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Trafficked girl who killed her rapist must pay his family $150k

Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2022 11:42 am
by jimbob
Obscene

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ily-150000
Appeal raises $150,000 for girl ordered to pay family of accused rapist she killed
Judge had ‘no other option’ but to impose restitution on human trafficking victim given probation with risk of 20 years’ prison
Lewis was 15 when she stabbed Brooks more than 30 times in a Des Moines apartment. Officials have said Lewis was a runaway seeking to escape an abusive life with her adopted mother and was sleeping in the hallways of an apartment building when a 28-year-old man took her in before trafficking her to other men for sex.

Lewis said one of those men was Brooks, who raped her multiple times in the weeks before his death. She recounted being forced at knifepoint by the 28-year-old man to go with Brooks to his apartment for sex. She told officials that after Brooks raped her yet again, she grabbed a knife from a bedside table and stabbed him in a fit of rage.

Re: Trafficked girl who killed her rapist must pay his family $150k

Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2022 1:28 pm
by Woodchopper
Worth noting that:
As for being required to pay the estate of her rapist, “this court is presented with no other option”, Porter said, noting the restitution is mandatory under a state law that has been upheld by the Iowa supreme court.
So the 150 000 payment is an example of a foolish legislature rather than a foolish judge.

Re: Trafficked girl who killed her rapist must pay his family $150k

Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2022 1:34 pm
by jimbob
Woodchopper wrote:
Thu Sep 15, 2022 1:28 pm
Worth noting that:
As for being required to pay the estate of her rapist, “this court is presented with no other option”, Porter said, noting the restitution is mandatory under a state law that has been upheld by the Iowa supreme court.
So the 150 000 payment is an example of a foolish legislature rather than a foolish judge.
She should have never been prosecuted, and the plea bargain was not fair.

Do judges have to accept guilty pleas?

Re: Trafficked girl who killed her rapist must pay his family $150k

Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2022 11:26 am
by dyqik
jimbob wrote:
Thu Sep 15, 2022 1:34 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Thu Sep 15, 2022 1:28 pm
Worth noting that:
As for being required to pay the estate of her rapist, “this court is presented with no other option”, Porter said, noting the restitution is mandatory under a state law that has been upheld by the Iowa supreme court.
So the 150 000 payment is an example of a foolish legislature rather than a foolish judge.
She should have never been prosecuted, and the plea bargain was not fair.

Do judges have to accept guilty pleas?
No

Re: Trafficked girl who killed her rapist must pay his family $150k

Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2022 9:23 pm
by Fishnut
The judge sounds like a right c.nt
Prosecutors took issue with Lewis calling herself a victim and said she failed to take responsibility for stabbing Brooks and “leaving his kids without a father”.

The judge peppered Lewis with requests to explain what poor choices she made that led up to Brooks’s stabbing and expressed concern that she sometimes did not want to follow rules in juvenile lockup.

“The next five years of your life will be full of rules you disagree with, I’m sure of it,” Porter said. He added: “This is the second chance that you’ve asked for. You don’t get a third.”
So a 15 year old "runaway seeking to escape an abusive life with her adopted mother [who] was sleeping in the hallways of an apartment building when a 28-year-old man took her in before trafficking her to other men for sex" isn't a victim and needs to admit to making "poor choices" but a 37 year old repeated rapist is completely innocent in all this. f.ck that sh.t.

Re: Trafficked girl who killed her rapist must pay his family $150k

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2022 5:14 am
by Millennie Al
Fishnut wrote:
Fri Sep 16, 2022 9:23 pm
The judge sounds like a right c.nt

So a 15 year old "runaway seeking to escape an abusive life with her adopted mother [who] was sleeping in the hallways of an apartment building when a 28-year-old man took her in before trafficking her to other men for sex" isn't a victim and needs to admit to making "poor choices" but a 37 year old repeated rapist is completely innocent in all this. f.ck that sh.t.
She isn't a victim of homicide, which is the crime that was before the court. I can find no report that says anything about the rapist being innocent, let alone completely so. She made choices which would normally be poor - not going to the police after several rapes, not summoning the police or ambulance after stabbing Brooks, returing to the man who had forced her at knifepoint to go with Brooks. However, her personal experience with authority was very bad - which was what drove her into this situation in the first place. The Guardian article says that the judge asked her to explain her poor choices but does not say anything about her response. Given how poor reporting is for court case, without a transcript or recording it's impossible to say whether it was reasonable or not.

Lewis stabbed Brooks 30 times the morning after he raped her. She is not reported to have claimed that this was in self defence, which strongly suggests it was in retribution. The state reserves to itself the right of retribution. Even self-defence is only permitted when the circumstances are such that there is immediate danger - you can't claim self defence where you fear something that will happen hours or days later. The closest thing to a claim that Brooks was innocent was the judge dismissing the argument that Lewis should not have to pay restitution, where her lawyer said that Brooks should be considered to be 51% responsible and so not get compensation. The law (says: Iowa Code 915.100 – Victim restitution rights
2. a. In all criminal cases in which there is a plea of guilty, verdict of guilty, or special verdict upon which a judgment of conviction is rendered, the sentencing court shall order that restitution be made by each offender to victims of the offender’s criminal activities.
...
c. In cases where the act committed by an offender causes the death of another person, in addition to the amount ordered for payment of the victim’s pecuniary damages, the court shall also order the offender to pay at least one hundred fifty thousand dollars in restitution to the victim’s estate or heirs at law, pursuant to the provisions of section 910.3B.
There's nothing which requires the victim to be innocent. I suspect this was considered during draughting and is deliberate - for example, if a member of an organised crime gang has murdered several members of a rival gang, and someone from that rival gang is convicted of mudering him in turn, I expect that the lawmakers very much intended that restitution be paid and that the fact that the victim had committed many murders was not supposed to be taken into consideration.


In the UK, for a case like this the CPS would have to consider if prosecution was not in the public interest. And if it went to court it seems likely that a jury might find Lewis innocent. That's one of the reasons for having juries - to fix problems where cases are so unusual that the law doesn't really reflect justice. However in America, plea bargaining can terrorise defendants into pleading guilty (in this case the threat was at least 20 years in prison - possibly life in prison without the possibility or parole if the charge had been left at first degree murder). I don't know how likely it would have been for a jury to have returned a guilty verdict in this case - this is where a good lawyer can give valuable advice, but the problem with relying on the judge is that judges (except possibly at the very highest levels) apply the law as written because that is their job.

Re: Trafficked girl who killed her rapist must pay his family $150k

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2022 8:50 am
by Sciolus
This case has certainly thrown up a lot of extremely poor choices -- by Brooks, by the Iowa legislature, by the Iowa prosecutors, by the judge, by Brooks, and by morons on the internet. Only one person gets judicially punished for them though.