Criminal
law is riddled with double standards. For
example, suppose that two seventeen -year-olds
get into fisticuffs in the state of Wisconsin ,
and one of them gets a bruise on the cheek.
Typically, the winner of the fight gets prosecuted regardless of who
started it, so let’s further suppose that the kid without the bruise
gets charged with felony child abuse.
How can this be? In Wisconsin ,
he’s considered an adult because he’s seventeen, and therefore can be charged
criminally in adult court. But wait: the
kid who got the bruise on his cheek is also seventeen, so how can this be
“child” abuse? Because there’s a double
standard: when considering the age of the accuser, seventeen-year-olds are
considered to be mere children, rather than adults. But as absurd as this double standard is, it
pales in comparison the double standard for motive and the third-party defense.
