Samson Dubina sexual assault case

[NetProphet]

After reading through all this my intuition tells me that something did happen. There wasn't enough to build a strong case of more serious charges so the state and the defendant took what they could and settled on a lesser charge.

Which means that he does have questionable character. Would I take my child or anyone to him for coaching. No way.....

Yeah I think the same as regards leaving my child with him, I also wouldn't.
My frustration is the 'guilty until proven innocent' mindset that several posters seem to have. And the inference that he has pleaded guilty to a greater charge is confusing, what charge is greater than sexual assault of a minor.
I'll just have to blame the farcical bargaining justice system and the guilty first mindset in society.
I think this entire episode shows the damage this combination causes, evident from the 2 sides posting in here, those wishing they knew more and those wishing we'd all just believe their version of events.
In the end it's all just sad and (I think nextlevel said it a few posts back) be very damn careful about who you trust with your children!

 

[Truth]

Then that means that even though we don't know anything, you and a few others are (it seems) hell bent on convincing everyone that he's guilty of something heinous, which in all likelihood he is not.
It's a lot of conjecture.
Does anyone know what he's actually done?
I'll have to assume not.

You may want to study the police report. There has to be an investigation and grand jury ruling before an indictment and an arrest can be made. And note that two different minors were victimized. Why would you say he "in all likelihood is not". guilty of a crime? 90% of all cases in America end in a plea bargain. It's not what you see on TV. The news media had no problem concluding that he was guilty. Why would he put out such a confident email less than a week before the case accusing the victims of lying and promising his followers that "the truth will come out" etc. etc. only to take a plea deal? I say they called his bluff and his "game strategy" failed miserably. Additionally, why would people just suddenly "have it out for Samson" for no reason? Your idea that people would just spread damaging misinformation so casually reeks of a conspiracy theory. Or if not that, deep denial that seemingly "nice people" in a positions of trust and leadership, actually DO commit these sorts of crimes.

 

[NextLevel]

You may want to study the police report. There has to be an investigation and grand jury ruling before an indictment and an arrest can be made. And note that two different minors were victimized. Why would you say he "in all likelihood is not". guilty of a crime. 90% of all cases in America end in a plea bargain. It's not what you see on TV. The news media had no problem concluding that he was guilty. Why would he put out such a confident email less than a week before the case accusing the victims of lying and promising his followers that "the truth will come out" etc. etc. only to plead guilty in a plea deal? I say they called his bluff and his "game strategy" failed miserably.

Then why not find him guilty of the original charges to make it fully transparent that he is a sex offender? Why the plea deal? What does that prove since that specific accusation has nothing about sex tied to it and the details are opaque? And since the police report is related to a crime that is not the one he is charged for, we are left to make links that are reasonable but are not conclusive.

To put it another way, is he legally a sex offender or not? A yes or no answer would be appreciated.

The point here is not that I seriously disagree with you. The point here is I get tired of your attitude presupposing that you need to tell people how to think about facts that do not necessitate the conclusions you arrive at because you cannot trust people to disagree with you in good faith.

 

[Truth]

Then why not find him guilty of the original charges to make it fully transparent that he is a sex offender? Why the plea deal? What does that prove since that specific accusation has nothing about sex tied to it and the details are opaque? And since the police report is related to a crime that is not the one he is charged for, we are left to make links that are reasonable but are not conclusive.

To put it another way, is he legally a sex offender or not? A yes or no answer would be appreciated.

The point here is not that I seriously disagree with you. The point here is I get tired of your attitude presupposing that you need to tell people how to think about facts that do not necessitate the conclusions you arrive at because you cannot trust people to disagree with you in good faith.

The answer is 'no' he will not be on the sex offender registry. I have tried to present factual information and am generally a patient person, but I find the obtuseness cloaked in "objectivity" here a bit maddening. "Why not find him guilty of the original charges?" Because the prosecutor and defense lawyer made a plea deal for Samson to plead guilty to a different charge of assault. So once the deal was made, the judge cannot legally find him guilty or punish him for the original sex assault charge. The judge doesn't have that kind of power. But if Samson wanted to clear his name, he could have chosen to have the bench trial which was scheduled for that day. He chose not to.

