormous sum of cash or they would go to the cops and say he molested them years and years ago. He refused and they pressed charges. His incompetent lawyer, and our system’s loose treatment of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” meant he copped a plea and spent 5 years in prison as an old man (and innocent as far as any of us can tell.)

Statutes of limitations are there for a reason. Victims of any crime ought to make a case beyond a reasonable doubt, and the all defendants deserve a trial where the case must be proven. It’s easy nowadays with dna testing and psychologists.

in decades past, rape (of women) was notorious to prove because many states required too much proof. Now the pendulum occasionally swings too far the other way, imho.