Geoff has had a hot, bright light on him the last week or two, arguing his case on a dozen different fronts.  One of those becomes, "how serious was Lueke's crime?"

Again using a pseudo-roundtable-type format, bouncing off Geoff's reply to SABRMatt:

And that is why I am not about to turn any story about this case into a PR piece about how well Lueke is doing after the fact. It's been less than 10 months since he was sentenced and really isn't relevent when it comes to relaying the severity of his crime to readers. Of course, he probably regrets the whole thing and is on his best behavior. Anything less would be a crazy move by him. But relaying that information does nothing to tell readers about what happened that night.

Had I gone and written 400 words about how much his victim suffered and how her life fell apart, you could try to claim I was jaded. But I haven't done that. In fact, Lueke had more say about being "a good person" in my story than his victim did about anything.

A fair point.  SSI endorses Baker's view that he isn't obligated to "balance" his reporting with positive pieces about Lueke.

And Baker's point weighs heavily here:  he did not wallow in tear-jerking ambience here.  He hasn't demagogued the story, and hasn't appealed to the lowest common denominator. 

His intention has been a fair fight, fought with facts and logic, so fine.

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I don't want to go back and forth on this all day, but I sense a fundamental disconnect between how you want to view this case and how the facts view it. Most importantly, you seem to want us to treat Josh Lueke as being on equal footing with his victim. He is not. ... If an NFL player goes to a Vegas casino, flashes money around, then gets beaten and robbed and left unconscious on the street outside, he does not share equal responsibility with his aggressors. Our law recognized this last year when that very thing happened to an Oakland Raiders player. His attackers are doing hard time.

Another fair point.  The question, however, is whether the Lueke crime is comparable to the casino analogy. 

Analogous to the casino situation, would be if a woman showed up at a bar dressed sleazy -- and then Lueke grabbed her outside the back door, threw her kicking and screaming into his van, drugged her and had intercourse with her.

For the record, so you don't misunderstand my sympathies:  a man who "beat and robbed" a woman, raped her and "left her unconscious on the street outside" would receive the death penalty.  Forget suspension from baseball; why are we even talking about that?  He would be hung by the neck until dead.

Either the casino analogy doesn't apply to Lueke, or we're having the wrong conversation about Lueke.  :- )  But we understand that Baker's using a reductio ad absurdum, to show that the victim isn't equal with the perpetrator.

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Part 2

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