Friday, November 8, 2013

Of Men's Rights and Law

For the longest time, men have been getting the short end of the stick when the law should be fair to everyone.

For starters, men in general will be imprisoned longer, and receive harsher penalties for the same crime when compared to women. Lighter sentences are handed out to women, often through probation or suspended sentence, sometimes not even receiving a sentence at all. And yes, when imprisoned, they have better chances and have a shorter duration when getting a parole.

Domestic violence cases are especially tricky. When someone calls the police because of an alleged domestic violence crime, someone has to spend a night in jail, even if the caller was a male victim. This should be against the presumption of innocence, yet it still happens.

While domestic violence cases are already bad enough, rape cases are even worse for men. People are more inclined to believe the woman rather than the man when in rape cases, even if the man is innocent. Even if they are victim, it is still equally bad. If the victim is male, most people will treat him with ridicule or claim that he was lucky for “getting some”. The judge or the jury may also have this same mindset, as evidenced by many cases when the woman rapist got off scot-free or a slap on the wrist.

False rape claims are rising because they only receive nominal punishments, while he spends his days in jail, or have to pay ridiculous fees.

And of course, there's paying child support and/or alimony. It may not be related to criminal defense, but it still is a huge problem in the US, with women still taking advantage of getting payment even if they she has the higher income, or just to ruin or give the man a bad reputation. And yet, when he can’t pay, again, he gets sent to jail.

All of this are happening even in the state of Nevada. As a criminal defense lawyer in Las Vegas, I sincerely hope that domestic abuse laws will continue to improve in the future, and treat men and women the same just as anyone else.