I was kind of afraid to post my original comment actually, because people get really passionate about this case. I feel for the family, but I don't like the idea of totally blaming and shaming this woman for a teenager's suicide.

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Victim impact statements are useful. Just thing of all the easy, light sentences given to child molesters, rapists, etc. It's a lot harder to set down a light sentence when the victim and/or family is telling you how it affected his or her life. Until that happens the crime is more abstract.

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@BAngieB: Our Justice system has always been skewed towards protecting the rights of the defendant because they're the ones whose lives are on the line. Victim impact statements take a giant step in the opposite direction.

Let me also say that I'm pretty sure that if you or a loved one where on trial/convicted of a crime you/they didn't commit a judge handing down a harsher sentence because of a victim impact statement would seem like a grotesque twisting of the justice system.

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I know that defendants have rights, but so do victims. Often a victim's life and actions is put on trial, and I think this evens the score.

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That said, once someone has been convicted of a crime, no matter the circumstances, The State must allow the record of the suffering of the family of the victim or victims to hold some value in sentencing, to see full justice done.

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I think this kind of thing is going to have to surface and cause a lot more problems before it's in any way regulated, sadly. In the meantime, people will continue to be fucking assholes.

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And this precept is used all the time by prosecutors, who are more than willing to charge someone with something, anything, in order to be able to buy time to charge them with a higher crime.

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I know that prosecutors use the we'll get them for what we can strategy all the time, and selectively enforce laws like this just to go after people who they think are "bad" for some other reason, but I think overeliance on prosecutorial discretion is part of why our criminal justice system is so profoundly racist and classist and often arbitrary, and I cannot endorse it. Obviously other people's mileage varies on this topic, but I don't think it hurts to ask the generally very very pro prosecution jez community to think about the way in which legal srategies like this manifest themselves as opportunities to harass marginalized communities.

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As for him not looking at Megan's parents, he has probably read and/or heard (like the post mentions) the points made over the course of this case several times and can pretty much pull whatever testimony that was given from a transcript.

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