Montana’s Supreme Court is aiming to block the order of one judge’s verdict who denied the re-sentencing of a former teacher accused of raping a 14 year old female student, who committed suicide while the case was pending. Hit the the jump for the full story!
Court officials are heavily criticizing the decisions of one judges verdict on the freedom of a teacher in a suspected rape crime.
54 year old former Billings teacher Stacey Rambold was accused of the rape of his then student, 14 year old Cherice Moralez. The victim committed suicide while the case was pending in 2010. During Rambold’s arraignment case on August 26th, a heavily criticized Judge G Todd Baugh stated in the defense of Rambold, that the victim was “older than her chronological age.”
The judge seemed to place the blame on prosecutors for the initial sentence and stated that they did not immediately state objections while the verdict was being held.
“Less than an hour before the hearing was to begin, the high court ordered Baugh to cancel it and enter a written sentence for Rambold so the appeal process could proceed”
The former teacher is scheduled to be released after completing his 30 day sentence at the end of October.
“He took no responsibility, no ownership. He blamed the state, blamed the prosecutor,” said Marian Bradley, president of the Montana National Organization for Women. She said his earlier comments “tell women it’s not OK to step forward, because even if you do, you could be knocked down by a judge.”
