|
?:reviewBody
|
-
In conjunction with the ongoing conspiracy theory holding that rings of Hollywood elites are engaged in the sex trafficking of minors to pedophiles, a meme started to circulate via social media purportedly documenting the case of a sex offender who won an appeal of his conviction by arguing that pedophiles are a persecuted minority: This was yet another example of a meme that presented some truthful information but was nonetheless deliberately misleading through its failure to provide context for that information. As explained in the underlying news article referenced in the meme, the pictured man is Gary Wolchesky, who in 2016 was convicted of first-degree aggravated sexual assault and related child pornography charges and was sentenced to 46 years in prison. Wolchesky argued (unsuccessfully) during his trial that pedophiles are a persecuted minority, and that the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice wrongfully makes this conduct a crime. It is true that in January 2020 Wolchesky received a favorable ruling from an appellate panel. However, he didn't win an appeal of his conviction, and that ruling had nothing to do with the court's reconsidering the merits of Wolchesky's already rejected argument at trial that pedophiles are victims of discrimination, as the meme falsely suggests. Rather, the appeal was granted on narrow grounds related to Wolchesky's constitutional right to a speedy trial — seven years elapsed between his 2009 arrest and the commencement of his trial in 2016, and a lower court was ordered to examine that issue: In short, no legal precedents related to pedophilia are being set by this case, for Hollywood or anyone else — just the continued application of the Sixth Amendment's guarantee that the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial.
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}