Remy returning to the booth

[singaporesoxfan]

 
 
Lastly, and most importantly, it's dangerous to assume that just because someone got (or didn't get) a particular sentence, a subsequent event would (or would not) happen.   I doubt a court sentencing Remy to jail would have fundamentally dealt with his anger and psychological issues in a way that would transform him into a Non-abuser.   From what we can tell, jail does remarkably poorly at changing bad behavior.  The best way is to change the individual's environment, get them real counseling, get them medicated, etc.   So perhaps the court *did* that.  We don't know what the probation entailed. 
 

 
But this gets to my previous point, and to what yep articulated very well above. You seem to be assuming to people asking why Remy was not jailed previously was only because they wanted to prevent what eventually happened. But I think it offends many people's sense of justice that what did happen at the time was not met with a jail term i.e. the reason people are asking why Remy was not jailed is out of a sense of retributive justice, rather than any hope that jail would have been rehabilitative.

 

[Rasputin]

Ras, the bit quoted above implies that you know for a fact that Jerry and Phoebe did nothing.

 
If you're sending texts to the third woman your son has beaten to convince her not to extend a restraining order that's pretty good evidence that you're not doing anything to stop the violence isn't it? And it's certainly evidence that they didn't do enough.

 

[YTF]

 
But this gets to my previous point, and to what yep articulated very well above. You seem to be assuming to people asking why Remy was not jailed previously was only because they wanted to prevent what eventually happened. But I think it offends many people's sense of justice that what did happen at the time was not met with a jail term i.e. the reason people are asking why Remy was not jailed is out of a sense of retributive justice, rather than any hope that jail would have been rehabilitative.

 
Thank you for this. Some here are SEEMING to present "well it wouldn't have done any good anyway" as a defense for the lack stronger sentencing.  If that's the case why even arrest the guy? Yeah an overstatement, but ask any cop what the most frustrating part of his/her job is. Guessing the #1 answer is seeing people they arrest walk free. Now I realize there can be a variety of reasons for that, but tell me that the cops who busted Remy (pick a time) weren't shaking their heads over some of the sentences handed out.

 

[Rovin Romine]

 
But this gets to my previous point, and to what yep articulated very well above. You seem to be assuming to people asking why Remy was not jailed previously was only because they wanted to prevent what eventually happened. But I think it offends many people's sense of justice that what did happen at the time was not met with a jail term i.e. the reason people are asking why Remy was not jailed is out of a sense of retributive justice, rather than any hope that jail would have been rehabilitative.

 
I don't really buy this, absent Martel's death.  They're sort of hard to untangle.  Are people really upset that in 2004 (or whenever) a judge put somebody on probation instead of putting them in jail for 30 days?  Or are people upset because a woman died, and they think that had things been handled differently, she might not have died?   I think it's the latter.
 
I'm not saying it's wrong to desire equal enforcement of the laws, but where's the harm that came from probation, vis a vis those older cases?  Would this even be an issue if Remy had simply continued as he was without killing anyone?
 
 

 
Thank you for this. Some here are SEEMING to present "well it wouldn't have done any good anyway" as a defense for the lack stronger sentencing.  If that's the case why even arrest the guy? Yeah an overstatement, but ask any cop what the most frustrating part of his/her job is. Guessing the #1 answer is seeing people they arrest walk free. Now I realize there can be a variety of reasons for that, but tell me that the cops who busted Remy (pick a time) weren't shaking their heads over some of the sentences handed out.

 
Well, I'm not advocating that Remy should have been more lightly or more severely punished.  (I'd say though that with any punishment or sentencing, I'd personally like to see it handled in a way that minimizes the future risk of harm and costs to society.  Show me that means longer incarcerations and I'm on board; show me it means shorter ones and I'm on board.  I don't think it's very smart to make sentences "lighter" or "harder" without understanding what the effects of that will actually be.) 
 
There's been a not too thinly veiled critique of the legal system, most of it based on not understanding it's role, how it works, and what it's limits are.  Fleshing that out is really the only dog I have in this fight.  
 
Lastly, we're not in this to cater to the subjective opinions of cops.  I really and truly appreciate the good cops who are out there, as I appreciate the good judges, but I don't want them swapping roles.  Oddly though, one of the best judges I know used to be a homicide detective.  On the other hand, there was that cop who told me, point blank, on the record, in a depo, that she stopped my client because he was black, "And black teens don't belong in that neighborhood."  I'm sure she was frustrated when the state dropped the charges against my client.  And I don't much feel for her.  

 

[Rasputin]

 
I don't really buy this, absent Martel's death.  They're sort of hard to untangle.  Are people really upset that in 2004 (or whenever) a judge put somebody on probation instead of putting them in jail for 30 days?  Or are people upset because a woman died, and they think that had things been handled differently, she might not have died?   I think it's the latter.
 
I'm not saying it's wrong to desire equal enforcement of the laws, but where's the harm that came from probation, vis a vis those older cases?  Would this even be an issue if Remy had simply continued as he was without killing anyone?

 
It can be both, and of course it would.
 
We don't really have a good way to deal with domestic violence in our society and that has nothing to do with the Remys. 

 

[Reverend]

I get the critique of an over-simplified view of the system, but in this particular case the system taught Jared Remy that there are not consequences for his actions. Granted, there was several years in between legally identified incidents and it's unlikely that he was conditioned to believe that he could get away with murder even though he got away with other things.
 
So it's not so much that any specific sentence might have saved this woman's life, but a less gradual ramping up of punishment over time could have forced him to have a reckoning of sorts. I mean, that's how you teach people responsibility, yeah? Consequences. They succeeded in teaching him the opposite in the formative years of his life--that's bad.
 
Edit: Most of the research on the subject I've seen suggests that magnitude of punishment is not nearly as effective a deterrent as certainty of receiving a given punishment. This is why the death penalty is not an effective deterrent: nobody thinks they're going to get it and aren't thinking about it.

