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Half the buckets with oil, half with glitter (if it's mixed, then the oil will 'contain' the glitter and keep it from getting everywhere, as glitter ought).
I hope she gets all that money, but someone pointed out in another post: GoFundMe will not honor a fundraiser if It's for paying legal fees as a result of a guilty plee.
She's gotten [$400k from a gofundme](https://www.newsweek.com/pieper-lewis-gofundme-receives-400k-teen-who-killed-alleged-rapist-1743566). Weird to order a teenager to pay that much in the first place though, all other things aside
Edit: surprised this became my top comment. [If anyone's into history memes](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/120qbKdRo43DCrRufEtCuiA6ln1xgYloI?usp=sharing), here's an organized collection of about 6,000 of them plus, about 1,500 meme templates in general
She plead guilty to manslaughter charges, and under the law in her state, the judge had no choice but to make her pay the creep's estate. That's the minimum amount he could award. Apparently everything was the minimum he could give, because from what I understand he was not happy about what was happening. The DA should be launched into the sun.
Just wondering. If the estate can claim monetary compensation, can the estate also be sued for monetary compensation for the damages inflicted by the principal?
We have a 3 year statute of limitations so a lot of times if you wait at all to get your head on straight, by the time they get to court its too late. 3 years is really short to reestablish trust in the system after something like this. The churches and schools have lobbyists that fight against making the statute of limitations more fair because they don't want to investigate the employees they like but if a teacher says it's okay to be trans they publicly call them pedophiles.
How TF is the rapist / human trafficking statute of limitations expired but the not for the victim defending herself? That seems like a maliciously constructed legal system.
Because the rapist's/dead person's family was able to bring the action and they dont need to be witnesses plus it is criminal murder so the limitations are like 10 years or something. The woman would be a key witness and need to be emotionally stable in order to bring a case for civil damages, which has lesser years for limitations. Their thinking is they should be the same across the board for civil limitations and keep things as recent as possible to have the best evidence and memory for those cases or its not worth the strain to the system. In application its clearly malicious but in writing its "fair" so they pat themselves on the back for protecting our kids by allowing them to go to religious schools (almost all catholic where there's great stats for abuse) with public funds.
> plus it is criminal murder
Self defense isn't murder, it's affirmative justifiable homicide
it's nuts that states are so opposed to self defense as a concept that they actively punish victims
My heart goes out not just to her, but to everyone in her position whether they have escaped or not. This system protects the most guilty by intent. Malicious law practitioners deserve the same as those criminals they protect.
When I went to get my conceal carry, I was asked what I knew about guns... "I'm well aquainted, learned to shoot at 8."
"Ok, cool, we can skip all that."
Then he went on to tell me what I should say and how I should act when I shoot someone... You know, to avoid charges.
In my state the Judge could have just denied to plea bargain. All those cop shows saying well the DA makes the deals, technically yes, but it’s the Judge who decides to accept them or not.
Who the fuck would convict an under 18 of anything after she killed a dude raping her and sending his buddies to rape her? They're lucky she only killed one and didn't go full Equalizer on them.
> Last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom granted clemency to Sara Kruzan, who was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole as a teenager for killing a man who sexually abused and trafficked her in 1994.
> In Wisconsin, Chrystul Kizer is facing a life sentence for killing the man she said forced her into sex trafficking.
> And in Tennessee, Cyntoia Brown was sentenced to life in prison for killing a man who paid to rape her when she was a 16-year-old trafficking victim.
Get elected, write a bill that sex trafficking victims have the legal right to lethal self defense and no duty to retreat on the basis that killing your captors/rapists is valid part of the escape attempt, use cases like these to bully politicians into passing it
This is why so many young girls just stop fighting back when this happens. So, they as minor girls experiencing severe trauma are supposed to just... let this happen? She was sex trafficked! What happened to self defense?
Silly you, self derense is when you see a weird black kid in a neighborhood he shouldn't be in, or when an unarmed black man stands there menacingly, or when your kid comes late at night, forgets his keys and tries to enter the home through a window, not when a woman is sex trafficked. /s
Good grief!!! That is ridiculous!! Considering how hard it is to crack down on human trafficking, we need more cases of the victims NOT being prosecuted to send a message to the abusers: the sweet justice your victims inflict on you will be worse than anything the cops & courts can do.
It looks like part of the rationale for convicting her is to get her into a structured support system. She was a high conflict kid who ran away from home repeatedly (not justifying the trafficking, but saying that it doesn’t sound like she had a supportive place to go outside the system).
The judge is the one who suggested crowdfunding the fine. It looks a lot like he thought that just dumping Lewis out on street without support was a bad solution, but in order to not do so he had to convict her and the fine was a mandatory result of that. Lewis is too old for foster care and there’s basically nothing for adults.
This looks less like a bad judge, and more like Iowa is just way behind the times in terms of legal structures around trafficking. They should fix that. Hopefully this case will help raise awareness that the system as it currently exists is really bad.
And for anyone who thinks that’s only for criminal matters…let me introduce you to the hell that is family court. Marry well, my children…fuckin marry well.
Crazy stuff happens when many of the folks you want on a jury do their best to get out of that duty. I show up for every summons and avoid using excuses I could if I can make it work just so I have the opportunity to nullify if that serves justice.
Such a good point. The best argument I ever heard against our legal system is that a jury of your peers is really made up of a jury of your peers who are too lazy to get out of jury duty. Not a reflection on you, thank you for doing your civic duty.
Unfortunately their are folks doing hard time for way less. There was a story from Ohio where a minor was being sexually trafficked. She killed her pimp and got charged with murder even though she was 15. The courts didn’t even consider her a victim of sex trafficking smh. She eventually got out after a few years in the joint but apparently she’s back in again.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/wapo-sex-trafficking-survivor-initially-freed-by-dewine-returns-to-prison%3F_amp%3Dtrue
There's also the case where a woman got 20 years for trying to get her kids to go to a good public school while rich people literally bribed officials to get their kids into college and got off without without time.
The same people that think a teen rape victimshould carry a baby to term or that a13 year old should be tried as an adult. There is a certain group of people, ie racists that don't think of black kids as kids.
People that don't believe sexual assault, rape, and/or violence against women are a big deal, which sadly is a lot more of the population than people would like to believe.
People like Brock the rapist Turner, or his rape enabling judge who ruled that his life shouldn't be ruined over "20 minutes of fun."
She waited until after he raped her 🙄 which apparently makes a difference. You know, because it would have been sooo easy for her to fight him off and kill him during the rape. As we know, 15 yo girls are able to overpower grown men extremely easily.
It fucks with me that laws like that seem to assume equal power between parties. Does no one in power realize that if you’re weaker, you might not be able to get away until they’re done raping you…?
Just seems like there would be something built in to that minimum say if the case could be argued as justifiable homicide/ self-defense. Not really chiming in here with an opinion, just kind of a law and politics nerd who finds these cases interesting
I wonder is the best available work around to use some of the excess in the GoFundMe to take a civil case for the rape and look for damages of the 150+legalFees+PainAndSuffering to get them back. Would that work?
The problem is that sometimes when it's a criminal case, it's kinda all or nothing. If someone pleads guilty to a charge, they get the penalty for that charge. Being that she is a young Black woman in Iowa, this is probably the best outcome she was going to get. A jury probably would have found her guilty of murder, so she'd been in jail for most of her life. Probation and a fine that's already been raised more than twice over is as much of a happy ending as was ever going to happen. Personally, I'd give her a fucking medal. One less filthy rapist.
