i don't think all of this is true.

the manhattan judge dismissed the case against him because he is dead.
there are still FBI and DOJ investigations. i'm reading other countries are starting investigations as well.

Naw, all pedos should have their civil rights protected.
We live in an era where our civil liberties have been eroded systematically in the name of moral inquisitions against pedophiles, white supremacists, islamic terrorists and now spooky russians.

Let me give you an example from here in MN. The Jacob Wetterling murder was finally solved 27 years after the fact, after it had been a huge story and Patty Wetterling had become a politician, creating the first sex-offender registry under the Jacob Wetterling Act.
Danny James Heinrich was long suspected as one possible candidate for the murderer, and at the time in 1989 a DNA sample was taken but nothing to link him to the crime was found, and it became a cold case.
In 2015, that DNA was linked to another kidnapping and sexual assault of a minor (not murder), but the statute of limitations had been expired on the decades-old crime.
Even though it was long since expired, the county granted a search warrant anyway (!) and went into Heinrich's residence and found unrelated child porn on his laptop
He was then charged with possession of child pornography and the prosecutors brought 25 charges against him for the images on that computer and sought 250-500 years in prison served concurrently for child porn charges alone, disconnected from any other accusation of a crime. They offered him a plea agreement, and he agreed to plead to just 1 count of child porn possession with 20 years in prison, in exchange for him leading police to the body of Jacob Wetterling and allocuting to that crime for which he would be granted immunity. He then led police to a pasture in Paynesville, where the skeleton of Jacob was recovered. He testified to police how he had kidnapped Jacob, driven him to a gravel pit, molested him, killed him and buried the body. He avoided police by listening to police scanners, admitted to kidnapping and molesting the other boy and to moving the body. Now imprisoned, prosecutors have said that even once he becomes eligible for parole in 17 years, the state authorities will seek civil commitment as a sexual predator and deny his release after time served, extending his prison sentence to life without any further trial or convictions. The judge said "this crime is so heinous, so brutal and awful that it is unlikely society will ever let you go free."

Look at that story from a few different lenses.
On one hand, a child rapist and murderer was finally brought to justice decades after the fact. He had victimized other children and may have one day struck again if not for law enforcement.
It took a lot of legal maneuvering and stretching the law, but they were able to use the statutes on the books to give him life in prison despite not having the evidence to prosecute the crime otherwise.

On the other hand, they shredded the constitution. They trampled over every civil right and just created a farce of a trial. They conducted a blatantly unreasonable search and any evidence seized should be fruit of the poisonous tree. They had no valid premise for a warrant. Further, they charged someone with 500 years in prison for the mere possession of 25 images of child porn. A pseudo-victimless crime that treads dangerously close to the first amendment is treated with preposterously inordinate sentencing so that mass murdering people in a shooting spree would get you less of a prison sentence than just having illegal pictures on your laptop. The state created a paper thin pretense of a trial for child porn in which the actual case at hand and evidence was completely ignored and instead made into a proxy for the murder of jacob wetterling, an unrelated crime that should never have been admissible in court. The judge didn't even bother pretending the guy was on trial for kiddie porn, he flat out said it was all about the murder- the one he was never convicted of and for which they had no valid evidence.

What matters more to society?
Bringing predators down and protecting children, or holding justice up and protecting civil rights?

Personally, I think that civil rights should always be upheld, and if someone is so egregious and slips through the cracks and escapes justice due to technicalities or statutes of limitation or poisoned evidence- if you know he's guilty but is getting away with it- you should simply take him out back and shoot him. Dispense with the pretense of civility and justice, don't conduct show trials. Lynch the bastard, then go back to being civilized and orderly when the system works. Any reasonable society would make the calculation that either we can have functional civil rights or we can just enforce mob rule. And if there's a time for one and a time for another, lets not poison our democracy by trying to have it both ways.

Once you open that door and legitimize the bastardization of justice, that's how we wind up with broken law enforcement. If the people go outside the law and say "The law can't give us what we want, so we're taking it into our own hands", at least we acknowledge that what they're doing isn't legal. But once you make it legal, what's to stop the FBI prosecutors from selectively bringing 500 years of charges on serial jaywalking against their opponents while using 'prosecutorial discretion' to ignore the exact same conduct by their friends?

This post was edited by Goomshill on Aug 29 2019 05:27pm

Excuse me, but the production of (real life, not the anime stuff) child porn necessarily involves victimizing and traumatizing children. Child porn is very far form a "victimless or quasivictimless crime". I'm no legal scholar, but I also highly doubt that possession of c.p. falls under the first amendment, for this very reason.

(I agree with most of your other points, in particular that 500 years in prison for possession of 25 images is ridiculously inordinate sentencing and that civil rights must be upheld.)

and yet, it does tread closely to the first amendment and has only indirect, tenuous victimization.
That's how you get borderline cases like where a 15 year old girl mails nude pictures of herself to her 18 year old boyfriend, or a government passes a law against cartoon depictions of sexualized minors or otherwise artificial depictions.
The line between what is expressive and harmless and what is exploitative and victimizing is not a wide chasm.

Based

Sure, and those fringe cases involving pubescent teenagers or "self-produced material which is technically violating the law" should be handled with more nuanced legislation and/or care by law enforcement and the courts. But I was talking about clear-cut cases involving pre-pubescent children who are far removed from any semblance of "ability to consent".

And let's be honest: in the case you were talking about, that guy surely didnt possess 15 images of his half-nude, 15-year old niece which she had sent him of her own accord.

I get your point now, but you were conflating/failing to distinguish two very different types of situation which really must be argued separately.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 30 2019 11:14am

ayup