 

[Average Reds]

 
I don't really buy this, absent Martel's death.  They're sort of hard to untangle.  Are people really upset that in 2004 (or whenever) a judge put somebody on probation instead of putting them in jail for 30 days?  Or are people upset because a woman died, and they think that had things been handled differently, she might not have died?   I think it's the latter.
 
I'm not saying it's wrong to desire equal enforcement of the laws, but where's the harm that came from probation, vis a vis those older cases?  Would this even be an issue if Remy had simply continued as he was without killing anyone?
 

 
Look, I agree with most of what you have been writing on this topic, but you lose me here.  In fact, I think you're being more than a little disingenuous.
 
The part that makes it hard to untangle the two events is that we only found out about the full extent of Remy's record because Martell was killed.  But if I had discovered what Jared Remy's record had looked like in 2004, you can be damn sure that I'd want him put away.  You know, before he eventually killed someone.
 
As to the second bolded part, when we consider that Remy eventually did kill a woman - an act that appears to have been as inevitable as the sun rising - it seems self-evidently nonsensical to the point of being offensive to ask "where's the harm that came from probation?"  Because while neither of us will ever be able to prove causality, I can say with near-100% certainty that if he had received jail time instead of probation it couldn't have made the situation worse. 

 

[JayMags71]

I can't see you pointing out a specific error in law that precludes giving Jared Remy a longer sentence in any of his cases. Specifically in Napkin's example.

 

[YTF]

 
I don't really buy this, absent Martel's death.  They're sort of hard to untangle.  Are people really upset that in 2004 (or whenever) a judge put somebody on probation instead of putting them in jail for 30 days?  Or are people upset because a woman died, and they think that had things been handled differently, she might not have died?   I think it's the latter.
 
I'm not saying it's wrong to desire equal enforcement of the laws, but where's the harm that came from probation, vis a vis those older cases?  Would this even be an issue if Remy had simply continued as he was without killing anyone?
 
 
 
Well, I'm not advocating that Remy should have been more lightly or more severely punished.  (I'd say though that with any punishment or sentencing, I'd personally like to see it handled in a way that minimizes the future risk of harm and costs to society.  Show me that means longer incarcerations and I'm on board; show me it means shorter ones and I'm on board.  I don't think it's very smart to make sentences "lighter" or "harder" without understanding what the effects of that will actually be.) 
 
There's been a not too thinly veiled critique of the legal system, most of it based on not understanding it's role, how it works, and what it's limits are.  Fleshing that out is really the only dog I have in this fight.  
 
Lastly, we're not in this to cater to the subjective opinions of cops.  I really and truly appreciate the good cops who are out there, as I appreciate the good judges, but I don't want them swapping roles.  Oddly though, one of the best judges I know used to be a homicide detective.  On the other hand, there was that cop who told me, point blank, on the record, in a depo, that she stopped my client because he was black, "And black teens don't belong in that neighborhood."  I'm sure she was frustrated when the state dropped the charges against my client.  And I don't much feel for her.  

 
:speechless:

 

[Myt1]

Again, I agree. We saw this in a less harmful but still creepy phenonmenon when people were flipping out on the SJC for the "upskirt" decision when their hands were tied through no fault of the prosecution or their own.

Edit: Sorry, that was directed at an earlier RR post. The one about seeing the justice system as a fuzzy paternalistic thing that just fixes stuff.

 

[redsahx]

 
If you're sending texts to the third woman your son has beaten to convince her not to extend a restraining order that's pretty good evidence that you're not doing anything to stop the violence isn't it? And it's certainly evidence that they didn't do enough.

 
For the love of god can someone explain to me how Remy and his wife could have "fixed" their son. How do they "stop him" from commiting violence permanently?  Obviously the implication is that if Jerry just stopped hiring good lawyers and cut his son off financially, he would have straightened himself out or society would have somehow been safer. No he goes out on the street, or spends a few weeks in jail before getting released back into society, at which point he is just as dangerous if not even more so. Then he is showing back up at the Remy's doorstep whether they like it or not.
 
They obviously are guilty of underestimating his capabilities at the very end, but so were a lot of people. Again I don't know how good Jerry and Phoebe really were as parents, but there is absolutely no logic to back up the argument that somehow the Remy's were being neglectful because they hired him lawyers and tried to get him jobs. Obviously most people here have very limited experience dealing with mentally ill family members.

 

[Myt1]

There's far more evidence that Phoebe Remy took an active role in putting Martell in danger than there is that Remy was suffering from some severe mental illness. Enough with the crutch.

 

[Myt1]

 
Look, I agree with most of what you have been writing on this topic, but you lose me here.  In fact, I think you're being more than a little disingenuous.
 
The part that makes it hard to untangle the two events is that we only found out about the full extent of Remy's record because Martell was killed.  But if I had discovered what Jared Remy's record had looked like in 2004, you can be damn sure that I'd want him put away.  You know, before he eventually killed someone.
 
As to the second bolded part, when we consider that Remy eventually did kill a woman - an act that appears to have been as inevitable as the sun rising - it seems self-evidently nonsensical to the point of being offensive to ask "where's the harm that came from probation?"  Because while neither of us will ever be able to prove causality, I can say with near-100% certainty that if he had received jail time instead of probation it couldn't have made the situation worse. 

I agree that, ex post, it couldn't have made things worse. I'm far less convinced that it would have been particularly beneficial in preventing the crime rather than simply delaying it. A&B, even domestic, simply doesn't carry a very serious penalty and imprisonment for it is unlikely to substantially change this sort of monster.

I'm all for punishing people for other reasons, though.

Recently, we've had more and more legislation in MA directed at these sorts of issues. More is coming down the line. There's a recognition on the policy side of things that the status quo is insufficient to act as the shield we want.

