Update on the Deni election :(

from Philly News

QUELLE surprise.

Teresa Carr Deni has survived.

The Municipal Court judge who provoked a national uproar when she downgraded rape charges to armed robbery in a case involving a prostitute will be back on the bench for another six years.

Lucky us.

Deni won a retention vote yesterday, despite a rare public rebuke from the chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association and a grassroots effort to defeat her.

"A city official told me that you pretty much have to kill your mother not to win a retention vote," said Matilda O'Neill, a local activist and the prime mover behind the "Deny Deni" movement.

The furor over Deni's ruling, which made national news and spurred denouncements on the Internet from as far away as Australia, couldn't penetrate the public apathy about judicial retention elections.

But her Oct. 4 ruling had a profound impact on one person for sure: the victim.


She's a 19-year-old woman who struggles to support herself and her infant daughter - while she cares for her sick mother.

"I'm a single parent by myself and I go through so much - it's so hard," she told me this week.

Her disabled mother spends months at a time in the hospital - which prompted her daughter to drop out of school when she was in 10th grade...