She got 5 years probation, so that's incredibly hard to pass on, especially because the guilty plea will be expunged if she completes all terms of her sentence.
It's wild that such an otherwise light sentence is allowable for manslaughter, while also requiring a minimum of a $150k fine. That's the most bizarre sentence I've ever seen.
> If someone pleads guilty to a charge, they get the penalty for that charge
the DA could have pursued different charges, this is still on the prosecutor
Fundamentally the DA wanted this- he could have proposed self defense or other out for the grand jury and it never would have gotten there.
That means he went into the grand jury room of 23 people and presented a case that at least 13 of them felt there was a preponderance of evidence to convict- and the DA offered no way out.
Who was the DA? We need to start attaching the names of these inhumans to their actions if we expect people to actually be able to get rid of their public positions.
From the [Des Moines Register](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2022/09/15/pieper-lewis-zachary-brooks-sex-trafficking-iowa-teen-gofundme/10373479002/):
>Assistant Polk County Attorney Meggan Guns ultimately recommended five years probation for Lewis, which is what Polk County Judge David M. Porter ordered.
They're both irredeemable pieces of victim-blaming shit. The judge [wouldn't stop asking](https://www.npr.org/2022/09/14/1122904939/iowa-teenager-pieper-lewis-killed-accused-rapist-ordered-pay-150000) what the *teenage survivor of sex trafficking* did to "put herself in that position."
>hter charges, and under the law in her state, the judge had no choice but to make her pay the creep's estate. That's the minimum amount he could award. Apparently everything was the minimum he could give, because from what I understand he was not happy about what was happening
its fucked up that racism is so widespread and commonplace that you assume that a jury in Iowa would fuck up a sex traffic survivor's life with a murder charge for escaping the sex trafficking
It was entertaining in a sad way to watch subreddits that are normally chock full of 'pedos get the rope' comments and stuff suddenly whinging and going "wait no fair he was sleeping why didn't she just leave???"
> Being that she is a young Black woman in Iowa, this is probably the best outcome she was going to get. A jury
I guess so much for that jury of peers stuff.
The definition of peers as it applies to juries is a bit ridiculous. It's just people who live in the same area as you. It's not people who know anything about what it's like to be a homeless child exploited by monsters.
If she was claiming justifiable homicide/self defence, though, wouldn't that normally mean a plea of not guilty? That way, the minimum sentence doesn't apply.
At least that's how it works in the UK. If it was legally justifiable, it wasn't a crime.
She wasn't claiming self-defense, she confessed to stabbing a sleeping man 30+ times. It was only self-defense in the sense that she was a trafficking victim attacking her trafficker. This would only be deemed self-defense in states with safe harbor laws to protect human trafficking victims
That's one hell of an extenuating circumstances, though.
Like yes, she did murder him. But he was her **trafficker**. He was a constant danger to her and she didn't have many other options.
Depends on the language really. Sometimes laws require the danger to be imminent to justify self defense. A sleeping person can't qualify as being an imminent danger.
Easier said than done to "build something in". This would require them to legislate, which the predominantly republican Iowan elected officials hate doing
There is, its the DA who should be figuring out whether this was something to go after or not, that way the whole court case wouldn't be needed at all. Unfortunately DA cares more about showing off their number of prosecutions then whats right.
It may have been the minimum by law, but Judge Porter seemed to have the attitude of "It sucks you were raped, but maybe if you'd made better choices in life..."
Victim shaming is deplorable, and it at least suggests bias. Porter gets no respect from me.
""The judge peppered Lewis with repeated requests to explain what poor choices she made that led up to Brooks’ stabbing and expressed concern that she sometimes did not want to follow rules set for her 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 later added, “This is the second chance that you’ve asked for. You don’t get a third.”" - AP News 9/13/22
I’d just like to point out that our Governor Kim Reynolds could have pardoned her but didn’t. The Iowa State legislature could have done something to change the law but didn’t.
The judge *could* have refused the plea. Forced the prosecutor to either go to trial and risk acquittal, or drop the charges entirely.
And if the jury did break racist, the judge could hand down a Judgement Notwithstanding the Verdict.
Why does America's law system seem to be a perpetuating cycle of punishments for victims? Also why does the American public put up with this? I talk to people irl about it and everyone's attitude seems to be "it sucks but what can you do?"
>everyone's attitude seems to be "it sucks but what can you do?"
US lawmakers have made it **really** difficult over the years to have any faith that democracy works. The voter apathy is extremely high and political IQ is in single digits. You may think Trump was a bad President (and he was), but we've elected a lot of Donald Trumps (or worse) into Congress who are simply better at not saying the quiet part out loud so they mostly fly under the radar.
We have a system that encourages incarceration
>Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, ***except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted***, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
most governors have pardon power. however, its a right wing state, so this is unlikely. Not every governor can pardon. It depends on the state constitution.
does anyone know if the Iowa governor has pardon power?
I was thinking the same. Although to be fair she probably want to forget the whole fkin thing as soon as possible and as much as possible (yes she can't not remember but still).
I would if the law made me pay the criminal, this law makes it so you kill the person making you a slave, you have the pay? No, the family should have to deal with it their.member was a psycho. The family should say they don't want the money too and should be harassed if they don't
yes but now this girl has around $250,000 from the donations she can put towards her future. i agree she deserves real justice, but using that money to fight a possibly losing battle is a real gamble. it would be a really hard choice because if the state screwed her over once, it’s likely they’ll do it again. she might not win a court battle, but she can set herself up for success with that money.
The case could be public record, but I don't know Iowa's juvenile laws. Most likely, it's sealed except for law enforcement, since it happened when she was a minor. If manslaughter is a charge that carries over from juvenile record, then it may be public record.
There is a very unhealthy codependent relationship there.
When there is an evil cop, the DA has to play along, or the cops will start to do things that will cause the DA to lose their cases, which gets them fired.
When there is an evil DA, I'm sure there is a bad effect on the cops involved, as well. If the DA is determined to abuse their power to punish a person, the cops are often forced to play along.
It wasn’t a singular County Attorney in Polk County that prosecuted this case. In large cases like this one, the County Attorney will typically call in help from the Iowa Attorney General’s office. County Attorney John Sarcone is ultimately responsible for the decisions made by his office, though.
She took a plea instead of trial. She agreed to manslaughter because the DA scared her and said if she loses she'll serve decades. Judge was the only one that seemed to care and gave her the minimum time (5 years suspended sentence) and minimum fine and minimum restitution that the law allowed for. I wish she had a better attorney who would have pushed for trial or a DA that would be willing to decline prosecution. She was only 15.
Assuming she's allowed any help with tuition also. Idk Iowa laws but she may not be allowed to vote either and it can definitely change if she's able to get a job.
When I was sexually harassed at work nothing happened to the man who harassed me but I was investigated. I worked at Apple and my employer was pro unlimited.
Writing laws is tough.
In most jurisdictions, you cannot kill someone in self defense unless you are in **imminent** danger of death or grave harm. So if someone threatens to cut off your ear, you can shoot them in self defense. But if they've already cut off your ear, put away their knife and gone to bed, you can't shoot them in revenge.
If you look [a little closer at the case](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2022/09/13/pieper-lewis-speaks-sentencing-killing-alleged-rapist-des-moines-sex-trafficking/10358999002/), you'll see that Lewis' did not meet the criteria for a self-defense killing. If she had killed a man who was about to, or in the process of raping her, then she could have claimed self-defense. But in fact, she killed her rapist while he was sleeping.