 

[NortheasternPJ]

 
For the love of god can someone explain to me how Remy and his wife could have "fixed" their son. How do they "stop him" from commiting violence permanently?  Obviously the implication is that if Jerry just stopped hiring good lawyers and cut his son off financially, he would have straightened himself out or society would have somehow been safer. No he goes out on the street, or spends a few weeks in jail before getting released back into society, at which point he is just as dangerous if not even more so. Then he is showing back up at the Remy's doorstep whether they like it or not.
 
They obviously are guilty of underestimating his capabilities at the very end, but so were a lot of people. Again I don't know how good Jerry and Phoebe really were as parents, but there is absolutely no logic to back up the argument that somehow the Remy's were being neglectful because they hired him lawyers and tried to get him jobs. Obviously most people here have very limited experience dealing with mentally ill family members.

Not funding high priced lawyers for 20 arrests over 15 years would be a start.

Enabling the mentally ill for 15 years while they're beating women and men is not a solid decision

Cutting him off may not have changed the outcome but wouldn't enable it for 15 years.

 

[Reverend]

Not funding high priced lawyers for 20 arrests over 15 years would be a start.

Enabling the mentally ill for 15 years while they're beating women and men is not a solid decision

Cutting him off may not have changed the outcome but wouldn't enable it for 15 years.

 
See, I'm even more crotchety that this--this guy had too much money as a kid for someone as badly behaved as it sounds like he was. Do parents not take away the car keys anymore?
 
Shit like this is why we have a zillion dollar drug war when parents freaked out that their kids were smoking weed and never stopped to consider that maybe the problems was that their unemployed progeny had the time and money to score the shit in the first place.
 
One way or another, the Remys were bankrolling steroid use on the part of a guy with a severe anxiety disorder that manifested itself in hyper-aggression. This strikes me as unwise.

 

[Rasputin]

 
For the love of god can someone explain to me how Remy and his wife could have "fixed" their son. How do they "stop him" from commiting violence permanently?  Obviously the implication is that if Jerry just stopped hiring good lawyers and cut his son off financially, he would have straightened himself out or society would have somehow been safer. No he goes out on the street, or spends a few weeks in jail before getting released back into society, at which point he is just as dangerous if not even more so. Then he is showing back up at the Remy's doorstep whether they like it or not.

 
No. Normal people don't assume that everything in this world is absolute. What I, at least am suggesting is that if the Remys refused to help Jared, he'd be more likely to face a stiff penalty where maybe he learns something and at the very least he's off the street for a while. If the Remys don't pay the legal fees. If they don't agree to have him in their house on ankle-bracelet probation. If they do assure Martel or the previous women, that they won't their support--either financial or child care help--if she reports and testifies against Jared, then maybe Jared spends a month in jail and maybe he gets into a program where he can get off the roids and get his tempter under control and maybe, just maybe, not be a violent thug.

 

[yep]

The problem with this game of what the present would be like in a make-pretend world where the past was different is that anyone can make up anything. Would Jared Remy have been humbled and cowed by time in prison, or would he have come out a hardened killer? Would he have ever met Jennifer Martel, or would some "Sound of Thunder" type butterfly-effect had him dead in a ditch on the way to kill her? If Dad had not given him all that rope, would he have learned the importance of character and got a paper-route, or turned into a homeless drug-addict whose first murder would be not an innocent woman but some other scumbag in a drug dispute, or would Remy have wound up on the steps of a church-run soup-kitchen and found god and done a lecture circuit on the dangers of steroids?
 
I mean, I know it's a game that has to be played when these things happen, but I don't think it's a very informative one. 

 

[Reverend]

The problem with this game of what the present would be like in a make-pretend world where the past was different is that anyone can make up anything. Would Jared Remy have been humbled and cowed by time in prison, or would he have come out a hardened killer? Would he have ever met Jennifer Martel, or would some "Sound of Thunder" type butterfly-effect had him dead in a ditch on the way to kill her? If Dad had not given him all that rope, would he have learned the importance of character and got a paper-route, or turned into a homeless drug-addict whose first murder would be not an innocent woman but some other scumbag in a drug dispute, or would Remy have wound up on the steps of a church-run soup-kitchen and found god and done a lecture circuit on the dangers of steroids?
 
I mean, I know it's a game that has to be played when these things happen, but I don't think it's a very informative one. 

 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhHRt2PpHsQ

 

[CarolinaBeerGuy]

If'n you want to contact NESN, you can e-mail sports@nesn.com or write, call, fax to them at:
 
NESN 480 Arsenal Street, Building #1 Watertown, MA 02472 Phone: 1-617-536-9233 FAX: 1-617-536-7814

Read more at: http://nesn.com/contact/

Email sent. I'll be watching the other teams' feed on mlb.tv until he's gone.

 

[Lazy vs Crazy]

Email sent. I'll be watching the other teams' feed on mlb.tv until he's gone.

If you really want to get him off air, the best way would be to watch the games on NESN, note what commercials play, and write to the companies that advertise that you won't buy any of their products until Remy is gone.

 

[YTF]

The problem with this game of what the present would be like in a make-pretend world where the past was different is that anyone can make up anything. Would Jared Remy have been humbled and cowed by time in prison, or would he have come out a hardened killer? Would he have ever met Jennifer Martel, or would some "Sound of Thunder" type butterfly-effect had him dead in a ditch on the way to kill her? If Dad had not given him all that rope, would he have learned the importance of character and got a paper-route, or turned into a homeless drug-addict whose first murder would be not an innocent woman but some other scumbag in a drug dispute, or would Remy have wound up on the steps of a church-run soup-kitchen and found god and done a lecture circuit on the dangers of steroids?
 
I mean, I know it's a game that has to be played when these things happen, but I don't think it's a very informative one. 

 
Quoting your post, but not singling you out. I think most of us who would have liked to have seen sentences of more consequence aren't advocating that Jen Martel would still be alive today though some insist on addressing us as though we are. Please stop confusing or intentionally linking the two. I think many of us are appalled even outraged to read  Remy's lengthy rap sheet as compared to the sentences imposed.