 

[NetProphet]

You may want to study the police report. There has to be an investigation and grand jury ruling before an indictment and an arrest can be made. And note that two different minors were victimized. Why would you say he "in all likelihood is not". guilty of a crime?

I'm not saying he is not guilty of 'A' crime. As usual you have managed to misread or somehow twist what has been said, no surprise there. You don't seem to be able to comprehend anything that doesn't fully tie with your version. And again you follow it up with questions that you don't have the answers to...followed up with what YOU SAY. Thanks for the info I guess but your opinion was already clear.
What's weird is the few ppl trying to convince everyone he did something really awful, when it seems there is no evidence to support what he did or did not do. You perpetrate the guilty first society mindset. Careful, cos whenever you might do anything, that mindset will bite you in the ass!
As Torbozed said early on, there are different degrees of assault, crime and incident.
Learning to read what's written and taking your emotion out of it will make you much easier to take seriously.

 

[NetProphet]

As for trusting the media version of anything. Seriously.
What country do you live in again?
If you trust media for your info you will be continually and deliberately mislead.

 

[Truth]

I'm not saying he is not guilty of 'A' crime. As usual you have managed to misread or somehow twist what has been said, no surprise there. You don't seem to be able to comprehend anything that doesn't fully tie with your version. And again you follow it up with questions that you don't have the answers to...followed up with what YOU SAY. Thanks for the info I guess but your opinion was already clear.
What's weird is the few ppl trying to convince everyone he did something really awful, when it seems there is no evidence to support what he did or did not do. You perpetrate the guilty first society mindset. Careful, cos whenever you might do anything, that mindset will bite you in the ass!
As Torbozed said early on, there are different degrees of assault, crime and incident.
Learning to read what's written and taking your emotion out of it will make you much easier to take seriously.

You said "you and a few others are (it seems) hell bent on convincing everyone that he's guilty of something heinous, which in all likelihood he is not." I'm not sure about you but I'd label any type of a assault against a child from an adult in a position of trust and authority as "heinous". Yes - he was 'innocent until proven guilty'. He pled guilty. No one forced him.

 

[NextLevel]

The answer is 'no' he will not be on the sex offender registry. I have tried to present factual information and am generally a patient person, but I find the obtuseness cloaked in "objectivity" here a bit maddening. "Why not find him guilty fo the original charges?" Because the prosecutor and defense lawyer made a plea deal for Samson to plead guilty to a different charge of assault. So the judge cannot legally find him guilty for the original sex assault charge. The judge doesn't have that kind of power. If Samson wanted to clear his name, he could have chosen to have the trial which was scheduled that day. He chose not to.

The fact that you consider it obtuseness is part of the problem. You agree that he is legally not considered a sex offender but yet you would continue to say that he is guilty of a sexual offense and the newspaper is right to report it as such Who is obtuse for accepting that contradiction, you or those who you accuse of being obtuse?

The main point here is that life is complicated and there is no point pretending that because others are not as animated as you are that they are stupid. Why should a potential sex offender not be on the sex offender registry? To whose benefit is that? If they were willing to allow that, does that mean they are okay with him doing what he did to other people? Yes lots of counsellings and probation and other things, but he is being given a chance to avoid some of the serious consequences of dangerous behavior if he is guilty of something heinous.

The point is not Samson. I have made it clear that *my* position is that I have seen enough not to trust him with my children and to be broadly doubtful of his character. The point is that if you accept he is not legally a sex offender and that the details of what he is precisely guilty of are not public, you cannot take offense when people come to different conclusions using their intelligence. And if you do, please fo not say it is because others are obtuse, it is because your ability to empathize is limited. Probably by righteous anger, but limited regardless.