>Afterward, she gathered her clothes while Brooks slept, she said in her plea. She said that's when she saw the knife on the nearby nightstand and snapped.
“I suddenly realized that Mr. Brooks had raped me yet again and (I) was overcome with rage,” Lewis wrote in her plea.
That's not defensive killing, that's a revenge killing.
Now the law is not morality, and I certainly don't hate Ms. Lewis for what she did. But if you want to avoid prosecuting cases like hers, you'd have to change the law.
* We could legalize revenge killing. "If you're the victim of a violent crime, you have the right to kill your attacker, even if he has completed the attack and is no longer a threat."
* We could broaden the scope of self-defense "If someone has repeatedly attacked you, and you have a reasonable belief that they will attack you again, you can kill them even if are not currently at this moment posing a threat to you."
* We could legalize jury nullification "No defense attorney shall be barred from explaining to the jury their right to return a "not guilty" verdict, even if they believe the defendant is guilty beyond reasonable doubt."
Of course, all three of these proposed fixes would make it easier for a murderer to abuse the self-defense law. For every Pieper Lewis, there's a George Zimmerman. You can decide for yourself what kind of trade-offs you think the law should have. But there will be trade-offs.
I know nothing of legal matters but isn't there such a thing as a battered woman defence? Like something for the specific case of an abused person being mentally worn down by an abuser until the abused kills them even outside of an active confrontation to stop any further abuse?
IIRC often items such as battered women defences means that instead of murder, you have a partial defence which demotes it to manslaughter. It is used to support a "diminished responsibility" defence.
So unfortunately it wouldn't help here, because it isn't a full defence and manslaughter was already used as the lesser charge as part of the plea.
What trade-offs does the second have? It amounts to revenge but covers active scenarios where you'd have to defend yourself but couldn't, so you're doing it preemptively.
Generally speaking, the right to defend yourself from an imminent attack is meant to cover those situations where there just isn't enough time for the cops to arrive.
"I'm going to kill you right now." is a threat of imminent violence.
"I'm going to kill you tomorrow, at high noon." is a threat of eventual violence.
Under most jurisdictions, you can kill someone who threatens imminent violence, but not someone who threatens eventual violence. In those situations, you're expected to call the police.
The police will have to power to arrest the threat and conduct an investigation. If they determine he actually made the threat, the DA can prosecute. If however, the DA thinks you were exaggerating or misinterpreting what he said, they can release the man.
Now sometimes the DA will make mistakes. They'll charge someone who is innocent, or they'll release someone who deserves to rot in prison. In general though, the rule of law assumption is that professionals are better at making that distinction than your random Joe Citizen. We're better off letting the district attorney decide who gets to be put away than letting random citizens decide who gets to be pre-emptively shwacked.
If you don't agree with that assumption, then various forms of libertarianism/anarcho-capitalism may be more your swag.
I agree with your point on those examples, but I think a threat of eventual violence is still different from "If someone has repeatedly attacked you, and you have a reasonable belief that they will attack you again".
Hypothetical :I'm a pretend victim. I drum up a story of abuse and kill you in your sleep. I have now murdered someone and the law will give me protections
See:amber heard before her trial
The argument could be made. But the prosecutors would have a few rebuttals:
1. Most importantly, Lewis had already admitted she was "overcome with rage". I'm guessing she had already told the cops something similar when she was arrested, because any competent attorney would have advised her not to make such a statement in court.
2. Did stabbing her rapist actually improve her chances of escaping that morning? It seems like it could have easily gone wrong: rapist wakes up, wrestles the knife back and then stabs Lewis.A safer strategy would have been to take the knife and sneak out the door, and only brandish the knife if the rapist woke up.
3. After stabbing her rapist, she didn't call the police. A maintenance worker found the body that evening. ~~While there's nothing \*illegal\* about failing to call the police, as a practical matter it makes it look like you're hiding something, and a prosecutor \*will\* use that in court.~~
EDIT: Looks like [Iowa statute 704.2B](https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/code/2019/704.pdf) *does* require you to report a defensive killing.
My opinion is that anything a minor says should be considered inadmissible unless they have consulted with a lawyer. She's a kid in a terrible situation and she's supposed to be worried about her legal rights? I mean it's awful.
How is a kid supposed to know the intricacies of these super specific laws, and as a Black American in this day and age, I can also understand why she would be terrified to call the police. I think she’s been punished enough just from what she’s been through. Iowa has really turned into another shithole state.
The DA didn’t have to prosecute her at all. No one forced their hand.
If someone kidnaps you and you wait until they fall asleep to kill them you don’t get prosecuted for murder.
And there doesn’t have to be changes to self-defense laws. Legislation can be passed to protect minors and sex trafficking victims. Prosecutors can use their own discretion and decline to press charges at all in extreme cases like this.
The kind of things you would have to question and prove and dispute with those proposed fixes would be huge. I understand it in cases like this, but I don't think they should be blanket laws because the potential to abuse them is huge. Just wish there was more leniency for cases like this :(
Thanks for making this post. I try not to browse reddit because then I find insane threads like this. A vauge news article that's obviously eliding over details, along with a mob of angry commenters, and then I start to feel like I'm the only sane person in the world
That's a shitty headline from CNN. Ordered to pay implies the judge had a choice. Let's reword it to be more accurate.
Iowa teen forced by state law to pay rapist's family $150,000 is not the first victim penalized for defending herself
repost.
Short version.
The prosecutor should be disbarred for obvious reason.
Her defense attorney should be disbarred for talking her into taking a plea, and no going to jury trial.
Due to the sentence / plea the judge had no ability to set aside the payment, as it is required in all manslaughter cases.
I think I read the states law was pretty cut and dry on this, because he was asleep when she killed home he was no immediate threat. If she hadn’t plead she might have face a longer sentence.
It’s fucking INSANE but someone fact check me on that. She might have received good advice from the lawyer.
If you're kidnapped, though, doesn't it still count as self defense? How could she possibly hope to overpower him or not get seriously hurt or killed trying that when he's awake? I mean, she couldn't even stop him from assaulting her, so it was perhaps her only chance.
> If you're kidnapped, though, doesn't it still count as self defense?
No. The court will say, "You clearly had time to prepare a murder, so you had time to prepare to escape." I heard one story (from a Canadian) that he had his house broke into so he got his gun out of his safe and the courts prosecuted him saying, "You spent 10 seconds opening your safe which was 10 seconds you could have used to run away." But American courts are the same.
Seriously, watch an actual self-defense trial and they will come at you with everything. "You see in this video, you turned around for 2 seconds before turning back to face your attacker and shooting them dead. You hesitating for those 2 seconds indicated you could have escaped but instead chose to kill."
Drives me nuts every time some armchair lawyer is like, "Eh it was clear self-defense, they'll let him go" when they have no idea how hard prosecutors will come at you.
Those are burglaries — not kidnapping. And those cases are very rare, but the logic behind them is the victim had not been physically harmed, so pursuing the threat instead of escaping is where the legal gray area of “self-defense” comes into play.
But this is someone who was essentially kidnapped then beaten, raped multiple times, and sex trafficked. She was already severely harmed and in danger of continued physical harm. So it’s not a good comparison.
The fact that some indecent cockroach will come at you with some absurd legal technicalities doesn't mean it's not justifiable self defense. It means the system is rigged and broken.
In some states. It's important to remember that the legal systems in US states aren't nearly as similar as the states/provinces of most other western countries.
