Posted on 06/26/2008 6:10:48 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
When William Shakespeare wrote his ironic verse about hanging the lawyers, he hadn’t met the likes of Rep. James Fagan (D-Mass). Had he heard what State Rep. Fagan had to say for himself regarding how he would defend people accused of raping children, The Bard would have considered hanging far too kind a way to end a malicious and hateful existence.
Fagan rose to debate a bill that would have imposed long mandatory sentences on anyone convicted of raping children in The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Fagan showed the world how Democrats are the party of compassion. He spoke out on how to fix whiney, little raped children but good below.
"I'm gonna rip them apart," Fagan said of young victims during his testimony on the bill. "I'm going to make sure that the rest of their life is ruined, that when they’re 8 years old, they throw up; when they’re 12 years old, they won’t sleep; when they’re 19 years old, they’ll have nightmares and they’ll never have a relationship with anybody.” - James Fagan (May 2008)
Republican House Minority Leader Bradley Jones found himself in the pleasant position of being able to serve both morality and political expediency at the same time. He showed too much restraint by only mildly condemning the disgusting comments with which Fagan had polluted the legislative chambers. He should have beaten Fagan with rhetorical shillelagh. His comments were at least in the right direction.
“I thought his comments were over the top and unnecessary,” Massachusetts House Minority Leader Bradley Jones told FOXNews.com on Wednesday.
“I appreciate that he’s a defense attorney, and felt he had a point to make, but I think it was unnecessary,” said Jones, who supported an original version of the bill. “It was excessive.”
Jessica Lunsford’s father, Mark, has known first hand what it was like to have something like this happen to his family. His daughter, Jessica, was raped and left buried in garbage at the tender, young age of nine. He asked the obvious question.
“Why doesn’t he figure out a way to defend that child and put these kind of people away instead of trying to figure ways for defense attorneys to get around Jessica’s Law?” Lunsford told the paper. “These are very serious crimes that nobody wants to take serious. What about the rights of these children?”
There is that question of billable hours….
In fairness to defense attorneys as professionals, rape charges based primarily on the sworn testimony of the victim, are among the most ethically challenging situations that a decent and honorable lawyer can encounter. A paying client is owed a rigorous defense. The attorney can’t let sympathy with the plaintiff stand in the way of doing the job.
However, there should be at least some sense of remorse. There should be a feeling that the entire encounter was a colossal shame and a travesty. I don’t get that sense of remorse from Good Old “Rip ‘em Apart” Fagan.
He sounds like a hyper-active adolescent blasting aliens on his PlayStation III. The man seems to charge himself off of ruining young lives. Judging from Representative Fagan’s words, the man could have defended Jeffrey Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy and actually rooted for his clients to walk.
Fagan could have gotten totally carried away in his rhetoric. People say over the top things or type themselves beyond the pale in political debates all the time. The proper thing to do it that instance is to apologize.
From the comments of Representative Bradley Jones, I get the sense people that Fagan’s fellow legislators were neither intimidated nor impressed. They know garbage when they hear it, and do not find it anything other than gross and disgusting.
Fagan didn’t win any friends. Not for himself; not for his party; not for the cause of more careful sentencing guidelines. A performance like the one he put on in the Massachusetts will not exactly make the jury feel lenient towards his clients. I can only imagine what he would say on the floor if Massachusetts started debate on the law Bobby Jindal recently signed in Louisiana; that called for the chemical castration of child rapists.
I found this in his bio:
ORGANIZATIONS: Massachusetts Academy of Trial Lawyers; Taunton Boys & Girls Club (Board of Directors); Taunton Little League; Taunton Youth Basketball Coach; Massachusetts Bar Foundation; Massachusetts Waterfowlers, Inc.; Babe Ruth League; High School Umpire; Bristol Ducks Unlimited; Southeastern New England Area Boys’ Clubs of America (past Chairman).
Just out of curiosity, is this guy gay? I suppose that he doesn’t have a record as a sex offender, or we would know that. Of course, in Massachusetts, they don’t really enforce that law anyway.
Canceled the note to Fagan. I was worried if I sent it, I'd get visitors.
THIS?
“Obama addressed a press conference on Wednesday where he said, ‘I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances for the most egregious of crimes. I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime and if a state makes a decision that under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that that does not violate our Constitution.’”
Or THIS?
“In his statement McCain said, ‘As a father I believe there is no more sacred responsibility in American society than that of protecting the innocence of our children. I have spent over twenty-five years in Congress fighting for stronger criminal sentences for those who exploit and harm our children. Today’s Supreme Court ruling is an assault on law enforcement’s efforts to punish these heinous felons for the most despicable crime.’”
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7011391539
ENOUGH WITH THE DEFENSE OF THIS POS.
Just because he is a lawyer, he does not have to make such reprehensible statements, in public and as the people’s representative.
Just because he is a lawyer, no one is holding a gun to his head and demand that he take the case.
Just because he is a lawyer, he does not have to prove that Liberals are mentally deranged.
Obama said today that he disagrees with this SCOTUS decision by Justices Kennedy, Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Souter. But the latter three justices are Obama's model appointees, as he explained on May 8, 2008.
Wolf Blitzer: Are there members, uh Justices right now upon whom you would model...who do you like?
Barack Obama: Justice Breyer, Justice Ginsburg are very sensible judges. I think that Justice Souter, who was a Republican appointee, is a sensible judge.
Disbarment and Recall.
There is no defending this POS. Someone has to defend a guy accused of kiddy rape. No one has to get up for it the way I used to get up for rugby matches. What truly makes Fagan disgusting is his enthusiasm. It’s as if he enjoys doing that to kids.
As far as I’m concerned, Fagan’s the face and voice of the Democratic Party: a psychotically vicious and arrogant trial lawyer. And he has that accent that just screams “dumb as a box of rocks.”
Fagan is scum.
Now that I've got that out of the way, I have to say it always bugs me how people constantly misuse Shakespeare words.
First off, it isn't "hang all the lawyers". The line is "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
More importantly, the context refers to what must be done for a rebellion to be successful. In other words, they recognized that for rebellion to be successful, the system of laws must be destroyed.
Irregardless of my personal pet peeve, Fagan is still scum.
Consider that the people of his district sent him to Boston. In other words he represents them. Thats the essence of this entire event...the people of his district are either as or more corrupt or they’re completely unaware of who they voted for. In either case it doesn’t look that great.
I think that MA has mandatory sentencing for gun crimes...right? So why is the mandatory sentence for child molesters so repugnant?
Sounds to me like FAGan has raped a few kids in his time - no wonder he gets a kick out of tormenting children.
You mean Jeff Beatty? :) That guy ought to just challenge Lurch to a duel. I can’t believe that given the choice between Lurch (did you know he spent 6 months in the Nam?) and a man with a record like Beatty’s, people will choose a puffed up, preening poltroon like John Kerry. But that’s Massachusetts...
bookmark
Dont lawyers have some kind of obligation not to bring disrepute to their profession? Seems to me that this guy is the worst thing to happen to the profession’s image since Mike Nifong.
He's GOT to be a pedophile!
Ask him why he has so much "contact" with young boys, and he'd probably say, "To mold their minds."
He's correct: looks like no one here is familiar with the Fells Acres Daycare case.
Children coached by 'professionals' sent innocent people to jail.
"Better for 100 guilty persons to be set free than one innocent one sent to jail".
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