 

[yep]

 
Quoting your post, but not singling you out. I think most of us who would have liked to have seen sentences of more consequence aren't advocating that Jen Martel would still be alive today though some insist on addressing us as though we are. Please stop confusing or intentionally linking the two. I think many of us are appalled even outraged to read  Remy's lengthy rap sheet as compared to the sentences imposed.

I didn't intend to single anyone out with it, and I think it applies equally to both "pro" and "con" arguments RE: legal penalties, different parenting, quality of legal defense, etc. 
 
I am 100% in agreement that something is very wrong when someone can be arrested so many times, with such a clear pattern of dangerously abusive and murderously threatening behavior, and can apparently have such a (correctly) blase attitude towards consequences ("just another year of probation..."). I don't know nearly enough about the legal system to know whether each or any offense was properly handled under the law, but if they were, it seems obvious to my simple mind that the law ought to be changed (how, precisely, is currently beyond my wisdom to say). 
 
I also cannot speak intelligently about anything regarding the upbringing or parenting in the Remy household, except to state the obvious: that these are some frightening children whose patterns of behavior are shockingly at odds with the public face of a seemingly very nice, successful, and down-to-earth father who spent 3 hours a day, six months a year shooting the breeze on TV. Maybe it was something in the water? I don't care to speculate.
 
I agree with those who say that Jared was in serious need of what used to be called "tough love" (i.e., shutting the kid off from material/enabling support). But once again I lack the expertise to voice more than personal opinion, and I certainly can't prove (or even provide coherent supporting evidence) that "it would have made a difference", so why argue with those who adamantly maintain that I have no right to judge, or that they know it wouldn't have mattered? 
 
I think sometimes the truth is so patently obvious that attempts at reasoned analytics and thought-experiments serve more to obfuscate than illuminate, trying to set the parameters by which we shall determine whether water is truly wet... 
 
I think it's good and laudable that our approaches to criminal-justice should endeavor to offer opportunities for redemption and rehabilitation, and my non-expert guess is that there is virtually always at least some component of "mental illness" at play in these things. But there is also a component of justice and law and parenting (or ought to be, I think) whereby, if you live in this place with the rest of us, there are rules we all must agree to be bound by, and there are limits to how much we will allow your problems or mine to become ours. 
 
Jared Remy, for a long time, clearly made his own problems, problems for everyone else, in pretty egregious ways. I personally think that's what is prison ought to be for. I think his parents appear to have been active participants in giving their son more and repeated opportunities to be a problem for everyone else. But again, just my opinion, and I'm not an expert.
 
In any case, I'm in the camp that doesn't want to see Jerry yukking it up on TV this summer. And I was (mostly) a fan until I read this piece. 

 

[SydneySox]

I didn't like the article much at all. Not because of the subject matter, which is horrible, but because of how halfassed it was. There is a lot of great legwork in there, excellent research, but it is a  prosecution of Remy and I am very much of the belief that it isn't the media's job. The article was very much like the work of the documentarian Michael Moore, in that while I agree completely with the basic tenet of the point - Jared Remy is a piece of shit whose long history of violence ended finally tragically in a murder following near murders and horrible assaults - I can't stand watching his shit films because I find them so badly one-sided. There were a lot of half-presented facts cleverly worded that lead to others that left me wondering a lot more, like the bottle to the head of the poor kid by someone else. The reporter can do whatever they want, and this is a sad indictment on many things in our society, but it really just boiled down to court-documents, a couple interviews with people who are pretty much all unsympathetic to Remy (which is basically everyone but still it continues to paint the same picture) and an unspoken vibe of continual wrongdoing. The point that Remy is a piece of shit is spot on. But apart from running through court dates, I don't see anything in the article beyond that.
 
I posted about not excusing people but I also don't want to believe in a blame world. I wonder why people would have thought it mattered if he did 3 to 6 months before being released on bail 13 years ago instead of doing home detention/curfew stuff? The article veers a few ways and, like most things like this that are essentially just court docs and interviews, never bothers to wonder if doing the time would have made a difference. The picture of Remy is one of a bad person out of control. Would jail time have 'scared him straight?' I doubt it. I think it's clear incarceration only acts as a deterrent to those in the community most inclined to have the empathy of not committing crimes in the first place. Remy is not one such. I note a lot of people focusing on that in this thread and that's ok. But I guess I wonder why it would have mattered? A bigger world view on that make me wonder how we as a society can do things to have these people - fringe criminals who aren't committing crimes big enough to be sent away for a long time (until now, very sadly and almost inevitably) - brought back to society. I don't necessarily think the courts did anything wrong there.
 
I also don't share the 'enabler' view outright. It's clear the Remy's kept Jared Remy financed but to what end. I don't see them as mustache twirling villains. I see them as parents. I dismiss immediately comments like 'If this was my son he'd have been on his own 15 years ago' as valid opinions but not those I think I could ever listen to. For a couple reasons. The first being unemotional - that of the ideal where we can do things to move in a long-term direction on the idea of unsocial members of our world. Removing bad people from our family does not remove them from society. Instead it casts them into society without any guiding stability, whatever level that takes. A Jared Remy without family is possibly a Jared Remy who does not get to kill Martell but only possibly because he kills someone 12 years earlier. Secondly, emotionally - I think it is, at a base level, objectively admirable when a family tries to 'help' (being the operative word) someone who is like this - a deplorable, horrible person who skirts close to serious crime. If not for those few who a) can stay relatively close to the scumbag but, more importantly, b) have any reason to actually do so, what then?  I used the word objectively because I say this at a base level and it's always then worthwhile looking at the actual assistance. Two things, for instance, horrify me in the way they acted, and those are the two references to the Remy's suing for custody of the children. Not only do the simple references in the story to that happening stand out as sickening fuck-you's to the families involved, they paint the Remy's very much as truly bad people. Still, there's no more info on those two things than presented - yet again an example of the reporter quoting unsympathetic court docs and little else.
 