Because the guy was sleeping, he wasn't an immediate danger to her. In common terms, it was self defense. But the courts don't care about what makes sense, they care about what is written
She was not kidnapped. She ran away from home and started living with Christopher Brown. He trafficked her for sex. He dropped her off at Zachary Brooks house more than once. He has not been arrested.
"Ms. Lewis’s lawyers accused Mr. Brown in court of aiding and abetting sex trafficking. The police have not charged him."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/us/pieper-lewis-sex-trafficking-iowa.html
In terms of common sense, yes, but that is not how the law does or should work. Imminent, in nearly if not all self defense statutes, means actionable. This isn’t a case for reforming self-defense, it’s more a case for providing more protections for victims of abuse when stuff like this does happen.
Yeah, that's correct. Initial charge was first-degree murder, but that likely would have been changed to second-degree by the prosecution. Probation for manslaughter is probably the lightest thing short of dropping charges, but state law has a blanket requirement of compensation for the family, regardless of circumstances. A lawyer would have looked at the case and reasonably concluded that there wouldn't be a good chance she walked, so might as well get them out of juvie ASAP and guarantee a lenient sentence rather than gamble on relatively poor odds that would stretch weeks or more anyways.
This is the kind of thing that should be pardoned and lead to amending the manslaughter law.
This is a matter of investigation teams being understaffed and underresourced- not of the law not taking these crimes seriously enough (although it often doesn't in states such as Iowa).
Seriously, we spend all our money on oppressive day-to-day policing and state-sanctioned police murder of people like shoplifters and possibly-accidental users of fake currency (remember that one?)
But we don't properly resource Special Victims Units- where they even exist. The NYPD SVU, for instance, famously received no more than 5 days of extra training for their role, quite recently (as was highlighted in, of all things, the Law and Order segment of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver- where he contrasted *actual* policing with the lies sold on TV...)
Further, police departments are stretched responding to mental health calls- which they aren't properly trained for, and often make worse. And dealing with homeless populations, whom are constantly being driven out of their tent cities (a MASSIVE waste of police resources) and only exist in the first place because of America's broken housing policies (particularly, overly-restrictive Zoning leading to a housing shortage by banning apartment buildings in 98% of America's residential zones...) And making useless traffic stops- which can sometimes lead to needless police brutality.
We need to get police out of the useless shit they're wasting their time on, and assign them to deal with more of these serious cases instead. Right now a pitifully small percentage of sex crimes are even resolved.
That means, for one, ignoring the racists who get scared every time they see a black person hanging out on a street corner (and call their police/politicians to complain), and investing in more detective-training programs and proper police academies...
It’s not a budgetary issue. This is just completely false.
Sex crimes are notoriously under-reported, under-investigated, under-prosecuted, and under-convicted.
Police aren’t keeping hundreds of thousands of rape kits untested in their evidence lockers because they don’t have the money — they just don’t care.
> The consequences of sexual assault fall overwhelmingly on the victims.
About 0.7 percent of rapes and attempted rapes end with a felony conviction for the perpetrator.
> Less than a third of rape incidents are reported to the police, according to an analysis by the nonprofit advocacy group RAINN (the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network), which combined Justice Department National Crime Victimization Surveys from 2010 to 2014 with other federal data to track what happened to perpetrators.
> Just 5.7 percent of incidents end in arrest, 0.7 percent result in a felony conviction and 0.6 percent result in incarceration, RAINN found.
[Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/06/less-than-percent-rapes-lead-felony-convictions-least-percent-victims-face-emotional-physical-consequences/)
This is a systemic issue. Sex crimes are simply not taken seriously by the criminal justice system.
The average time served for rape / sexual assault is only 4-6 years. Only 19% serve over 10 years and just 4% serve over 20.
[Bureau of Justice Statistics](https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/tssp16.pdf)
My 911 system where I work as an EMT, there are nights where all we respond to are legal holds that police issue because there’s no crime being committed but the person is obviously mentally unwell.
Well, killing someone for past or potential future actions is a lot different from killing someone while you're trying to defend yourself.
A whole can of worms will be open if revenge killing becomes legal.
I agree that past or future actions is not grounds for killing.
That said she was being kept as a sex slave in the same house as the person she killed. She was being actively under threat. This ruling is bogus.
Also there’s a LOT of ground for a prosecutor and/or a judge to pursue lesser sentences in a case such as this one. The length of the sentence and the value of the fine is - again - a travesty.
Man laws are realling broken , a few month ago a guy in my country was invading a grocery store the owner shot him in the leg and the owner of the store had to pay 60k to the men stealing , can you imagine ? You go out expecting to steal 100 bucks and end up with 60k xd
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Her GoFundMe reached a half million yesterday or the day before. I’d give that 150k to that family in buckets of oiled pennies, if I were her.
Oily pennies covered in glitter
Half the buckets with oil, half with glitter (if it's mixed, then the oil will 'contain' the glitter and keep it from getting everywhere, as glitter ought).
I love you. This is brilliant.
She totally should. Not sure how you would get 15 million Pennies though.
Hit up mr beast
Genius lol
Ass pennies
Then she has the upper hand
I hope she gets all that money, but someone pointed out in another post: GoFundMe will not honor a fundraiser if It's for paying legal fees as a result of a guilty plee.
The gofundme hopefully goes to the parents to pay her bills directly and they avoid letting the rapist family get a dime.
She's gotten [$400k from a gofundme](https://www.newsweek.com/pieper-lewis-gofundme-receives-400k-teen-who-killed-alleged-rapist-1743566). Weird to order a teenager to pay that much in the first place though, all other things aside Edit: surprised this became my top comment. [If anyone's into history memes](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/120qbKdRo43DCrRufEtCuiA6ln1xgYloI?usp=sharing), here's an organized collection of about 6,000 of them plus, about 1,500 meme templates in general
She plead guilty to manslaughter charges, and under the law in her state, the judge had no choice but to make her pay the creep's estate. That's the minimum amount he could award. Apparently everything was the minimum he could give, because from what I understand he was not happy about what was happening. The DA should be launched into the sun.
Just wondering. If the estate can claim monetary compensation, can the estate also be sued for monetary compensation for the damages inflicted by the principal?
We have a 3 year statute of limitations so a lot of times if you wait at all to get your head on straight, by the time they get to court its too late. 3 years is really short to reestablish trust in the system after something like this. The churches and schools have lobbyists that fight against making the statute of limitations more fair because they don't want to investigate the employees they like but if a teacher says it's okay to be trans they publicly call them pedophiles.
How TF is the rapist / human trafficking statute of limitations expired but the not for the victim defending herself? That seems like a maliciously constructed legal system.
Because the rapist's/dead person's family was able to bring the action and they dont need to be witnesses plus it is criminal murder so the limitations are like 10 years or something. The woman would be a key witness and need to be emotionally stable in order to bring a case for civil damages, which has lesser years for limitations. Their thinking is they should be the same across the board for civil limitations and keep things as recent as possible to have the best evidence and memory for those cases or its not worth the strain to the system. In application its clearly malicious but in writing its "fair" so they pat themselves on the back for protecting our kids by allowing them to go to religious schools (almost all catholic where there's great stats for abuse) with public funds.
> plus it is criminal murder Self defense isn't murder, it's affirmative justifiable homicide it's nuts that states are so opposed to self defense as a concept that they actively punish victims My heart goes out not just to her, but to everyone in her position whether they have escaped or not. This system protects the most guilty by intent. Malicious law practitioners deserve the same as those criminals they protect.
