A Delaware Superior Court judge, Jan Jurden, is under fire after sending a wealthy heir to the DuPont fortune to treatment rather than prison because Robert H. Richards IV would “not fare well” in prison after being convicted of raping his 3-year-old daughter. [A review of the record shows the concern raised about not faring well in prison but it is not clear how stated this concern. The Judge did express concern over the lack of jail time, though it is not clear why the Judge approved the sentence]
Jurten was convicted of fourth degree rape. Under state law, fourth degree rape is defined as:
§ 770 Rape in the fourth degree; class C felony.
(a) A person is guilty of rape in the fourth degree when the person:
(1) Intentionally engages in sexual intercourse with another person, and the victim has not yet reached that victim’s sixteenth birthday; or
(2) Intentionally engages in sexual intercourse with another person, and the victim has not yet reached that victim’s eighteenth birthday, and the person is 30 years of age or older, except that such intercourse shall not be unlawful if the victim and person are married at the time of such intercourse; or
(3) Intentionally engages in sexual penetration with another person under any of the following circumstances:
a. The sexual penetration occurs without the victim’s consent; or
b. The victim has not reached that victim’s sixteenth birthday.
Richard was accused of rape after his ex-wife Tracy filed a lawsuit over the abuse of his daughter. Richards lives off a trust fund and has no job. His great-grandfather is du Pont family patriarch Irenee du Pont, and his father is Robert H. Richards III and was a named partner at the Richards Layton & Finger law firm. He lives in a mansion worth $1.8 million in Greenville. He was accused of sexually abusing his infant son between 2005 and 2007 as well as his daughter starting when she was 3. He was originally indicted on two counts of second-degree rape of a child. After the girl described sexual abuse, Tracy Richards confronted her then-husband who allegedly admitted to the abuse but said “it was an accident and he would never do it again.”
Richards took a plea to one count of rape in the fourth degree, which has no mandatory time but can result in up to 15 years in jail.
The plea bargain likely reflected the challenge of any trial based on dated accounts of a very young child. However, what Richards did plead guilty to fourth degree rape, still a very serious offense. The question is whether it is appropriate for such a felon to be spared jail due to the adjustment needed in going from a mansion to a prison cell. For some it reminds them of the recent affluenza case in Texas.
Defense lawyer Joseph A. Hurley insisted that the court got it right: “Sex offenders are the lowest of the low in prison. He’s a rich, white boy who is a wuss and a child perv. The prison can’t protect them, and Jan Jurden knows that reality. She is right on.”
What do you think?
Source: Delaware Online
The judge should be removed period. Since when do we make it easy for child rapists. Did he think of his daughter as he defiled and ripped her up. He should be raped and see what it feels like.
Beau Biden released a statement today defending the decision. And of course, everything he says is true. But none of it explains why the judge’s stated rationale was that he would not fare well in prison.
Can the victim and prosecutor appeal this sentencing to a higher court? Does the Du Pont family have ties with this judge?????
Dr. Harris;
You can babble psychological banter obfuscating as much as you wish; but your logic is ill-fated and works contrary to simple common sense.
If you don’t arrest persons (who are ignoring their fear of punishment) from their bad faith behavior, it is likely to continue.
Even with POTUS wannabe’s and DuPont heirs.
What to do? Lynch the judge as an example to others. The only thing worse than a father who would rape his own child, is a judge that would protect him.
Punishing people using adverse stimuli as a social control mechanism seems invariably to drive society, and the people who comprise society, toward an ever escalating form of learned helplessness.
It is one thing to punish, using adverse stimuli, a person for acting in undesired ways, and quite another thing to punish particular behaviors for unwanted consequences of the behavior being punished.
Is punishment hurting a person who was hurt so badly that the person has become incapable of using words to describe the hurt and acting out the hurt non-verbally is the person’s last resort prior to self-destruction?
Is punishment doing what actually makes less likely in the future some behavior that someone has recognized as undesirable because of the consequences the undesirable behavior generates?
Is it better to punish the offender or better to punish the offense?
How can the offense be punished without punishing the offender?
For myself, that is a trivial issue at the cutting edge of the social evolution of social psychology when honestly applied to criminology; hurting people for having been hurt against their informed consent only compounds human hurtfulness.
Is there an practical and practicable alternative to human society based structurally on conflict or based structurally on consensus?
In my view, definitely. That structure is based on avoiding the depersonalization and deindividuation that both conflict-based and consensus-based societies relentlessly demand in order to sustain conflict or to sustain consensus. Societies based on conflict and/or consensus require some form of groupthink mechanism to enforce social norms that are internally self-contradicting. The alternative to groupthink-based societies is social structues based on collaboration of individual persons who communicate using dialogue as in, for example, Martin Buber’s I and Thou.
In my view, the rule of law has five basic questions: Who? What? When? Where? How?
In my view, journalism has six questions: Who? What? When? Where? How? and Why?
In my view, scientists have seven questions: Who? What? When? Where? How? Why? and Whenceforth?
If it is wrong to hurt people, then it is no less wrong to hurt people who have been so badly hurt that they can only share their agony with others through hurting others?
What actually distinguishes punishing offenders for having been punished by offenders for having been punished by offenders, this having been a social pattern that has persisted throughout human written history?
What is a useful name for doing that which is objectionable in order to reduce doing that which is objectionable? How about, “insane psychosis,” if insanity is a legal construct and psychosis is a neurological construct, and doing that which is objectionable to reduce what is objectionable is a contradiction in process?
Just a little fanny love. He probably would like it.
I live in Delaware too and I don’t think we have heard the end of this story. The prosecutor only asked for probation and a representative for the Attorney General says he was never informed about the case. It happened in 2009 and got no media coverage then. We are only hearing about now because of the civil suit.
Our prisons aren’t that violent. Nobody would have killed him.