I don't see getting a job at Fenway Security as, necessarily, a priveledge... I see, partially, a father getting his son an actual job to make him work. There's undoubtedly far more to that story, though again it's clearly presented here as yet one more priviledge provided to a person who has had too many chances, but this all falls into a zone where Jared Remy - still clearly a piece of shit asshole - may have been in the 7-8 year period where he lived at home with his girlfriend raising a daughter with no domestic abuse charges laid. I know we all love Fenway and want to work there but if this is Jared Remy the owner of shitty chain restaurants (pretty close to true!) and the kid gets a job as a doorman? I dunno. I guess I try and see how this is the sort of thing I actually want to happen. I want people to have to actually do a job within the community. I hope this leads to actual responsible behaviour. It seemed for several years maybe it did in this case. If having family connections provide the job gets the job - and we're not talking being put into the Front Office as an unpaid not-an-actual-job job, but an actual job where he had to do things and get paid for it - I don't really care. I mean, also because I am more than a little aware this happens everywhere. People's dads always get them jobs.
 
He sucks. I don't like Jerry Remy's commentary. I don't want to him to keep his job because I think he sucks at it. But I really do want to be in a place where people who are horrible aren't abandoned. And on one level I can see where the Remy's have probably experienced as much hell at the hands of Jared Remy (and, by the sounds of it, his horrible siblings) as others. This is really just a bad story. I wish this article had been better than a court doc/interview piece. I wish Martell hadn't died. I don't think it was inevitable someone was going to die at Jared Remy's hands, that indicates certainty. And certainty is bad. Nothing is black and white except that Blacken is a jerk.

 

[Blacken]

:buddy:

 

[benhogan]

If'n you want to contact NESN, you can e-mail sports@nesn.com or write, call, fax to them at:
 
NESN 480 Arsenal Street, Building #1 Watertown, MA 02472 Phone: 1-617-536-9233 FAX: 1-617-536-7814

Read more at: http://nesn.com/contact/

thank you.
 
A fan for 40 yrs and I'll be watching the games on the opposing teams telecast via DISH.
 
I'm off NESN till Remy is out, as plain and simple as that.

 

[SydneySox]

:buddy:

  

 

[genivive]

I've heard, phrased nearly identically, this so many times in the last couple days from people so suspiciously congruent with your political views that I'm curious where this has been seeded.
 
?? I don't think of myself as liberal but I came to the same conclusion.  The courts, the professionals with no emotional ties, failed.  Period.

 

[Rovin Romine]

 
Look, I agree with most of what you have been writing on this topic, but you lose me here.  In fact, I think you're being more than a little disingenuous.
 
The part that makes it hard to untangle the two events is that we only found out about the full extent of Remy's record because Martell was killed.  But if I had discovered what Jared Remy's record had looked like in 2004, you can be damn sure that I'd want him put away.  You know, before he eventually killed someone.
 
As to the second bolded part, when we consider that Remy eventually did kill a woman - an act that appears to have been as inevitable as the sun rising - it seems self-evidently nonsensical to the point of being offensive to ask "where's the harm that came from probation?"  Because while neither of us will ever be able to prove causality, I can say with near-100% certainty that if he had received jail time instead of probation it couldn't have made the situation worse. 

 
There have been some other responses along this line, but I'll just respond to AV's post. 
 
I think the thing that's getting lost is that Remy had a long string of violence free years between his last period of probation and when he snapped and killed Martel.  
 
So, it's not "inevitable" that he was going to kill anyone in 2004, and you can't lock up individuals forever (or otherwise permanently remove them from society) based on what Remy was initially alleged to have done.  Like Rev and Sydney and others have pointed out, the issue of deterrence through punishment is tricky.  A month in jail, a year in jail, most likely wouldn't have helped his anger issues. 
 
I understand that unfair application of the law upsets people on principle.  It upsets me.  But we're not even certain that happened here.

 

[Catch55]

 
 But we're not even certain that happened here.

This needs to be reiterated.

 

[Dogman]

 
There have been some other responses along this line, but I'll just respond to AV's post. 
 
I think the thing that's getting lost is that Remy had a long string of violence free years between his last period of probation and when he snapped and killed Martel.  
 
So, it's not "inevitable" that he was going to kill anyone in 2004, and you can't lock up individuals forever (or otherwise permanently remove them from society) based on what Remy was initially alleged to have done.  Like Rev and Sydney and others have pointed out, the issue of deterrence through punishment is tricky.  A month in jail, a year in jail, most likely wouldn't have helped his anger issues. 
 
I understand that unfair application of the law upsets people on principle.  It upsets me.  But we're not even certain that happened here.

 
The article flat out states Remy admitted to arresting officers that he abused one of his girlfriends by breaking her nose.  There are also 9 different documented incidents of Remy in court vis a vis girlfriend abuse. There is pictorial evidence of more than one. There is also a number of people that have stated that Remy made death threats on countless occasions to girlfriends and others and those threats have been corroborated by former friends of Remy.
 
Really, who gives a shit that there was 8 years between abuses.  Martel brings the count to 9 girls continuously abused over an approximate 15 year period.
 
Abuse, released with little to no punishment, death threats.  Repeat.
 
This time he completed the cycle.  
 
Stop using the word alleged. 

 

[curly2]

 
.  A month in jail, a year in jail, most likely wouldn't have helped his anger issues..

 
It might have made him at least TRY to resolve those issues. His quote in the story to one of the many people he was abusing/intimidating was "I always win."
 
The quote was listed once, but it might have been a philosophy he lived by, at least from 1998-2005. He ALWAYS skated on everything he did, so there was no compelling reason - other than simple human decency, which he seemed to have none of - for him to change.
 