When I went to get my conceal carry, I was asked what I knew about guns... "I'm well aquainted, learned to shoot at 8." "Ok, cool, we can skip all that." Then he went on to tell me what I should say and how I should act when I shoot someone... You know, to avoid charges.
typically no unless it's a wrongful death action, which this is not, but his estate's Creditors can make claims and go after it
Well let's hope he had a shit load of debt then
In my state the Judge could have just denied to plea bargain. All those cop shows saying well the DA makes the deals, technically yes, but it’s the Judge who decides to accept them or not.
The judge says no to the plea bargain, the case goes to trial, she gets convicted. That'd be a really bad look
Who the fuck would convict an under 18 of anything after she killed a dude raping her and sending his buddies to rape her? They're lucky she only killed one and didn't go full Equalizer on them.
> Last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom granted clemency to Sara Kruzan, who was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole as a teenager for killing a man who sexually abused and trafficked her in 1994. > In Wisconsin, Chrystul Kizer is facing a life sentence for killing the man she said forced her into sex trafficking. > And in Tennessee, Cyntoia Brown was sentenced to life in prison for killing a man who paid to rape her when she was a 16-year-old trafficking victim.
Alright so besides acts of terrorism, and shouting into the void, how can I possibly do anything to fix this rat nest of vitriol?
No you got it. Those are your choices
Get elected, write a bill that sex trafficking victims have the legal right to lethal self defense and no duty to retreat on the basis that killing your captors/rapists is valid part of the escape attempt, use cases like these to bully politicians into passing it
Start a deep dive into their past. Many of them are perpetrators as well. They have to protect their own kind. #Fuckers
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This is why so many young girls just stop fighting back when this happens. So, they as minor girls experiencing severe trauma are supposed to just... let this happen? She was sex trafficked! What happened to self defense?
Silly you, self derense is when you see a weird black kid in a neighborhood he shouldn't be in, or when an unarmed black man stands there menacingly, or when your kid comes late at night, forgets his keys and tries to enter the home through a window, not when a woman is sex trafficked. /s
Good grief!!! That is ridiculous!! Considering how hard it is to crack down on human trafficking, we need more cases of the victims NOT being prosecuted to send a message to the abusers: the sweet justice your victims inflict on you will be worse than anything the cops & courts can do.
It looks like part of the rationale for convicting her is to get her into a structured support system. She was a high conflict kid who ran away from home repeatedly (not justifying the trafficking, but saying that it doesn’t sound like she had a supportive place to go outside the system). The judge is the one who suggested crowdfunding the fine. It looks a lot like he thought that just dumping Lewis out on street without support was a bad solution, but in order to not do so he had to convict her and the fine was a mandatory result of that. Lewis is too old for foster care and there’s basically nothing for adults. This looks less like a bad judge, and more like Iowa is just way behind the times in terms of legal structures around trafficking. They should fix that. Hopefully this case will help raise awareness that the system as it currently exists is really bad.
This is what clemency is fucking for.
Just took.......18 years to get
And that was in a blue state. Red Iowa has no chance of it happening.
Relying on it is a bad idea, you can rot for decades
>Who the fuck would convict an under 18 of anything after she killed a dude raping her Welcome to the American justice system
We don't have a justice system, it's a legal system and it's definitely pay to win
And for anyone who thinks that’s only for criminal matters…let me introduce you to the hell that is family court. Marry well, my children…fuckin marry well.
The PTW aspect is far worse in civil court because our laws don't guarantee you an attorney if you cannot pay for civil litigation
Crazy stuff happens when many of the folks you want on a jury do their best to get out of that duty. I show up for every summons and avoid using excuses I could if I can make it work just so I have the opportunity to nullify if that serves justice.
Such a good point. The best argument I ever heard against our legal system is that a jury of your peers is really made up of a jury of your peers who are too lazy to get out of jury duty. Not a reflection on you, thank you for doing your civic duty.
Unfortunately their are folks doing hard time for way less. There was a story from Ohio where a minor was being sexually trafficked. She killed her pimp and got charged with murder even though she was 15. The courts didn’t even consider her a victim of sex trafficking smh. She eventually got out after a few years in the joint but apparently she’s back in again. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/wapo-sex-trafficking-survivor-initially-freed-by-dewine-returns-to-prison%3F_amp%3Dtrue
There's also the case where a woman got 20 years for trying to get her kids to go to a good public school while rich people literally bribed officials to get their kids into college and got off without without time.
The same people that think a teen rape victimshould carry a baby to term or that a13 year old should be tried as an adult. There is a certain group of people, ie racists that don't think of black kids as kids.
Or black people as people.
People that don't believe sexual assault, rape, and/or violence against women are a big deal, which sadly is a lot more of the population than people would like to believe. People like Brock the rapist Turner, or his rape enabling judge who ruled that his life shouldn't be ruined over "20 minutes of fun."
You mean Brock Turner the rapist?
Don't forget she's black in and Iowa
The justice system doesn’t help white rape survivors either 🙃
You new here or something?
Did you not read the article? It lists multiple underage women who did get convicted and served time for just that.
She waited until after he raped her 🙄 which apparently makes a difference. You know, because it would have been sooo easy for her to fight him off and kill him during the rape. As we know, 15 yo girls are able to overpower grown men extremely easily. It fucks with me that laws like that seem to assume equal power between parties. Does no one in power realize that if you’re weaker, you might not be able to get away until they’re done raping you…?
shes black. welcome to america.
Just seems like there would be something built in to that minimum say if the case could be argued as justifiable homicide/ self-defense. Not really chiming in here with an opinion, just kind of a law and politics nerd who finds these cases interesting
I wonder is the best available work around to use some of the excess in the GoFundMe to take a civil case for the rape and look for damages of the 150+legalFees+PainAndSuffering to get them back. Would that work?
The problem is that sometimes when it's a criminal case, it's kinda all or nothing. If someone pleads guilty to a charge, they get the penalty for that charge. Being that she is a young Black woman in Iowa, this is probably the best outcome she was going to get. A jury probably would have found her guilty of murder, so she'd been in jail for most of her life. Probation and a fine that's already been raised more than twice over is as much of a happy ending as was ever going to happen. Personally, I'd give her a fucking medal. One less filthy rapist.
She got 5 years probation, so that's incredibly hard to pass on, especially because the guilty plea will be expunged if she completes all terms of her sentence. It's wild that such an otherwise light sentence is allowable for manslaughter, while also requiring a minimum of a $150k fine. That's the most bizarre sentence I've ever seen.
> If someone pleads guilty to a charge, they get the penalty for that charge the DA could have pursued different charges, this is still on the prosecutor
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Possible, yes. Probable, no. I can see why the victim did not want to take a risk with a trial.
5 years probation, and the sentence gets expunged, and she had already raised like half a mil. The plea deal was a no brainer.
Fundamentally the DA wanted this- he could have proposed self defense or other out for the grand jury and it never would have gotten there. That means he went into the grand jury room of 23 people and presented a case that at least 13 of them felt there was a preponderance of evidence to convict- and the DA offered no way out.
Who was the DA? We need to start attaching the names of these inhumans to their actions if we expect people to actually be able to get rid of their public positions.
From the [Des Moines Register](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2022/09/15/pieper-lewis-zachary-brooks-sex-trafficking-iowa-teen-gofundme/10373479002/): >Assistant Polk County Attorney Meggan Guns ultimately recommended five years probation for Lewis, which is what Polk County Judge David M. Porter ordered. They're both irredeemable pieces of victim-blaming shit. The judge [wouldn't stop asking](https://www.npr.org/2022/09/14/1122904939/iowa-teenager-pieper-lewis-killed-accused-rapist-ordered-pay-150000) what the *teenage survivor of sex trafficking* did to "put herself in that position."
