bearister said:
SFCityBear said:
Chapman_is_Gone said:
mikecohen said:
Chapman_is_Gone said:
MSaviolives said:
This whole episode is very sad in so many ways. For the victim, Jabari, and their friends and families. The news that he had earlier sought treatment for anxiety issues takes me back to one of the very few beefs I have gotten into with another poster on this forum.
Recall that Jabari was a last minute scratch from the NCAA tournament game against Hawaii because of back spasms. That night, after the loss, a poster claimed that Jabari was "mentally weak," and such weakness caused him to either fake the back spasms, or to have the back spasms and/or to be unable to play through the spasms--he actually referred to the Ronnie Lott finger joint amputation episode as an example of someone who is mentally strong in the face of physical adversity. I defended Jabari and the string eventually reached the point of such craziness that the mods removed it.
Well, hmmm.....
I don't understand your point. Jabari is mentally weak, in that he appears to have a legitimate mental illness...
Successfully dealing with mental illness (on a higher level of intensity than the rest of us have to deal with, because none of us is entirely free of it), and overcoming it is definitely doable, actually makes people mentally strong, and in fact stronger than the rest of us who haven't had to face ourselves and our weaknesses and demons..
Just depends on how you want to spin it, right? I say mentally weak, you say mentally strong. I can see it both ways, but your way definitely involves more spin. I don't spin for people, simply because they can jump high and put a round ball through a metal circle.
I do agree, though, that it does take a certain mental fortitude to be able to choke a woman to the point of her nearly blacking out, to let her recover, and then to return to the well by doing it again, and again, and again...
No, but you will spin by embellishing and dramatizing the accuser's story, without having heard the story of the incident from the accused person, I guess because the accuser is a woman and must be believed, and you feel the need to help her case. Are you so mentally weak, you can't wait for Jabari Bird to tell his story? Guilty until proven innocent? It is thinking like this that resulted in our nation's sordid history of numerous vigilante lynchings with a rope in a rush to justice.
Bird has appeared in court, been charged with crimes, and has plead "not guilty" to those charges. Once the trial has taken place, we can learn his side of the story. If he is found guilty, you can hate him all you want...
I will tell you my hunch after reading the articles. Unless Massachusetts accepts the "involuntarily intoxication by prescribed medication" defense and unless Jabari can prove said defense, his "side of the story" isn't worth jack guano and he will be serving a significant stretch. I don't care for the inference in your post that the victim has credibility issues. She could have made the whole thing up or grossly embellished the story but that situation is very long odds and you wouldn't bet on it. My guess is her neck bruises are all the corroboration she needs. Since I had previously formed a high opinion of Jabari's character, I truly hope it was an adverse reaction to psychotropic drugs that in effect rendered him temporarily insane.
http://jaapl.org/content/43/3/321
My posts here are to ask that we not rush to judgment and try this case in public, on line, in a blog about Cal sports. With all due respect to you, if you chose to infer that the young lady has credibility issues from what I wrote, I assure you it was not intentional. I do not believe or disbelieve either side here, and I wish to hear more from the trial and the verdict. I am not smart enough to guess about any of this, and I wasn't in the room when the incident happened.
I will say that many women lie, and many men lie, especially when it comes to domestic abuse. In this case, we have two opposing statements from the participants, one with some detail, and the other a denial with no detail. One of them is not telling the truth, maybe both. People have been known to inflict injuries on themselves and accuse their spouse of abuse. It has happened. I had a case related to that in my own family, a relative who showed me some bad bruises on her face, and told me that her son beats her. I confronted him, and he denied it. The next day she showed me much more severe bruises, saying he had beaten her again, because I had confronted him with it. Mother and son separated for good, as the son moved 3000 miles away, and we never found out whether mother or son was telling the truth, and the case was never reported to authorities. Any bruises in Bird's case need to be examined by a physician experienced in forensic evidence, including any of Bird's DNA residue. Bird's hands and fingers need to be examined to find any trace of her DNA on them. Hopefully it has been done, or it is not too late to do it.
Assault cases brought by women against men are all big news now, as women clamor for justice, clamor to be believed in the absence of evidence or an eye witness, and it has become intensely political. It makes news, sells newspapers and gets internet hits. We cannot allow society to reach a hysteria reminiscent of the French Revolution, where all anyone had to say was the famous words, "J'accuse," and the accused had his head chopped off with a guillotine. Many in our society are trying to push us to always believing the woman and never the man so we can settle these tricky cases where there is no witness or evidence. What will happen in the more rare cases where a woman is accused of assaulting a man? Will we continue then to believe only the woman or continue to believe only the accuser? Our legal system is not perfect, but it is the best we have got at the moment.
As to embellishing her story, I didn't say she had done that, nor did I intend that you infer it. Chapman did the embellishing. I just don't want to engage in speculation. There is too much I don't know to make up my mind in this case.