Everything about it is horrible and nothing about it is just. But that said, imo, punishing an innocent by making them spend one day in jail is less horrible than punishing one innocent (or more likely many innocents; the guy has already committed six violent crimes and it's likely that he will keep hurting innocents…

So, she passed the buck and the burden of proof to her new husband? Yeah, I would call for a divorce. You don't want to be put in the potential line of fire but you have no problem putting me in it? That marriage isn't going to last.

I'm not. Notice how it said "In most cases." That denotes most victims don't answer calls purposefully. Jesus. Reading comprehension. I have no idea what they did in this case, and neither does anyone else. I know I never had to resort to this type of material witness warrant when I worked in this field, but…

HOW HAVE I NEVER SEEN THIS FUCKING GIF?!?!?!?!??!

Daniel Radcliffe doesn't have suave magician hair. C'mon. This is obviously life imitating art.

"Why don't younger children try to be more risque?"

Am I getting from your vague comment that you're a defense attorney for spouse abusers?

Your hand is forced as a A.D.A. You are not the boss. If she is a material witness, who brought the case in the first place, she is legally bound to testify. To not do so is to break the law. If she breaks the law, repeatedly, there will be consequences. I do feel terrible for her, this was horrible, and so does…

So is the rapist supposed to walk free? She came to us to prosecute the case, that's what happens. The law literally cannot prosecute it without her. If the law allowed material witnesses to say they don't feel like it, no one would go to jail. Most cases are not ended with CSI, but material witness testimony.

Feel free to be ridiculously unreasonable and expect the world to cower at your feet because you want it to.

I am actually disgusted with the level of entitlement in this thread and in these comments. There should be NO responsibility of the victim to cooperate even though a ridiculous amount of money is being spent…

You're kicking and screaming while not offering any solutions whatsoever. This article and your response doesn't help anyone or anything, it's just whining that the world sucks sometimes. Deal with it.

I'm a criminal defence lawyer, and while I sympathize (absolutely, heartbreakingly) with the victim in this instance, I don't think that the amount of vitriol being thrown at the prosecutor in this case is fair. There is no indication in the article above that the decision to issue the warrant was made lightly or as…

I was going to say, this is just like an episode of law and order. There have been more than one episodes where they arrest the victim to get them to cooperate. I watch SVU religiously. It's on every single night when I go to bed, except for weekends and this week when the stupid olympics screwed everything up.

Thank you. We can have sympathy for her situation, but it's frustrating to read people commenting who have absolutely no idea how the system actually works. What if people just didn't show up to court? It would be anarchy. There have to be safeguards to prevent that.

Do any of you understand what it's like to be a state prosecutor? To have a victim constantly dodge your phone calls because they don't want to deal with it or can't be bothered? If you are subpoenaed, you have a legal obligation to testify, sometimes at pretrial events such as hearings... to not do so is breaking the…

Unfortunately, in the real world there are not unlimited funds to pay for these types of solutions.

A view/rant from the prosecutor's side - material witness warrants are a necessity. This guy was accused of extremely serious crimes that he needs to be held accountable for. There is a massive amount of public interest in prosecuting these offences. If the crime or offender is serious enough and a key witness (victim…

If people don't show up in court, how can they convict the perp?

Olivia Benson is a work of fiction. This is the real justice system. BTW, no one does the forensic lab work like they do in CSI either.