I hate people.
Hassan Nagi should not receive a harsh sentence for rapes, Sydney court hears

TAXI driver Hassan Nagi should not receive a harsh sentence for raping three women as he suffered a condition called "Don Juanism" which made him addicted to sex, his barrister said yesterday.

Clive Steirn SC also urged a District Court judge in Sydney to spare the sex predator a "crushing" sentence because he never bashed his victims while he was raping them.

"There was no gratuitous violence. None of the women was physically harmed. It's an important consideration," he said.

The submissions drew gasps from the public gallery, including from two of Nagi's victims. It also earned a rebuke from Judge James Bennett who said: "He doesn't get rewarded for not belting them."

Mr Steirn said Nagi, 37, from Bexley, had been diagnosed with Don Juanism after visiting brothels from the age of 20. The disorder was "a man's equivalent of nymphomania".

Article from February with details of the cases.

I still have no words. I actually Googled this, hoping it wasn't true, which was how I found the earlier article that just increased my RAGE.

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nights_mistress
2009-05-27 09:05 pm UTC (link)

I'm pretty sure he knew it didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding too. You don't get to be Senior Counsel if you're an idiot.

It's his job to make whatever argument he can, regardless of how spurious or deeply offensive he finds it. If his client instructs him "I want you to argue that I deserve a lesser sentence because I never bashed no-one" then he is obliged to argue that because it's his job to be his client's advocate. If barristers were limiting themselves to arguing cases that they believed strongly in, then we'd have a lot of worthy litigants unable to get legal representation because their case is something barristers find uninteresting or morally dubious.

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