Karen DeSoto, an NBC on-air legal analyst recently joined Richard Lui and NBC News correspondent Kristen Dahlgren to talk over a domestic violence case in Florida, wherein a domestic abuse victim was sent to jail for three days for refusing to testify against her husband.
Karen DeSoto believes that it is problematic for prosecutors and it’s very frustrating to prosecute such cases. She thinks that it is disturbing because the victim refuses to testify with the fear of the man losing his job, which puts the prosecutor in a very uncomfortable position.
Karen expresses sympathy for the victim who was suffering from post-traumatic stress, and who had a knife and was choked. As per Karen, putting the victim in the jail when she is also a mom of a one year old is disturbing.
Another thing that she pointed out was that the judge could have done whatever she wanted in the case. She could have sentenced the victim to serve community service, or she could have given her a pass. Even after being traumatized and abused, the victim had been put in jail, which according to Karen, is not fixing the problem, but re-abusing the victim.
Later in the show, Karen stated that the fix to this problem is to not to throw victims in jail, but rather send them for outreach programs where they can be given counseling, as jail is not going to fix that.
Karen DeSoto 