No, that wasn’t what I was “reaching for”. I respect her for not flinching in pursuing her civil suit.
I was saying that the poster expressing pity for MB for having to relive his (alleged) childhood abuse was ironic, given that he had the option to avoid the trial by accepting what looks to me like a generous plea deal, and he chose the trial.
LK and lots of others will have to relive the tragedy, despite having no option to avoid the criminal trial.
I’d imagine she could not attend, couldn’t she?
The case is the state (not LK) against MB, so she could avoid attending, right?
Maybe he chose the trial in the hopes of avoiding years in prison.
Time will tell if that works out for him.
okie dokie well CHs post has nothing to do with mine so direct your thoughts there maybe. Still don’t see why anyone gets into a bitch fest though then complains when they get it back. Makes no sense.
She can’t avoid the trial taking place, and Bilinkas making all sorts of allegations to the effect that she was responsible for causing Barisone’s mental breakdown and therefore causing her own shooting.
Yes, she could not attend the trial, not read COTH, not read the papers, and not watch 48 Hours. If someone studiously avoids hearing/reading all the nasty allegations, but is well aware they’re being lobbed around, does that undo the pain and hurt, in your view?
It stops them Reliving it. 
That was your goalpost.
Now you’ve moved it…
Nothing will undo the hurt they’ve already experienced.
Not even life in prison for MB.
In life we can never stop what others do, we can only stop what we do or how we react to it.
My point was that knowing full well that Bilinkas will be defending Barisone by making LK out to be the aggressor/harasser who provoked Barisone’s mental breakdown and therefore caused the shooting (according to Bilinkas) is painful and hurtful whether she attends the trial/reads COTH/reads the papers/watches 48 hours or not.
If I were in her shoes, I would attend the trial, despite having to live through defense attorneys attempting to blame me and despite having to relive the shooting. It demonstrates courage to face the situation instead of hiding.
Now that the trial is happening, she’ll be called as a witness, so avoiding the trial altogether is not possible.
Everything I have read, including things written by LK, points to this being true.
Every defendant gets a defense.
I don’t think we know what that defense will consist of.
But isn’t he claiming both insanity AND self defense? So it seems to me that Barisone’s lawyer is going to claim that he was driven insane by LK and therefore can’t be held responsible for shooting LK, but at the same time he was mentally together enough to understand that he had to shoot her to save himself? Or maybe I have it all wrong since I am not a lawyer. It just seems so contradictory and I am really interested to see how it plays out in court.
Can a witness observe the trial before he/she is called to the stand?
Absolutely; Barisone is entitled to a strong defense.
We do know what the defense will consist of; Barisone has already entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and by reason of self defense. Both are affirmative defenses.
With an affirmative defense, apparently the defense has to give the prosecution a heads up that they will use the affirmative defense. So possibly Bilinkas is preserving his options so that he could use either self defense or insanity when the trial actually starts.
The Jaffer article quotes Bilinkas’s response to the judge’s assertion that self defense and insanity were in conflict. Blilinkas said that they were consistent in the sense that when he shot the gun, Barisone was delusional (insane) in thinking he needed to shoot in self defense. It seems to me that “self defense” should be restricted to rational, sane self defense, and that insanity is the more appropriate defense in that scenario, but I am not a lawyer, either.
From the article:
"The judge questioned him about this, saying, ‘How can a person who’s insane raise a self-defense case? Isn’t it a reasonable belief that deadly force is necessary to protect yourself?’
Bilinkas cited a state Supreme Court case that mandates those defenses be tried at the same time."
So the "schooling was done by Bilinkas.
And regarding not taking the plea deal, it seems to me then that MB and Bilinkas believe they have a strong defense.
LOL yeah let’s see how it plays out in court shall we. If the JUDGE tells you it’s bad idea to
use that approach it’s saying a lot. You think his lawyer is better schooled than a judge I have bridge to sell ya.
No
I don’t think it’s going too far to say that an attorney could be better schooled in a particular area of the law than a judge might be. Also, there are some questionable intellects on benches.
There are judges who are elected who are not great jurists. At the lower levels, this is particularly the case. In the Court of Common Pleas in my county, there are a couple of flat brilliant judges, and a couple of WTF? Where did YOU get your juris doctor?
Exactly. And you can bet Bilinkas will be consulting with a psychologist who can read potential jurors as they are doing jury selection.
Hm, that’s not what the judge was saying. Bearing in mind that the article is paraphrasing his question, the judge appears to be asking how they intended to characterize a decision made by an unreasonable person as reasonable. That doesn’t make the defenses incompatible, because the standard for self defense actually doesn’t have anything to do with whether the defendant thought it was reasonable but whether an outside, objective reasonable person would think it was.
Anyway, judges are not all made equal and I didn’t read the question as a suggestion to pick one or the other, or some kind of guidance from the judge.
My only other comment is that it seems, as to be expected, that most people only understand the “Law and Order” meaning of self defense.
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