If a judge had sent him to the cooler for 30 days, and he knew the next time would get him sent away for longer, MAYBE he actually makes an attempt to change.

 

[yep]

 
...A month in jail, a year in jail, most likely wouldn't have helped his anger issues. ..

Respectfully, I think using the phrase "anger issues" is kind of deliberately missing the redwood tree for the cedar forest. I don't think anyone here is especially concerned with curing Remy's "anger issues", or lamenting that he missed out on the therapeutic benefits of jail-time. The complaint is that a man with a star-spangled history of violence against women and murderous threats eventually finished the job.
 
You were making sound and insightful arguments when you were unpacking the ways in which legal procedures can sometimes produce outcomes that do not obviously jibe with common-sense hindsight. But if you're now making the case that Jennifer Martel would still be dead regardless of whether he had ever faced real and proportionate consequences... I think that's playing pure make-pretend. It's a science-fiction argument, or a mystical one.
 
He left a trail a mile wide of violence and murderous threats, and was caught multiple times, and there was never any substantive penalty for the abuse and brutality that he routinely applied for years. To say that the law was never properly equipped to do anything about that is one thing, but to argue that it wouldn't have made any difference if there had been real consequences earlier... speculation is too generous a word. 

 

[Myt1]

The two aren't distinct issues. He's saying that, even if the maximum consequences available under the status quo were imposed, it not only doesn't necessarily follow that Remy wouldn't have killed somebody; it isn't a particularly reasonable assumption that him not killing someone was more likely than not as a result of those consequences.

 

[SydneySox]

Yeah.
 
Also, in case you care Myt1, I was gonna use you as my black/white jerk but decided just to go for the low hanging fruit with Blacken.

 

[yep]

The two aren't distinct issues. He's saying that, even if the maximum consequences available under the status quo were imposed, it not only doesn't necessarily follow that Remy wouldn't have killed somebody; it isn't a particularly reasonable assumption that him not killing someone was more likely than not as a result of those consequences.

Understood and agreed, 100%. 
 
My objection is to the implicit assumption of the counter-factual to your double-negative postulate. Specifically that it is no more accurate to say: 
 

Even if the maximum consequences available under the status quo were not imposed, it not only doesn't necessarily follow that Remy wouldn't have not killed somebody; it isn't a particularly reasonable assumption that him not killing someone was more less likely than not as a result of those consequences.

 
Because that is actually exactly what happened. And to be clear, you could add more "nots" to the above statement, and re-reverse the conditional and subjunctive to mean the opposite, and I'd still agree with it, and so on. Because in plain terms, what we are agreeing on is that if something in past had been different, then the present might still be essentially the same, or different. And so we end up with a kind of Schrodinger's Jennifer Martel, who is either alive or dead in this hypothetical thought-experiment, and we don't actually know until we go back in time and open the box. 
 
But unfortunately for Jennifer, the box is open, and she's dead. 
 
Maybe in do-over world, Jared Remy was cut off from family funds, went to jail, had to try and dig himself out of his own hole, and he still kills her. I've never been especially good at predicting imaginary futures for alternate-universe scenarios, but if I had to bet, I'd bet that alternate-universe Jared Remy, ex-con, cut off from gym, steroid, apartment, and cell-phone money from home, cut off of perfunctory nepotistic Red Sox jobs... I'd bet that Jared Remy never even gets a date with Jennifer Martel.
 
But as I said earlier, once we start the game of make-pretend, anybody can make up anything, so who knows? In the world where people are made of meat and fragile bone, Jared Remy was caught repeatedly for violence and murderous threats, never faced any real consequences, got cushy privileges from his family, brushed off repeated arrests with glib statements of dismissal to the cops, and then (allegedly) killed the mother of his daughter immediately after being released on personal recognizance, for a domestic assault that had occurred the day before.
 
Maybe if he had been kept in jail he would have put a hit on her. Who can say? In the land of make-believe, anything is possible. 

 

[redsahx]

There's far more evidence that Phoebe Remy took an active role in putting Martell in danger than there is that Remy was suffering from some severe mental illness. Enough with the crutch.

 
Who are you saying I am using the crutch for? I am not asking for people to take it easy on Jared. I was saying some people need to pump the brakes on the idea that if Jared was their kid, they would have known how to straighten him out. There is a history dating back to Jared's early teen years of him receiving professional help for various emotional issues. We still also get the occasional posts from people insisting that somehow Jared and his siblings must have learned their violent behavior from their parents, which is lazy uninformed and irresponsible conjecture.
 
 

Not funding high priced lawyers for 20 arrests over 15 years would be a start.

Enabling the mentally ill for 15 years while they're beating women and men is not a solid decision

Cutting him off may not have changed the outcome but wouldn't enable it for 15 years.

 
I am even less comfortable with the idea of capable parents throwing a mentally unstable kid to the streets to fend for himself, than I am providing him with some support structure. The former essentially just makes him everyone else's problem and serves only to have the parents pretend they are wiping their hands clean. There is plenty of room for second guessing Jerry and Phoebe, but I don't think the fact that they got him a job and provided him with the family lawyer is necessarily an unreasonable amount of support for parents to give in those situations, nor do I think it is an indication that they weren't serious about trying to fix Jared. FWIW I agree that it doesn't seem very reasonable that he was able to get as many lenient rulings in his favor as he did, but that is a separate issue.
 

 
No. Normal people don't assume that everything in this world is absolute. What I, at least am suggesting is that if the Remys refused to help Jared, he'd be more likely to face a stiff penalty where maybe he learns something and at the very least he's off the street for a while. If the Remys don't pay the legal fees. If they don't agree to have him in their house on ankle-bracelet probation. If they do assure Martel or the previous women, that they won't their support--either financial or child care help--if she reports and testifies against Jared, then maybe Jared spends a month in jail and maybe he gets into a program where he can get off the roids and get his tempter under control and maybe, just maybe, not be a violent thug.