 

[Truth]

"Why should a potential sex offender not be on the sex offender registry? To whose benefit is that? If they were willing to allow that, does that mean they are okay with him doing what he did to other people?" Good question. Because the justice system - especially when it comes to sex crimes - is deeply flawed. If it weren't for the sex registry as punishment, the only punishment for fondling a minor is up to 60 days in jail and up to a $500 fine - basically a slap on the wrist. See this story on marital rape in Ohio! https://www.nbc4i.com/news/politics/ohio-house-passes-bill-to-end-marital-rape-loophole/

 

[NextLevel]

"Why should a potential sex offender not be on the sex offender registry? To whose benefit is that? If they were willing to allow that, does that mean they are okay with him doing what he did to other people?" Good question. Because the justice system - especially when it comes to sex crimes - is deeply flawed. If it weren't for the sex registry as punishment, the only punishment for fondling a minor is up to 60 days in jail and up to a $500 fine - basically a slap on the wrist. See this story on marital rape in Ohio! https://www.nbc4i.com/news/politics/ohio-house-passes-bill-to-end-marital-rape-loophole/

Sure. So if people do not know that the justice system is deeply flawed or do not agree with you that it is deeply flawed or they think it is flawed for different reasons from you, that is all about being obtuse?

And since according to you, the charge that Dubina pleaded guilty to is far more serious than getting put on the sex offender registry for a third degree misdemeanor sex offense (after all that was one of the consequences of the third degree misdemeanor), you think that others are obtuse for thinking that your touting his conviction on assault as a more serious punishment was even if technically true going by degrees, misleading in terms of ultimate consequences?

You probably know the parties involved better than I do but i did play and meet a lot of people when I used to play a lot more tournament TT in the US. But if you truly are content to lay out the facts, do not waste time calling smart people obtuse for arriving at subtly different conclusions from you based on their wealth of experience.

For example, while the original case report accuses Dubina of dealing with more than one minor, only one minor is discussed throughout the proceedings as far as I can tell. So again, there are things related to this that might involve speculation etc. I am fairly sure that your position, like mine, is influenced by non-public facts, with about the case and about sex crimes in general. Unfortunately, I am just too obtuse to see it exactly the way that you do.

Anyways, I will stop writing too much. Have a good day.

 

[Truth]

By obtuseness, I don't mean it in a personal way. Obviously everyone on here (and most people who play TT) have pretty high IQs. I was referring to the rigidly objective criteria that is being used by some to determine whether Samson actually did "anything really serious" versus using a bit of intuition and historical legal context about the reporting and prosecution of sex crimes in the US in order to read between the lines. And I'll stop talking too much as well.

 

[Jslick89]

For me, it's clear something did happen. I don't know exactly what happened, but something wrong did occur. Like nextlevel said, i would not trust my own kid around the guy. In fact, anyone who has assaulted a minor, whether physically or sexually, should not be coaching minors.

For me, it does not really matter if he is classified as a sexual offender or not.. It is fair to say he did one or more very wrong things...things we may never know exactly what happened. Sucks because from the videos ive seen of him on youtube, he seemed nice enough, but that just goes to show you can never truly know the character of a person. Maybe he made a series of bad choices, or maybe he had more sinister intent. Who knows?

It does seem like he took a guilty plea deal as the "path of least resistance". Sucks that we may never know exactly what happened, but we at least know enough to protect our loved ones.

 

[NetProphet]

You said "you and a few others are (it seems) hell bent on convincing everyone that he's guilty of something heinous, which in all likelihood he is not." I'm not sure about you but I'd label any type of a assault against a child from an adult in a position of trust and authority as "heinous". Yes - he was 'innocent until proven guilty'. He pled guilty. No one forced him.

There's the difference then. I would have a different threshold for use of the word heinous. To me it means extreme evil, but check dictionary definition of you want, maybe I'm wrong.
And yes he had plead guilty, but to WHAT?? Do you not get this part?
TO WHAT? THAT IS THE QUESTION.
I'll stop now because you are clearly angry and emotional about all of this and I'm not here to stir your pot. I was actually trying to find out/understand what happened, what he was charged with and what he has been found guilty of.

 

[dingyibvs]

Then why not find him guilty of the original charges to make it fully transparent that he is a sex offender? Why the plea deal? What does that prove since that specific accusation has nothing about sex tied to it and the details are opaque? And since the police report is related to a crime that is not the one he is charged for, we are left to make links that are reasonable but are not conclusive.

