Will She or Won't She?

It was a close call. As I drove home from work this afternoon, I almost decided to bag it.

Although I'm feeling much better since my surgery, my stamina still isn't totally recovered, so I'm pretty tired by the end of the day. That, combined with the fact that the election in Philly was pretty much decided in May, made me less than enthusiastic about voting. I went back & forth about whether it really mattered in this particular election.

In the end, the deciding factor may well have been Teresa Carr Deni. I wanted to be sure to vote against her retention on the Municipal Court and there were a few others that I wanted to vote for (Judge Debra Todd for Supreme Court, Christine L. Donohue & Judge John Milton Younge for Superior Court, & Ellen Green-Ceisler for Court of Common Pleas).

But Judge Deni holds a special spot. She's the Muni Court Judge that made the news for a recent ruling in a rape case, where she ruled there was not enough evidence to move forward with rape charges against a man accused of raping a prostitute at gunpoint. Instead, Deni said the appropriate charge was armed robbery for "theft of services." See Hooker raped and robbed - by justice system?. As the NYTimes noted, Judge Criticized in Rape Case:

A bar association has criticized a judge for refusing to uphold sexual assault charges against a man accused of making friends rape a prostitute he had hired. The judge, Teresa Carr Deni of Municipal Court in Philadelphia, said she considered the case “theft of services.” Judge Deni heightened the furor when she defended herself to The Philadelphia Daily News. “She consented, and she didn’t get paid,” the judge told the paper. “I thought it was a robbery.” The man, Dominique Gindraw, was accused of ordering the woman at gunpoint to have sex with three men. The judge dismissed the charges of rape and sexual assault on Oct. 4, but upheld those of robbery and false imprisonment. The chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, Jane Leslie Dalton, said: “The victim has been brutalized twice in this case, first by the assailants, and now by the court. We cannot imagine any circumstances more violent or coercive than being forced to have sex with four men at gunpoint.”

See also, Bar Comes Out Against Judge's Ruling in Rape Case. Well, she made her decision & I made mine. I hope she goes.

UPDATE (11/10): Unfortunately, Deni was not denied retention to the bench, see 'Hooker Judge' is not denied, but justice is . . .. This is unfortunate, but not unexpected. It's why judges should not be elected. People just don't pay attention to these races.

Tags: Philadelphia, Philly, Election