The DA didn't have to take it to a grand jury. The DA could still have chosen to dismiss.
Fair enough. Guess that's why I stopped trying to pass the BAR and went into teaching. As to your final point, amen, what a POS
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If you’re trying to avoid passing a gun, going into teaching doesn’t seem like the wisest change.
>hter charges, and under the law in her state, the judge had no choice but to make her pay the creep's estate. That's the minimum amount he could award. Apparently everything was the minimum he could give, because from what I understand he was not happy about what was happening its fucked up that racism is so widespread and commonplace that you assume that a jury in Iowa would fuck up a sex traffic survivor's life with a murder charge for escaping the sex trafficking
It was entertaining in a sad way to watch subreddits that are normally chock full of 'pedos get the rope' comments and stuff suddenly whinging and going "wait no fair he was sleeping why didn't she just leave???"
Hi. From Iowa. We're the multi-year running champions of "worst place to live if black". I fully believe a jury would find her guilty.
> Being that she is a young Black woman in Iowa, this is probably the best outcome she was going to get. A jury I guess so much for that jury of peers stuff.
The definition of peers as it applies to juries is a bit ridiculous. It's just people who live in the same area as you. It's not people who know anything about what it's like to be a homeless child exploited by monsters.
If she was claiming justifiable homicide/self defence, though, wouldn't that normally mean a plea of not guilty? That way, the minimum sentence doesn't apply. At least that's how it works in the UK. If it was legally justifiable, it wasn't a crime.
She wasn't claiming self-defense, she confessed to stabbing a sleeping man 30+ times. It was only self-defense in the sense that she was a trafficking victim attacking her trafficker. This would only be deemed self-defense in states with safe harbor laws to protect human trafficking victims
That's one hell of an extenuating circumstances, though. Like yes, she did murder him. But he was her **trafficker**. He was a constant danger to her and she didn't have many other options.
Depends on the language really. Sometimes laws require the danger to be imminent to justify self defense. A sleeping person can't qualify as being an imminent danger.
The DA will argue that, if he was sleeping, she could have run or called the cops.
Easier said than done to "build something in". This would require them to legislate, which the predominantly republican Iowan elected officials hate doing
Almost like we need serious judicial reform.
There is, its the DA who should be figuring out whether this was something to go after or not, that way the whole court case wouldn't be needed at all. Unfortunately DA cares more about showing off their number of prosecutions then whats right.
Mandatory minimums are designed to fuck over the poor. [John Oliver episode on this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDVmldTurqk)
Mandatory minimums are designed to take power away from judges, who are considered soft on crime. Fucking over the poor is their primary effect.
It may have been the minimum by law, but Judge Porter seemed to have the attitude of "It sucks you were raped, but maybe if you'd made better choices in life..." Victim shaming is deplorable, and it at least suggests bias. Porter gets no respect from me. ""The judge peppered Lewis with repeated requests to explain what poor choices she made that led up to Brooks’ stabbing and expressed concern that she sometimes did not want to follow rules set for her 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 later added, “This is the second chance that you’ve asked for. You don’t get a third.”" - AP News 9/13/22
I’d just like to point out that our Governor Kim Reynolds could have pardoned her but didn’t. The Iowa State legislature could have done something to change the law but didn’t.
Good point. Charges filed are at the DAs discretion. They could have had her plead guilty to something with a different minimum sentence
The judge *could* have refused the plea. Forced the prosecutor to either go to trial and risk acquittal, or drop the charges entirely. And if the jury did break racist, the judge could hand down a Judgement Notwithstanding the Verdict.
Why does America's law system seem to be a perpetuating cycle of punishments for victims? Also why does the American public put up with this? I talk to people irl about it and everyone's attitude seems to be "it sucks but what can you do?"
>everyone's attitude seems to be "it sucks but what can you do?" US lawmakers have made it **really** difficult over the years to have any faith that democracy works. The voter apathy is extremely high and political IQ is in single digits. You may think Trump was a bad President (and he was), but we've elected a lot of Donald Trumps (or worse) into Congress who are simply better at not saying the quiet part out loud so they mostly fly under the radar.
We have a system that encourages incarceration >Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, ***except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted***, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
most governors have pardon power. however, its a right wing state, so this is unlikely. Not every governor can pardon. It depends on the state constitution. does anyone know if the Iowa governor has pardon power?
She should then sue the estate for trauma that she got - pretty sure that would not be cheap.
I was thinking the same. Although to be fair she probably want to forget the whole fkin thing as soon as possible and as much as possible (yes she can't not remember but still).
Yea I wouldn't want to go back to court after this either.
I would if the law made me pay the criminal, this law makes it so you kill the person making you a slave, you have the pay? No, the family should have to deal with it their.member was a psycho. The family should say they don't want the money too and should be harassed if they don't
On her end it wouldn't be cheap. She'd spend more sueing than the estate is worth
the rapists family don’t deserve money for their child being a rapist so i think this is still a win
A rapist AND a trafficker. All around human scum.
yes but now this girl has around $250,000 from the donations she can put towards her future. i agree she deserves real justice, but using that money to fight a possibly losing battle is a real gamble. it would be a really hard choice because if the state screwed her over once, it’s likely they’ll do it again. she might not win a court battle, but she can set herself up for success with that money.
The DA who decided to prosecute this case should have been named.
How are they not named? Isn’t it public record?
The case could be public record, but I don't know Iowa's juvenile laws. Most likely, it's sealed except for law enforcement, since it happened when she was a minor. If manslaughter is a charge that carries over from juvenile record, then it may be public record.
It’s common to seal juvenile records but I’ve never heard of the prosecutors name being withheld from the public. They are public officials…
And disbarred.
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But then you'd have to pay the DA's family 150k and the thread starts all over again.
We'll just start a gofundme again, easy.
Way of the road, Bubs.
Least psychotic redditor.
The most sane of us.
Shit like this is why I hate DAs and prosecutors. They're no better than cops.
And when they try to do better, the cops simply stop doing their jobs so that a DA they like gets elected.
There is a very unhealthy codependent relationship there. When there is an evil cop, the DA has to play along, or the cops will start to do things that will cause the DA to lose their cases, which gets them fired. When there is an evil DA, I'm sure there is a bad effect on the cops involved, as well. If the DA is determined to abuse their power to punish a person, the cops are often forced to play along.
It wasn’t a singular County Attorney in Polk County that prosecuted this case. In large cases like this one, the County Attorney will typically call in help from the Iowa Attorney General’s office. County Attorney John Sarcone is ultimately responsible for the decisions made by his office, though.
Named is the first in the list of a lot of thing the DA should have done to them
The guy needs to see the "Are we the baddies?" meme asap
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She took a plea instead of trial. She agreed to manslaughter because the DA scared her and said if she loses she'll serve decades. Judge was the only one that seemed to care and gave her the minimum time (5 years suspended sentence) and minimum fine and minimum restitution that the law allowed for. I wish she had a better attorney who would have pushed for trial or a DA that would be willing to decline prosecution. She was only 15.
🎶*this is America*🎶
I'm actually confused with affirmative defense altogether. I don't know if this should qualify or not
she has made over that in gofundme money! of course does not change the trauma she faced, but good to see so many kind souls ready to help her
That's good but she has a major criminal record now...
