I am writing to see if you can help with our justice system. I have a cousin that was accused of criminal sexual misconduct in the 1st and 3rd degree.
Richard Paquin is his name and he was and is being falsly accused by his girlfriends brother of sexually penatrating him since the age of 10yrs old. The victim is now 18yrs of age. Richard had a jury trial and was offered many plea agreements, but never accepted them because he thought the truth would set him free and he also has 2 children that if he would have accepted the plea he would not have been able to have little or no contact with. so he had a jury trial and they found him to be guilty. He is looking at 12+ years and the prosicuter (states Attorney) Dan Maccintosh with held witnesses statments 40 pages to be exact ). So Richards attorney could not even cross examine the states witnesses properly. 1 of the witnesses was allowed to sit in thte court room the entire time of everyone elses testimonies and she was able to have a note pad to write there statments down. The witness that was allowed in the court room also got to take her notes that she wrote down up on the stand with her to look at and read off. There was also things that were not suppose to have been brought up in court in front of the jury that was. Richards attorney stated the laws and asked for a miss trial or even a retrial and the judge said " we are close to being over with it so no we will not have a mistrial or a retrial. All of the states witnesses counter dicted each other, even the victims mother counter dicted the victims testimony. There is no DNA , No Lie detector test , No witnesses to the accusations, No psylogical evaluation of the victim, No in person statments to the police. Richard was not even questioned by the police. Just arrested. Richard is now sitting in jail awaiting his sentencing for a crime he did not commit. The supposid victim could not even get his story straight of where or when the events happened. OR of how they even happened. PLease help us his. sentencing date is October 20th 2008.