WHY ERIC RIVERA CANNOT BE SENTENCED TO LIFE

Can Judge Murphy legally sentence Eric Rivera to life? 

We say no, attorney David Weinstein says yes. We invited him to present his argument, and we have it here, completely unedited.  You decide. 

Mr. Weinstein, as the guest, goes first. 






Rumpole's argument (which isn't really a response since, believe it or not, we didn't read his argument until after we wrote ours.)





That's more than enough law for this blog for one day. 
Enjoy the weekend. 
The survivors in the survivor pool fight on. We lost one last week. 

See You In Court. 

CAN ERIC RIVERA BE SENTENCED TO LIFE?

On Tuesday, a Miami jury convicted Eric Rivera of second degree murder without a firearm and armed burglary with a battery in the death of football star Sean Taylor. 

A few hours later a bit of a contretemps broke out on Twitter where we averred that Rivera could not be sentenced to life in prison in that he was a juvenile at the time of the crime. On the other side of the argument was attorney David S Weinstein (@davidsweinstein) who also was giving that opinion to the media. 

We treated Mr. Weinstein, a former assistant state attorney and assistant united states attorney  (now in private practice) poorly in our tweets. For that we apologize. Mr. Weinstein justly has a sterling reputation for the work he did as a state and federal prosecutor. To that end, we invited Mr. Weinstein to provide us with his written argument in support of his position. We will provide that argument- unedited,  and our argument that Rivera cannot be sentenced to life, shortly.  Feel free to weigh in before then. 

See You In Court.