6 year old in Air Ballon at 7500 feet, Colorado

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Well, love reigns supreme, because Richard (aka the "big Dick") is apparently willing to plead guilty in order to save his wife from the horror of being deported to Japan.

http://news.sympatico.cbc.ca/World/ContentPosting.aspx?feedname=CBC-WORLD-V3&showbyline=True&date=true&newsitemid=balloon-boy-parents-guilty-plea

My hero.

 

And they are making it sound like they have to plead guilty to something they are not guilty of so as to avoid being railroaded. It's time like this that I advocate torture*, I swear to ther Almighty, to force people to be frigging honest -- as in "yes, we did it and it was wrong, and we won't go on TV later trying to make it sound like we're actually victims."

These sorts of people make me sick.

*Please note the hyperbole.

 

People will do anything for attention. I have no sympathy for them now, they dug their own grave on this one.

If you want attention, why not do something a little less costly, like streaking the senior center bridge game, that will open some eyes and I doubt there would be complaints!

 

The saddest part is presumably yet to come: They're made the official village idiots (okay, county or even state dito) facing public humiliation and using THAT as a sob story to keep the $$$ racking up.

While they technically admitted guilt in this case, it can be argued that they didn't have much of a choice. I think it's stupid that you don't get any extra penalties for pleading innocence when you pretty darn well know it was you who did it. Or in practice - pleading guilty should lead into a "willing to co-operate" reduction in whatever penalty is coming up.

 

Yeah, but it really was a no-brainer. Plead guilty to a lesser crime, or try to prove your innocence and get deported. I agree with LKD that in this particular case they shouldn't try to play the victim card, but it is true in the strictest sense, that they really had very little choice here...

 

They had very little choice because of their own stupid decisions -- if they had not behaved like mental midgets in the first place, then they would not have been in the deportation situation in the first place. They have absolutely no one to blame but themselves, and they should count themselves lucky that they had the chance to plea bargain rather than be simply kicked out of the country (or in his case, lost his wife.)

 

So, it boils down to: Did they *actually* plead guilty or did the justice system prove them guilty beyond reasonable doubt, after which they crumbled and admitted guilt after the fact?

As I see it, they could have avoided the whole mess by pulling the plug before the situation got out of hand. Therefore its tar and feathers time.

 

Well, they never actually went to trial. Before you go to trial you enter a plea, and since they plead guilty, the whole process of "proving beyond reasonable doubt" is now unnecessary. The plea deal was that they admit to committing the lesser charges that allow them to stay in the country, in exchange for the more serious charges that could get the wife deported being dropped.

 

I don't think it really matters whether there was an actual trial for this or not. Their initial statement was that they didn't do it so they had to be countered with enough hard facts for them to realize their shaky grounds of pleading not guilty. Isn't that pretty much what would have happened in an actual trial, all the formal mumbo-jumbo legal stuff notwithstanding?

I'm thinking of the more philosophical aspect of this - when *exactly* does one cross the bounds between admitting guilt and being proven guilty?

 

It's when you're threatened with something that means more to you than your innocence. In this case, her eligibility to stay in the US with her family.

 

So she was a totally innocent person who was randomly selected by the US government for unjustified persecution? Please.

They acted like immature fools and are now being asked to admit to their mistakes like big boys and girls. And do they? NO! They try to make themselves out to be victims instead of the criminals that they are. It's nauseating. These people have no shame at all.

 

Blades answer is the correct one, but probably not what you're looking for if you're talking about legal definitions. His is a more philosophical (and accurate) point.

If you admit to something and plead guilty, then you're guilty. You skip the whole trial phase and move on to sentencing. The purpose of pleading guilty is you hope for a lighter sentence in exchange for not costing the state extra money in going through with the trial. When someone is proven guilty it's usually because they plead not guilty, go to trial, and lose.

 

I agree LKD, I was answering Sir Rechet's question about the difference in general. In this case, they are guilty and would be proven guilty if they didn't take the plea. They are, let me use one of your favorite terms, douchebags! Also one of my favorite terms, btw.