 
His problems predate steroids though, so I'm not sure that's a solution, but I agree he should have gotten more jail time than he did along the way. Again I can't fault them for simply providing him with a good lawyer, especially when they were also seeking professional help for his issues. If they were simply providing him lawyers and acting like nothing was wrong otherwise, then I'd be placing more blame on them.

 

[redsahx]

 
But unfortunately for Jennifer, the box is open, and she's dead. 
 
Maybe in do-over world, Jared Remy was cut off from family funds, went to jail, had to try and dig himself out of his own hole, and he still kills her. I've never been especially good at predicting imaginary futures for alternate-universe scenarios, but if I had to bet, I'd bet that alternate-universe Jared Remy, ex-con, cut off from gym, steroid, apartment, and cell-phone money from home, cut off of perfunctory nepotistic Red Sox jobs... I'd bet that Jared Remy never even gets a date with Jennifer Martel.
 

 
I think you are missing the point. It certainly is more than likely that Remy never meets Martel if not for his father setting him up with the job at Fenway, because according to the Globe article that is where he met her in the first place. However, Jared had run-ins with several other people in his life, and the point is he was likely to keep finding others if not Martel. He had already threatened to kill two previous girlfriends and other various acquaintances over the years. So what happens to the other people he was bound to run into?
 
Had he gone to jail for a few months, or a few more times, he comes out, struggles to find work, strikes up some new relationships, and likely those involve various violent encounters. Perhaps we get lucky and those all fall short of murder. Either way this sequence of events spares Jennifer Martel, but I struggle to see how it results in the rehab of Jared Remy, nor how it doesn't simply put others in the dangerous position of crossing paths with him. I think that was RRs point, that prison by itself was not likely to address all of his underlying issues, and he wasn't going to be there forever.

 

[yep]

 
...Either way this sequence of events spares Jennifer Martel, but I struggle to see how it results in the rehab of Jared Remy...

Jared Remy's hypothetical rehabilitation under alternate circumstances is not really much of a priority to me, since he clearly wasn't rehabilitated by the actual circumstances. It's pretty hard for me to imagine alternate life-trajectories for Jared Remy that end in significantly worse scenarios for everyone involved than murdering the mother of his child, but who knows? Maybe the family support and lax consequences saved us all from something worse.

 

[twibnotes]

Imagine if 3 years ago a story came out that Jerry Remy refused to help his son anymore. No more car payments, no more legal assistance, no more anything. Then Jared goes and does something violent. Half of sosh would be ripping Jerry Remy for turning his back on his son and making him an even bigger threat to society.

 

[nattysez]

The argument that Remy is being vilified for not "turning his back on his son" is a bit of a straw man.
 
After reading Sunday's article, please remember (from page 2 of this thread) that
 

Patty Martel said her daughter did not press to renew the restraining order at the request of the Remy family. Jennifer had spoken to Remy’s mother, who begged her not to file any kind of complaint because it would ruin Remy’s life; she also told Jennifer they would protect her, Patty Martel said
 

 

[Average Reds]

The two aren't distinct issues. He's saying that, even if the maximum consequences available under the status quo were imposed, it not only doesn't necessarily follow that Remy wouldn't have killed somebody; it isn't a particularly reasonable assumption that him not killing someone was more likely than not as a result of those consequences.

 
This is true, of course, and I admitted as much in my previous post.  We can all have our opinions, but projecting the future in alternative scenarios as if we had definitive knowledge of how changing one variable would make an impact is a fools game.
 
But putting all of this aside, there's the issue of punishment for its own sake, which you raised as well.  This cretin needed to be behind bars because that would have been a just punishment.  I can't say if a dose of incarceration or two would have changed him, but that's not a legitimate reason to have allowed him to walk free.

 

[rundugrun]

Imagine if 3 years ago a story came out that Jerry Remy refused to help his son anymore. No more car payments, no more legal assistance, no more anything. Then Jared goes and does something violent. Half of sosh would be ripping Jerry Remy for turning his back on his son and making him an even bigger threat to society.

I don't necessarily agree. Parents would not be held responsible for a 30+ year old son's actions. I know of a few parents who have "cut off" assistance when it was apparent that the funds were being used irresponsibly. If Mommy and Daddy stopped funding his lifestyle, and Jared had to live within his limited means, I suspect he ends up in jail a lot and instead of abusing women, is simply trying to find a way to make money and pay the rent. No assistance from Jerry and there are no steroids, no cars, no nice apartments, no Red Sox security guard jobs... and no Jennifer Martel.

 

[MyDaughterLovesTomGordon]

Listening to Martell's friend yesterday on Mutt and Lou was incredibly damning.

Martell was moving on, looking to get away from Jared, and Phoebe badgered and cajoled her into basically "giving him another chance."

She looked to Phoebe as a mother figure, but it's pretty clear whose interests the Remys had in focus.

 

[Traut]

Good column by Kirk Minihane on weei.com
 

It's absurd to claim that someone should lose his job simply because of the misdeeds of an adult son. 
 
But it's time for Jerry Remy to leave NESN. 
 
Why? Well, television is different. Entertainment is different. These guys are held to a different standard -- not higher, but different. We watch to get away from this stuff, not to be sucked into the middle of it. If Jerry Remy were a high school teacher or worked at the post office, he'd never lose his job over this. But it's going to be an impossibly tough sell for NESN to put Remy on TV night after night with what we now know. 
 

 

No misguided arguments about general and specific deterrence.
 
As far as the legal stuff goes, the system absolutely failed citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Much of the commentary that I've read focuses on hiring "the best lawyers" but I think that misses the point. In the scope of things, there are thousands of lawyers in the Commonwealth who could do as well as any other lawyer on the relatively garden variety shit Remy was charged with.
 
Where money really wins the day is outside of court. If I have a client with near limitless resources, I can hire excellent investigators and great experts. I can send my client into the best rehab facility on the planet. I can hire good shrinks. My clients, as in this case, also have the resources to directly or indirectly influence accusers and witnesses. 
 