To put it another way, is he legally a sex offender or not? A yes or no answer would be appreciated.

The point here is not that I seriously disagree with you. The point here is I get tired of your attitude presupposing that you need to tell people how to think about facts that do not necessitate the conclusions you arrive at because you cannot trust people to disagree with you in good faith.

The police report certainly does seem to be related to the one he was charged with, but not with the one he pled guilty to. Regardless, with a police report like that, ain't nobody's sending their kids to train with him.

 

[NextLevel]

The police report certainly does seem to be related to the one he was charged with, but not with the one he pled guilty to. Regardless, with a police report like that, ain't nobody's sending their kids to train with him.

The thing is that with a plea deal, there is no new police report so to speak. We are all smart enough to read between the lines, but the problem is that the need to read between the lines will not help people who are just taking things mostly at face value. Though since I am going through Safesport Compliance now, the charge is enough to end his coaching career of minors period, as jslick alluded to.

 

[Jslick89]

The thing is that with a plea deal, there is no new police report so to speak. We are all smart enough to read between the lines, but the problem is that the need to read between the lines will not help people who are just taking things mostly at face value. Though since I am going through Safesport Compliance now, the charge is enough to end his coaching career of minors period, just jslick alluded to.

i'm safe sport certified as a youth basketball/soccer official. It's actually a really great training. They HIGHLY stress that you should NEVER be alone with a minor in any circumstance. That is to protect both the minor AND you.

 

[RefereeNumber2]

There seems to be ongoing confusion about how the justice/legal system works.

You don't walk into a courtroom charged with sexual assault of a minor and come out convicted of an unrelated speeding violation. The purpose of the criminal justice system is to determine which (if any) criminal laws have been violated in the course of a given act -- an act which is specified in the case. Since a particular act can simultaneously violate multiple laws, there may be some discretion on the part of prosecution in determining which crimes (i.e., laws which have potentially been violated) to charge somebody with. This is a dimension on which plea deals are often made, and is clearly what happened in this case.

The criminal act which Dubina committed was viewed by prosecutors as potentially having violated several laws: one against sexual imposition of a minor, and one against assault (and possibly others). But the act in question is one and the same. In the course of reaching a plea deal, the prosecutor and Dubina agreed that he would plead guilty to the charge of assault, in exchange for not being charged with sexual imposition. This type of deal is a common occurrence, and it makes sense why it happened: Dubina gets to avoid a trial (and the accompanying costs and risks to him -- so we can infer these were rather serious) and the prosecutor gets a conviction and now can spend his/her time working on other cases.

Whether this is true "justice" or not is perhaps an interesting question, but I don't think it's very relevant on this forum. The criminal justice system's job is to determine whether an individual deserves the rights of a free member of society, and there is a high bar of evidence and procedure required in order to take away someone's freedom. That determination is not one any of us are equipped to make, at least in our capacity as forum-posters.

What we can do is determine how we treat and view Dubina, not in terms of his right to be a free person, but as a TT coach, community-member, player, etc. In my opinion, whether he is technically a "convicted sexual offender" is not only a mostly pointless semantic exercise, but is basically irrelevant to the action any of us can actually take. As others have pointed out, everyone is free to make their own private judgments of him, and I would add people are should also be free to share their opinions of him as long as it doesn't violate other forum rules. I'm writing this because it seems important that people here have a clear picture of the facts in order to form that opinion -- and there are a lot of posts which (to me) seem to be confusing/incomplete/inaccurate portrayals of the facts which might easily mislead somebody who is not familiar with the US criminal justice system.

 

[NextLevel]

i'm safe sport certified as a youth basketball/soccer official. It's actually a really great training. They HIGHLY stress that you should NEVER be alone with a minor in any circumstance. That is to protect both the minor AND you.

Yep, I was compliant as a coach/umpire a few years ago and will return to compliance shortly. It's part of the reason why looking at the whole thing, any accusation itself is hard to make stick if the accused took Safesport compliance seriously.

 

[NextLevel]

There seems to be ongoing confusion about how the justice/legal system works.

