r/news • u/FreeChickenDinner • 4d ago

West Virginia couple charged with trafficking their adopted Black children to be used as ‘slaves,’ authorities allege

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/us/west-virginia-adopted-black-children-slaves-reaj/index.html
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u/Different-Estate747 4d ago

So their defense is that they can't be bad people because they adopted 5 black children?

Yeah... we know you adopted 5 black children. And unfortunately we know why you adopted 5 black children too.

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u/brookelynfd 4d ago edited 4d ago

According to this USA Today article his lawyer really tried to imply this was all a misunderstanding and the teens like it. Smh

”During the June 11 arraignment hearing, Whitefeather's attorney, Mark Plants, called the barn where the 14 and 16-year-old were found locked in a “teenage clubhouse”

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u/stdexception 4d ago

Being a defense attorney for these cases must be tough. They are obligated to defend them as best as they can, even if the evidence is overwhelming. Pleading insanity might have been a better call, though.

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u/lonnie123 4d ago

I was under the impression you couldn’t outright lie though. Provided the best defense means making sure the prosecution was following the rules of evidence, the cops did their job properly, trying to get the best deal you can… but you can’t just bullshit and hope you fool the judge.

See: trumps lawyers for all his election cases. In public he says it was all rigged and stolen, in court they explicitly say that’s not their case and they are just trying to have XYZ looked at to see if it followed the law

If these kids are found in the barn chained up and said they were kidnapped basically, you can’t just lie and say they wanted to be there because it was their clubhouse

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u/AshleyNeku 4d ago

It's a little more complicated than that. You can't lie as to the facts, but a state of mind is not treated as a fact of evidence. He's suggesting that as far as the parents are aware, the children liked the barn. He's not directly claiming he knows the children did, since he has no expert that can attest to that. 

Either way, people should be glad his defense is shit. He has to do his best. This is his best. And if this is their best shot, they're fucked.