And I think this is where the Red Sox and NESN have to cut ties with Remy. Their influence is part of this story. There's no civil liability on the part of NESN or the Red Sox. Yet from a public relations perspective, the right thing to do is cut the Remy family off from the Sox tit.

 

[Andy Merchant]

When I first read this article I figured Jerry was done as a Red Sox broadcaster, but I'm starting to think I was terribly naive:

1. I went to a restaurant next to Jerry Remy's in Fall River on Sunday after the article came out. I won't dine at Remy's because I don't want to financially support Jared's defense, but the parking lot there was jammed yet there was no wait at the (IMO much nicer) restaurant next door.

2. Jerry is already back on NESN yucking it up with Don.

3. A conversation Mrs. Merchant (MM) had with a co-worker (CW) yesterday:

MM: Did you read the Jared Remy article in the paper yesterday?
CW: Yes I did.
MM: I don't see how he could possibly continue broadcasting games for the Red Sox.
CW: Why? He'll get a huge standing ovation when the regular season starts.
MM: His constant enabling and protecting of his son contributed to the murder of that poor girl. Isn't it in poor taste for him to be goofing around on TV and shilling stuff?
CW: But Jerry didn't murder anybody.

 

[redsahx]

Jared Remy's hypothetical rehabilitation under alternate circumstances is not really much of a priority to me, since he clearly wasn't rehabilitated by the actual circumstances. It's pretty hard for me to imagine alternate life-trajectories for Jared Remy that end in significantly worse scenarios for everyone involved than murdering the mother of his child, but who knows? Maybe the family support and lax consequences saved us all from something worse.

 
That's fine but we're all given the benefit of hindsight now. I was trying to present the possible perspective of the Remy's before all of this, and how it's not reasonable to state that they should have known they were choosing a more dangerous path for him at that time. If the choices were
A) Get him a job, provide family support for him and hope he grows out of his problems
or
B) Kick him to the curb, let him spend some more time in jail and ignore him when he comes out 
 
I'm not sure why B should have been considered the obvious solution from their viewpoint as far as what was going to spare society and protect others. You may not care about rehab, but their decision process would have been based on their best guess as far as how they might be able to rehabilitate a twenty-something year old son considering he was something they were going to be dealing with the rest of their lives. I'm sure Jerry and Phoebe have been second-guessing themselves pretty harshly, but I don't believe their intentions were poor. I do think Phoebe's reasoning and apparent actions those final two days make no sense, and I'd like to know why Jared's sister was able to detect how dangerous the situation was but not the mother. However, if you are going to criticize their handling of Jared in the prior years up to that point, I don't see how you can say that his hypothetical rehab is pointless, as all decisions are made with a hypothetical outcome in mind.

 

[JGray38]

I think the point is that that they chose A. Then they chose A again. And again, and again, etc. You're framing it as one decision, when it was the same decision made many times over. Most people get to choose A once, if that. How many times can you choose A before B becomes the option?

 

[Myt1]

This is true, of course, and I admitted as much in my previous post.  We can all have our opinions, but projecting the future in alternative scenarios as if we had definitive knowledge of how changing one variable would make an impact is a fools game.
 
But putting all of this aside, there's the issue of punishment for its own sake, which you raised as well.  This cretin needed to be behind bars because that would have been a just punishment.  I can't say if a dose of incarceration or two would have changed him, but that's not a legitimate reason to have allowed him to walk free.

Definitely. And I agree with yep's stuff, too. Romaine is typically very precise with his language on things like this and I was just trying to point out the shading.

It might be my own bias, but I have less of a problem with the Remys hiring good lawyers and supporting their son financially and more of a problem with the totality of the circumstances:

1. Out of three kids, they raised one monster and two others with violence issues.

2. They enabled all three, at least according to Remy's own evaluation of raiding them.

3. At least Phoebe intervened in this situation in a manner that probably materially increased the danger to Martel.

4. From my own experience with these issues and dynamics, I thinks it's quite unlikely that this was the first such successful intervention, by the family, which is an even more damning enabling behavior.

5. After their monster of a son murdered the mother of his child, they sought custody despite the fact that they're below the Mendoza line on child rearing.

. . .

97. When their son was at the mercy of the justice system, they got him the best help money could buy on a pretty vanilla legal matter.

 

[singaporesoxfan]

 
I don't really buy this, absent Martel's death.  They're sort of hard to untangle.  Are people really upset that in 2004 (or whenever) a judge put somebody on probation instead of putting them in jail for 30 days?  Or are people upset because a woman died, and they think that had things been handled differently, she might not have died?   I think it's the latter.
 
I'm not saying it's wrong to desire equal enforcement of the laws, but where's the harm that came from probation, vis a vis those older cases?  Would this even be an issue if Remy had simply continued as he was without killing anyone?

I think that's where we have the disconnect. You ask where's the harm from the earlier probation; my question is where's the punishment for those cases? And I can't speak for others but if I had known that Jared Remy had done what he did in the earlier cases (at least as detailed in the article, and so far no one seems to be disputing what he did), and I knew the kind of punishment he received and the lack of contrition, I would have been angry that he apparently got off easy and been angry that the Sox hired him.

Note that I'm not saying he got off easy necessarily to indict anyone or to say that there were flaws in the legal handling of the case. It could be that there were faults in how he was prosecuted, it could be a failure to have the right kinds of laws put in place, or it could be inherent in the difficulty of prosecuting domestic violence cases. But there was I feel a moral failure to punish Jared Remy adequately.

 

[Jnai]

5. After their monster of a son murdered the mother of his child, they sought custody despite the fact that they're below the Mendoza line on child rearing.
 

 
Everything else here is horrible, but this is the true WTF. This almost reads like the old Yiddish definition of chutzpah, in which a child who murders his parents pleads for mercy from the court because he's an orphan.