Long Lists of Charges

After reading Derek’s blog and considering his question of whether the court article was actually news or just facts strung together, I went back and looked at it again more closely.  I noticed something which I thought was strange the first time through, not on closer inspection, it bothered me even more.  Yes, as I observed in my blog, I didn’t think it was necessary for all the accused’s addresses to be included in the article, but I’m not sure it was necessary to include every single thing they’ve been charged with either.

For all three of them towards the end of the article, a long list was given of everything they were charge with.  For example, “Jonathan Pollard was charged with rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment, interference with the custody of children, aggravated assault, simple assault, corruption of minors, terroristic threats, recklessly endangering another person and criminal conspiracy.”  I can’t help but wondering whether this is really necessary either.  I mean, the reporter doesn’t go into any more detail about this charges.  Furthermore, if some sort of “plea agreement” has been reached, most likely the defendants will not even be convicted of all of these.  Nor do I think the average reader would enjoy sitting there and reading a huge list of charges.  It seems like the list could have been condensed into something like, “Jonathan Pollard was charged with 12 offenses,” or something else along those lines.  It almost seems like these were just tacked on at the end to take up space. 

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