Our week began with a News Journal article about Judge Jan Jurden’s 2009 sentencing of DuPont heir Robert Richards to probation for his 4th degree rape plea for molesting his young daughter, because “he would not fare well in prison.” You surely read about it; the delawareonline article was posted to Facebook over 35,000 times and the story went ultraviral on the Internet. One can see why. All the sensationalistic elements were in place: the rich guy getting special treatment, the rapist getting a deal, the implication that a larger person can handle himself better in person, and vague conspiracy theories about the defendant’s affiliation with a prominent Wilmington law firm.
But as your grandmother probably told you, not telling the whole truth is as bad as lying. As the week unfolded, the details that emerged, or I should say, the details that were there all along but not originally mentioned, began to tell the true story of what happened.
By midweek, Judge Jurden had a security detail and petitions for her ouster were being distributed. The next article cited the “outrage” over the sentence and the “controversy that erupted” after the Sunday article was published. Clearly, it was the misleading article that generated the controversy moreso than what actually occurred in the case. The full picture of the case had not yet been published–just the salacious details.
The legal community rallied to Judge Jurden’s defense, such as in this op-ed piece by Richard Kirk of the Delaware State Bar Association. Judge Jurden is universally considered one of the most intelligent, conscientious and fair judges in the State and those who know that were justifiably chagrined by the News Journal’s irresponsible Sunday article that started the whole thing. But by then, the public had made up its mind. The piece was posted to Facebook only 2,150 times.
Finally, late in the week, Attorney General Beau Biden gave a statement providing the context that had been there all along in publicly available documents. Child rape cases are notoriously hard to prove. The State was faced with the real possibility of there being insufficient evidence at trial and the perpetrator going free. The prosecutor offered a plea to reduced charges and the prosecutor recommended probation. This occurred after consultation with the victim’s mother. The plea deal eliminated the possibility of a young girl having to testify in court about horrible occurrences. The plea deal also featured requirements like sex offender registration, strict no contact provisions, and sex offender treatment. And most notably, the probation was backed up by lengthy jail time if Richards were to violate the conditions of his release. The sentence was arrived at after review of a presentence investigation conducted by the court’s Investigative Services Office. All these data points were readily accessible before the News Journal decided to print the Cris Barrish article in Sunday’s paper. But it is far less titillating than what got published and became an international sensation. As often happens in these cases, the public had already decided. The article about the Biden statement has been posted to Facebook only 400 times—35,000 fewer times than the original article.
Let’s be clear: sexual offenses against children are horrible crimes. It is understandably upsetting that Richards got to stay in his mansion after committing these offenses. But the sentence was the result of an imperfect justice system struggling to arrive at a just result. It was the result of a prosecutor, a defense attorney, and a judge conscientiously trying to find a resolution that was fair and right under all the circumstances. We should take some solace in the fact that Richards is a registered sex offender on a very short leash.
We hope the good people of Delaware will remember this week’s saga as a cautionary tale. Don’t rush to judgment before you know all the facts. And don’t count on a single article or post from one media outlet to be your only source for those facts. We live in a 24 hour news cycle with old school newspapers, television, and the Internet all competing for our attention. The tendency is to get the juicy details out first in order to sell papers or get eyeballs to a website. The full story comes later, and sadly, often gets ignored. In this day and age, it would be wise to have a healthy skepticism and an open mind.