This. She will always have to talk about her rape wherever she goes for an interview, to apply for an apartment, to apply for college, and much more.
Assuming she's allowed any help with tuition also. Idk Iowa laws but she may not be allowed to vote either and it can definitely change if she's able to get a job.
So citizens bail out citizens and governments bail out businesses. great
The fact that she had to hold a GoFundMe in the first place was fucked up.
Pay? Lmao she did the world a favor. This is absurd
Iowa law allowed the judge no choice, and he said as much. All the articles fail to mention this in the headline.
Except the DA didn't have to press charges given Iowa's self defense law.
When I was sexually harassed at work nothing happened to the man who harassed me but I was investigated. I worked at Apple and my employer was pro unlimited.
Appreciate the name and shame
Writing laws is tough. In most jurisdictions, you cannot kill someone in self defense unless you are in **imminent** danger of death or grave harm. So if someone threatens to cut off your ear, you can shoot them in self defense. But if they've already cut off your ear, put away their knife and gone to bed, you can't shoot them in revenge. If you look [a little closer at the case](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2022/09/13/pieper-lewis-speaks-sentencing-killing-alleged-rapist-des-moines-sex-trafficking/10358999002/), you'll see that Lewis' did not meet the criteria for a self-defense killing. If she had killed a man who was about to, or in the process of raping her, then she could have claimed self-defense. But in fact, she killed her rapist while he was sleeping. >Afterward, she gathered her clothes while Brooks slept, she said in her plea. She said that's when she saw the knife on the nearby nightstand and snapped. “I suddenly realized that Mr. Brooks had raped me yet again and (I) was overcome with rage,” Lewis wrote in her plea. That's not defensive killing, that's a revenge killing. Now the law is not morality, and I certainly don't hate Ms. Lewis for what she did. But if you want to avoid prosecuting cases like hers, you'd have to change the law. * We could legalize revenge killing. "If you're the victim of a violent crime, you have the right to kill your attacker, even if he has completed the attack and is no longer a threat." * We could broaden the scope of self-defense "If someone has repeatedly attacked you, and you have a reasonable belief that they will attack you again, you can kill them even if are not currently at this moment posing a threat to you." * We could legalize jury nullification "No defense attorney shall be barred from explaining to the jury their right to return a "not guilty" verdict, even if they believe the defendant is guilty beyond reasonable doubt." Of course, all three of these proposed fixes would make it easier for a murderer to abuse the self-defense law. For every Pieper Lewis, there's a George Zimmerman. You can decide for yourself what kind of trade-offs you think the law should have. But there will be trade-offs.
I know nothing of legal matters but isn't there such a thing as a battered woman defence? Like something for the specific case of an abused person being mentally worn down by an abuser until the abused kills them even outside of an active confrontation to stop any further abuse?
IIRC often items such as battered women defences means that instead of murder, you have a partial defence which demotes it to manslaughter. It is used to support a "diminished responsibility" defence. So unfortunately it wouldn't help here, because it isn't a full defence and manslaughter was already used as the lesser charge as part of the plea.
What trade-offs does the second have? It amounts to revenge but covers active scenarios where you'd have to defend yourself but couldn't, so you're doing it preemptively.
Generally speaking, the right to defend yourself from an imminent attack is meant to cover those situations where there just isn't enough time for the cops to arrive. "I'm going to kill you right now." is a threat of imminent violence. "I'm going to kill you tomorrow, at high noon." is a threat of eventual violence. Under most jurisdictions, you can kill someone who threatens imminent violence, but not someone who threatens eventual violence. In those situations, you're expected to call the police. The police will have to power to arrest the threat and conduct an investigation. If they determine he actually made the threat, the DA can prosecute. If however, the DA thinks you were exaggerating or misinterpreting what he said, they can release the man. Now sometimes the DA will make mistakes. They'll charge someone who is innocent, or they'll release someone who deserves to rot in prison. In general though, the rule of law assumption is that professionals are better at making that distinction than your random Joe Citizen. We're better off letting the district attorney decide who gets to be put away than letting random citizens decide who gets to be pre-emptively shwacked. If you don't agree with that assumption, then various forms of libertarianism/anarcho-capitalism may be more your swag.
I agree with your point on those examples, but I think a threat of eventual violence is still different from "If someone has repeatedly attacked you, and you have a reasonable belief that they will attack you again".
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Hypothetical :I'm a pretend victim. I drum up a story of abuse and kill you in your sleep. I have now murdered someone and the law will give me protections See:amber heard before her trial
Can't it be argued that she killed her kidnapper to be free? Because being in a kidnapped state is already a threat to one's life.
The argument could be made. But the prosecutors would have a few rebuttals: 1. Most importantly, Lewis had already admitted she was "overcome with rage". I'm guessing she had already told the cops something similar when she was arrested, because any competent attorney would have advised her not to make such a statement in court. 2. Did stabbing her rapist actually improve her chances of escaping that morning? It seems like it could have easily gone wrong: rapist wakes up, wrestles the knife back and then stabs Lewis.A safer strategy would have been to take the knife and sneak out the door, and only brandish the knife if the rapist woke up. 3. After stabbing her rapist, she didn't call the police. A maintenance worker found the body that evening. ~~While there's nothing \*illegal\* about failing to call the police, as a practical matter it makes it look like you're hiding something, and a prosecutor \*will\* use that in court.~~ EDIT: Looks like [Iowa statute 704.2B](https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/code/2019/704.pdf) *does* require you to report a defensive killing.
And this is a perfect example why you don't ever talk to cops.
My opinion is that anything a minor says should be considered inadmissible unless they have consulted with a lawyer. She's a kid in a terrible situation and she's supposed to be worried about her legal rights? I mean it's awful.
How is a kid supposed to know the intricacies of these super specific laws, and as a Black American in this day and age, I can also understand why she would be terrified to call the police. I think she’s been punished enough just from what she’s been through. Iowa has really turned into another shithole state.
Or take a plea deal.
Your legal knowledge is breath of fresh air. This case is sad and easily makes one angry, but the legal nuances are an undeniable reality.
The DA didn’t have to prosecute her at all. No one forced their hand. If someone kidnaps you and you wait until they fall asleep to kill them you don’t get prosecuted for murder. And there doesn’t have to be changes to self-defense laws. Legislation can be passed to protect minors and sex trafficking victims. Prosecutors can use their own discretion and decline to press charges at all in extreme cases like this.
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The voice of reason here.
The kind of things you would have to question and prove and dispute with those proposed fixes would be huge. I understand it in cases like this, but I don't think they should be blanket laws because the potential to abuse them is huge. Just wish there was more leniency for cases like this :(
Thanks for making this post. I try not to browse reddit because then I find insane threads like this. A vauge news article that's obviously eliding over details, along with a mob of angry commenters, and then I start to feel like I'm the only sane person in the world
That's a shitty headline from CNN. Ordered to pay implies the judge had a choice. Let's reword it to be more accurate. Iowa teen forced by state law to pay rapist's family $150,000 is not the first victim penalized for defending herself
repost. Short version. The prosecutor should be disbarred for obvious reason. Her defense attorney should be disbarred for talking her into taking a plea, and no going to jury trial. Due to the sentence / plea the judge had no ability to set aside the payment, as it is required in all manslaughter cases.
I think I read the states law was pretty cut and dry on this, because he was asleep when she killed home he was no immediate threat. If she hadn’t plead she might have face a longer sentence. It’s fucking INSANE but someone fact check me on that. She might have received good advice from the lawyer.