You don't walk into a courtroom charged with sexual assault of a minor and come out convicted of an unrelated speeding violation. The purpose of the criminal justice system is to determine which (if any) criminal laws have been violated in the course of a given act -- an act which is specified in the case. Since a particular act can simultaneously violate multiple laws, there may be some discretion on the part of prosecution in determining which crimes (i.e., laws which have potentially been violated) to charge somebody with. This is a dimension on which plea deals are often made, and is clearly what happened in this case.

The criminal act which Dubina committed was viewed by prosecutors as potentially having violated several laws: one against sexual imposition of a minor, and one against assault (and possibly others). But the act in question is one and the same. In the course of reaching a plea deal, the prosecutor and Dubina agreed that he would plead guilty to the charge of assault, in exchange for not being charged with sexual imposition. This type of deal is a common occurrence, and it makes sense why it happened: Dubina gets to avoid a trial (and the accompanying costs and risks to him -- so we can infer these were rather serious) and the prosecutor gets a conviction and now can spend his/her time working on other cases.

Whether this is true "justice" or not is perhaps an interesting question, but I don't think it's very relevant on this forum. The criminal justice system's job is to determine whether an individual deserves the rights of a free member of society, and there is a high bar of evidence and procedure required in order to take away someone's freedom. That determination is not one any of us are equipped to make, at least in our capacity as forum-posters.

What we can do is determine how we treat and view Dubina, not in terms of his right to be a free person, but as a TT coach, community-member, player, etc. In my opinion, whether he is technically a "convicted sexual offender" is not only a mostly pointless semantic exercise, but is basically irrelevant to the action any of us can actually take. As others have pointed out, everyone is free to make their own private judgments of him, and I would add people are should also be free to share their opinions of him as long as it doesn't violate other forum rules. I'm writing this because it seems important that people here have a clear picture of the facts in order to form that opinion -- and there are a lot of posts which (to me) seem to be confusing/incomplete/inaccurate portrayals of the facts which might easily mislead somebody who is not familiar with the US criminal justice system.

This is exactly the kind of post that is offensive - someone making a lot of noise about how ignorant other people are without addressing anything substantive. What about the "act" that Dubina performed made it harmful? Which act is he being convicted of?

In fact, the question of whether he is a convicted sexual offender is not a technical exercise. There are rights and privileges granted to people who are not sexual offenders that are not granted to people who are under the law in many communities.

What you consider confusing or inaccurate portrayals of facts should be quoted and labelled as such. Vague insinuations insult everyone's intelligence.

 

[RefereeNumber2]

This is exactly the kind of post that is offensive - someone making a lot of noise about how ignorant other people are without addressing anything substantive. What about the "act" that Dubina performed made it harmful? Which act is he being convicted of?

In fact, the question of whether he is a convicted sexual offender is not a technical exercise. There are rights and privileges granted to people who are not sexual offenders that are not granted to people who are under the law in many communities.

What you consider confusing or inaccurate portrayals of facts should be quoted and labelled as such. Vague insinuations insult everyone's intelligence.

I was responding to a number of your posts, but it seems like you continue to misunderstand.

You don't get convicted of an act. You get convicted of violating one or multiple laws in the course of an act. The criminal act that Dubina committed was something that prosecutors (having seen the evidence produced from an investigation) believed they could prove in court violated a law against sexual imposition of a minor -- otherwise they would not have charged him with it. They also believed that it violated another law against assault, otherwise they would not have proposed/accepted the plea deal they did.

I think your misunderstanding stems from a belief that the criminal justice system's job is to label criminal acts. That is not what it does, and criminal acts anyways do not fall neatly into clear labels defined by the law. The fact that Dubina plead guilty to assault does not mean he was cleared of sexual imposition. It does not mean that he was convicted of a different "assault" act than the "sexual imposition" act he was initially charged with. It means the act he committed, which he was initially charged with as having violated a law against sexual imposition, was determined through a legal process (plea bargaining) to have violated a different law against assault. I've outlined the reasons the legal process may have worked out like that in my earlier posts.