Post by Jeanne Sager
The ink is still drying on the sentence for the Steubenville rapists, and already one of them is appealing. Ma'lik Richmond, the younger of the two football players convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl, has mounted an appeal of the guilty verdict on a claim that his "brain isn't fully developed." Somehow we're supposed to believe that a 16-year-old boy's brain couldn't handle the fact that rape is wrong. And now for the scary part: as backward and ridiculous as the claim sounds, what's more ridiculous is that people might believe it. The appeal could work.![]()
The ink is still drying on the sentence for the Steubenville rapists, and already one of them is appealing. Ma'lik Richmond, the younger of the two football players convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl, has mounted an appeal of the guilty verdict on a claim that his "brain isn't fully developed." Somehow we're supposed to believe that a 16-year-old boy's brain couldn't handle the fact that rape is wrong. And now for the scary part: as backward and ridiculous as the claim sounds, what's more ridiculous is that people might believe it. The appeal could work.