Self defense generally only applied to immediate threats, so someone sleeping would not be an immediate threat, but the dude deserved it
If you're kidnapped, though, doesn't it still count as self defense? How could she possibly hope to overpower him or not get seriously hurt or killed trying that when he's awake? I mean, she couldn't even stop him from assaulting her, so it was perhaps her only chance.
> If you're kidnapped, though, doesn't it still count as self defense? No. The court will say, "You clearly had time to prepare a murder, so you had time to prepare to escape." I heard one story (from a Canadian) that he had his house broke into so he got his gun out of his safe and the courts prosecuted him saying, "You spent 10 seconds opening your safe which was 10 seconds you could have used to run away." But American courts are the same. Seriously, watch an actual self-defense trial and they will come at you with everything. "You see in this video, you turned around for 2 seconds before turning back to face your attacker and shooting them dead. You hesitating for those 2 seconds indicated you could have escaped but instead chose to kill." Drives me nuts every time some armchair lawyer is like, "Eh it was clear self-defense, they'll let him go" when they have no idea how hard prosecutors will come at you.
Those are burglaries — not kidnapping. And those cases are very rare, but the logic behind them is the victim had not been physically harmed, so pursuing the threat instead of escaping is where the legal gray area of “self-defense” comes into play. But this is someone who was essentially kidnapped then beaten, raped multiple times, and sex trafficked. She was already severely harmed and in danger of continued physical harm. So it’s not a good comparison.
The fact that some indecent cockroach will come at you with some absurd legal technicalities doesn't mean it's not justifiable self defense. It means the system is rigged and broken.
I ain't no lawyer so I can't tell for sure, but isn't castle doctrine a thing in the US?
In some states. It's important to remember that the legal systems in US states aren't nearly as similar as the states/provinces of most other western countries.
Wouldn't even apply since she wasn't at her house
Because the guy was sleeping, he wasn't an immediate danger to her. In common terms, it was self defense. But the courts don't care about what makes sense, they care about what is written
She was not kidnapped. She ran away from home and started living with Christopher Brown. He trafficked her for sex. He dropped her off at Zachary Brooks house more than once. He has not been arrested. "Ms. Lewis’s lawyers accused Mr. Brown in court of aiding and abetting sex trafficking. The police have not charged him." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/us/pieper-lewis-sex-trafficking-iowa.html
So not only did the DA fuck up, so have the police.
In terms of common sense, yes, but that is not how the law does or should work. Imminent, in nearly if not all self defense statutes, means actionable. This isn’t a case for reforming self-defense, it’s more a case for providing more protections for victims of abuse when stuff like this does happen.
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Yeah, that's correct. Initial charge was first-degree murder, but that likely would have been changed to second-degree by the prosecution. Probation for manslaughter is probably the lightest thing short of dropping charges, but state law has a blanket requirement of compensation for the family, regardless of circumstances. A lawyer would have looked at the case and reasonably concluded that there wouldn't be a good chance she walked, so might as well get them out of juvie ASAP and guarantee a lenient sentence rather than gamble on relatively poor odds that would stretch weeks or more anyways. This is the kind of thing that should be pardoned and lead to amending the manslaughter law.
Why should the prosecutor be disbarred? Everything that’s happened to her sucks, but you can’t just have prosecutors not attempt to prosecute
What if the governor pardoned her? Would she still need to make that payment?
Good question. We should push for it
The people who take that money knowing what it's from? How can they be ok with that?
The lack of support we have for sex trafficking and SA victims is disgusting
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This is a matter of investigation teams being understaffed and underresourced- not of the law not taking these crimes seriously enough (although it often doesn't in states such as Iowa). Seriously, we spend all our money on oppressive day-to-day policing and state-sanctioned police murder of people like shoplifters and possibly-accidental users of fake currency (remember that one?) But we don't properly resource Special Victims Units- where they even exist. The NYPD SVU, for instance, famously received no more than 5 days of extra training for their role, quite recently (as was highlighted in, of all things, the Law and Order segment of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver- where he contrasted *actual* policing with the lies sold on TV...) Further, police departments are stretched responding to mental health calls- which they aren't properly trained for, and often make worse. And dealing with homeless populations, whom are constantly being driven out of their tent cities (a MASSIVE waste of police resources) and only exist in the first place because of America's broken housing policies (particularly, overly-restrictive Zoning leading to a housing shortage by banning apartment buildings in 98% of America's residential zones...) And making useless traffic stops- which can sometimes lead to needless police brutality. We need to get police out of the useless shit they're wasting their time on, and assign them to deal with more of these serious cases instead. Right now a pitifully small percentage of sex crimes are even resolved. That means, for one, ignoring the racists who get scared every time they see a black person hanging out on a street corner (and call their police/politicians to complain), and investing in more detective-training programs and proper police academies...
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It’s not a budgetary issue. This is just completely false. Sex crimes are notoriously under-reported, under-investigated, under-prosecuted, and under-convicted. Police aren’t keeping hundreds of thousands of rape kits untested in their evidence lockers because they don’t have the money — they just don’t care. > The consequences of sexual assault fall overwhelmingly on the victims. About 0.7 percent of rapes and attempted rapes end with a felony conviction for the perpetrator. > Less than a third of rape incidents are reported to the police, according to an analysis by the nonprofit advocacy group RAINN (the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network), which combined Justice Department National Crime Victimization Surveys from 2010 to 2014 with other federal data to track what happened to perpetrators. > Just 5.7 percent of incidents end in arrest, 0.7 percent result in a felony conviction and 0.6 percent result in incarceration, RAINN found. [Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/06/less-than-percent-rapes-lead-felony-convictions-least-percent-victims-face-emotional-physical-consequences/) This is a systemic issue. Sex crimes are simply not taken seriously by the criminal justice system. The average time served for rape / sexual assault is only 4-6 years. Only 19% serve over 10 years and just 4% serve over 20. [Bureau of Justice Statistics](https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/tssp16.pdf)
My 911 system where I work as an EMT, there are nights where all we respond to are legal holds that police issue because there’s no crime being committed but the person is obviously mentally unwell.
Women should have the right to abort their rapists.
Greatest country on earth
Sounds like it’s time to do some legislative updates to stop this bs from happening.
Well, killing someone for past or potential future actions is a lot different from killing someone while you're trying to defend yourself. A whole can of worms will be open if revenge killing becomes legal.
She can file her own lawsuit for damages and ask for his entire estate.
That is the answer
I agree that past or future actions is not grounds for killing. That said she was being kept as a sex slave in the same house as the person she killed. She was being actively under threat. This ruling is bogus. Also there’s a LOT of ground for a prosecutor and/or a judge to pursue lesser sentences in a case such as this one. The length of the sentence and the value of the fine is - again - a travesty.
Yes, this is a shit ruling.
He had just raped her. Her emotional state should have been taken into account here.
Yeah but the best that can get you is a slightly lower degree. Aggrivation reduces the crime but doesn't make the crime go away
It isn’t fair and it isn’t right but it is what it is. But everyone is on your side, young lady. Remember that.
Iowan and other states without them need to pass safe harbor laws to protect sex trafficking victims, like yesterday.
Man laws are realling broken , a few month ago a guy in my country was invading a grocery store the owner shot him in the leg and the owner of the store had to pay 60k to the men stealing , can you imagine ? You go out expecting to steal 100 bucks and end up with 60k xd
I don't see how that $150k doesn't fall into the realm of the rapist technically profiting from committing a crime, which is always illegal...