They put a fucking 17 YEAR OLD in JAIL for this?!

[9th Engineer]

If the letter of the law is in opposition to the spirit or purpose of the law, then the politicians/lawyers who drafted and signed it are in gross negligence. If we have a law that says that the crime of getting a bj from your underage girlfriend mandates jail time, then the kid gets slammed with jail time and those who disagree go and drag the lawyers away from their shrimp cocktails and tell them to do their job. I'm sick of half-assed laws that get thrown out there with the assumption that other people will change them on the fly according to some ethereal 'spirit' that the law was written in, but does not reflect. You say that the real purpose of the law is protect minors? Then go headhunting for the people who fucked up their job.
If the letter of the law violates the spirit of the law, then the solution is to change the law, not to break it and say "well we don't want to enforce that law anyway".

[tw]

Originally Posted by 9th Engineer

If the letter of the law is in opposition to the spirit or purpose of the law, then the politicians/lawyers who drafted and signed it are in gross negligence.

That assumes extenuating circumstances do not and never exist. To not be grossly negligent, the future must be completely predictable. Clearly, 9th, your assumption is rather naive.

No wonder we don't require people with extensive experience as judges. Since every extenuating circumstance is predictable, then we can replace judges with law clerks. We can fire all those Supreme Court justices in Federal and all States. Wow. Look at how much money can be saved.

Clearly our ancestors were stupid. They did not understand all laws are complete - need no interpretation for extenuating circumstances and other variations. Clearly we have Congressmen so well endowed with brain power as to have thought all this out well in advance. And since people are so smart, then scientists need not do any experiments – they also have made all necessary predictions in advance. Well now we need not risk mankind in risky trips to the unknown - all is predicatable. We even know when the elevator will fail. Clearly we know when the murder will strike. I did not realize we have people so smart.

Meanwhile we don't have a law that specifically defines a blow job as sex. That was someone's interpretation. Law does not list every action that is sex. Clearly grabbing his balls also constitutes sex. I wonder why Congress forgot to make that clear? After all, Congress can predict all possible circumstances. Or were they (as usual) grossly negligent?