“To everyone who likes that Lewandowsky got charged: Will you agree that everyone who does nothing more than that should undergo criminal prosecution? Are you willing to pay the taxes to cover that? Are you ready to find out that you’ve already done it and you’re going to be needing to hire a lawyer? Oh, but it’s so funny when it happens to somebody else, somebody you don’t like. If that’s what you think, please just admit to yourself that you are entirely morally corrupt.”
––Law professor and blogger Ann Althouse, taking the popular position among the talking legal heads on CNN and elsewhere that charging Trump’s campaign manager for the technical crime of battery for for what appears to be minor contact on videotape is an abuse of prosecutorial discretion.
Ann is playing law professor here, and it’s hard to tell if she is asking these questions to provoke thought from the knee-jerk partisans and virulent Trump-haters, or if she really believes everything she wrote. I;m a fan of Professor Althouse, so I want to find a way to justify this post of her’s, which raises valid points and ignores others equally valid.
Do I “like” the fact that Lewandowsky was charged? I probably wouldn’t have charged him, but I’m not sorry he was charged. Why was a campaign manager grabbing a reporter? Why did the Trump organization react to the reporter’s complaint by attacking her honesty and character? I know the law shouldn’t be used to inconvenience people who act badly, and that doing this is usually an abuse of power. Still, do I like the fact that one of Trump’s thugs isn’t getting away with the thuggishness encouraged by his boss? Yes, I guess I do.
The charge can be justified on utilitarian grounds. Today I saw a cable TV news exchange regarding Fields’ complaint on CNN, where a lawyer explained that any unconsented touching is battery, and the interviewer was shocked. “What?” she said. Yes, I remember a lot of classmates in first year of law school being surprised at that too.
It’s the Common Law: nobody has a right to touch anybody else. I love that principle, myself: I don’t touch people unless I have permission, and they better not touch me. It’s per se battery, and while we usually don’t press it, we might if the batterer is enough of a jerk, or does more harm than he intended. If charging Lewandowsky makes people think twice before laying their hands on me or anyone else, good. Sending a message to discourage others from wrongful acts is always a valid reason to charge someone. Continue reading