Posted on 09/20/2005 9:26:26 PM PDT by Coleus
The New Jersey courts had rarely seen a hero quite like Judge Stephen Thompson.
A decorated Army veteran who lost a leg after being shot 20 times in the Vietnamese jungle, he came home to earn a law degree. He rose to the state bench, where he presided over Megan's Law cases, earned a reputation for fairness and balance and later helped make the state's first drug court an unqualified success.
Yesterday, that same Stephen Thompson went on trial, accused of going to Russia in 2002 to perform sex acts with a teenage boy. He is accused of videotaping that crime and of keeping a trove of child pornography -- videotapes, diskettes, photos and literature from the North American Man/Boy Love Association -- in his two homes.
The 59-year-old judge sat in a Camden federal courtroom yesterday, slightly stoop-shouldered in a sage green suit, with his eyes straight ahead and crutches under the table as the difference between his public and private lives was presented in stark relief.
The prosecution called his crimes horrendous and referred graphically to his immense store of videotaped sexual encounters with young men and boys. Prosecutors plan to show a 40-minute video made in Russia in which, they say, the judge is gleeful when the boy disrobes. As a judge and a man who overcame profound adversity, they said, he should have known better.
The defense argued that the judge is a tragic American hero, who despite his impressive record and personal accomplishments, is insane in his fixation on the virility he lost as a result of the war injuries that not only traumatized him but also damaged his brain.
The federal trial, likely to last a month, is expected to put the jury squarely in the middle of a choice between justice and mercy.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
rape of your daughter sounds like child molesting to me.......throwing babies down an air shaft sounds like murder.....death penalty sounds reasonable
"I don't understand such people. Maybe he never had children."
Perhaps he is a pedophile.
I strongly agree that these crimimanls should all be put to death.
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