BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Montana Supreme Court has overturned a one-month prison sentence given to a former high school teacher convicted of raping a 14-year-old student.
Wednesday’s decision cited in part the actions of District Judge G. Todd Baugh (baw) of Billings, who suggested the young victim shared responsibility for her rape because she had some control over the situation.
Justices said a new judge must re-sentence defendant Stacey Dean Rambold.
Rambold has been free since completing his sentence last fall. Prosecutors for the state say he should serve a mandatory minimum of four years prison.
Rambold’s attorneys had argued that the original sentence was appropriate.
A disciplinary complaint against Baugh from the Judicial Standards Commission is pending with the state Supreme Court. Justices say that will be dealt with separately.
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Please, please throw the book at him. The idea that a 14 year old girl could be responsible for her own statutory rape is reprehensible. And the ‘free pass’ the original judge gave this guy means that he is indulgent toward men who cannot control their illegal and immoral urges.
Why is he being treated differently than the many women teachers who have been convicted of having sex with students?
How many of them went to jail for their statutory rape?
The judge and the defendant are patriots in MT.
You ask like it’s a rhetorical question, but the answer is at least all of the ones I’ve seen reported. You are full of it.
What is your evidence that he is being treated differently?
There is evidence that, overall, male teachers engaging in sex with students receive greater punishment than female teachers guilty of the same (see this analysis by a New Jersey newspaper for an example http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/04/a_look_at_teacher-student_sex.html#incart_m-rpt-1 ).
But, all cases are individual and even differences in treatment between two populations can arise from more factors than just bias against the male teachers.
For example: age of the student; impact on the student; strength of evidence available to the prosecution; willingness of student to testify; student portrayal to others of the relationship and the teacher; previous disciplinary/legal record of teacher; location(s) of the offenses; advice from counsel (93 of the 97 cases in the NJ analysis were resolved by plea bargain); prominence of the story in local news (and, perhaps, prominence of the DA’s political ambitions); whether or not there was a direct supervisory relationship between the teacher and the student; and so on.
The variability of outcomes is very large, even within a single-gender population of defendants, so to imply a gender bias based on the outcome of a single case is a speculative act.