Usually only right wing Republicans make future Supreme Court nominees a deciding factor for a presidential candidate; but if the Supreme Court does not make a common sense decision in “The Strip Search Case,” then most Democrats and a whole lot of Independents are going to make it the  major factor in the next presidential election.  

If the court fails in this case, the need for the next president to ensure that a more sensible court is populated will be magnified.

The right to everyday strip searching by school officials on the flimsiest of evidence without any legal protections for the rights of children will create a vivid image that will be easy to rekindle, and Michael Moore or someone like him will remind us how dangerously close to tyranny some of our schools may easily slip into at any time without legal protections.  Just remember the Bush years and the torture issues now finally being exposed. 

For details of this case see the NPR morning report which includes an interview with Savana Redding, the victim of the strip search who is now in college, and the News Hour report which summarized arguments presented in the court during the day.

In MySpace suicide case, community fights back

By P.J. Huffstutter

Los Angeles Times

November 22, 2007

You probably saw the story of the 13 year old girl who committed suicide after becoming distraught over being rejected by a boy she only knew through her MySpace account, but who turned out to be a lady in her neighborhood.  The girl was subject to depression among other problems, and the lady pretended to be a boy who was interested in this girl, but then cut off all ties with her because he said he heard she wasn’t nice to her friends.  At the same time he also began sending out negative messages about her. That tipped this girl over the edge and she committed suicide within a day.

Now we hear in this latest update to the story that the authorities have not been able to find a charge to level against the lady imposter, even though she was an adult interfering with a minor child’s well-being. 

This article does point out one law that might possibly apply…

Parry Aftab, an Internet privacy lawyer and executive director of WiredSafety.org, points to one federal statute that may apply in the Meier case: the telecommunications harassment law. Amended in 2005, the law prohibits people from anonymously using the Internet with the intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass another person.

But an even more fundamental question this case raises is about the nature of child abuse.  What constitutes child abuse?  

Why can’t the authorities conceive of this case as child abuse?  If an adult somehow had managed to do these kinds of things in a face to face encounter would they have also been “legal”?  Is it permissible for adults to use deceit and subterfuge to deliberately hurt children?

“The fact that someone says… you should go home and have sex with that person, seems to me, doesn’t rise to the level of coercion”

– Aric Cramer, a Utah criminal defense attorney

If a 14 year old girl in a male-dominated, tightly-knit community is told she has to marry a given man, she does not have the same freedom of choice as a 26 year old woman who is struggling to decide whether to remain in a difficult marriage; yet Aric Cramer seems to suggest that the system of law we have in America cannot tell the difference between these two situations.

In NPR’s report Trial Begins for Polygamist Warren Jeffs, attorney Aric Cramer says the issues in this trial are problematic because Jeffs is being charged as “an accomplice to rape” and that usually implies physical force rather than mere verbal instruction. 

Cramer adds, “It kind of casts a pallor on marriage counselors, on religious leaders, on anybody who’s involved in trying to help people with marriages if they tell a husband or spouse to go home and stay with that other husband or spouse, behave as a married couple, then they could be charged as an accessory to rape.”

Cramer is suggesting that the law can see no difference between the social situation of a dependent minor in a subordinate situation and a grown adult in an egalitarian relationship.  

He even acknowledges the prosecution’s argument that the minor in this case was in a situation where the psychological pressures were so great as to be described as “mind-control.”

If Cramer can’t see how context makes a difference, either his legal thinking is off track, or he is telling us American law is a hopeless wreck!