Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
From the article:
Hardly. If the judge presiding over the case can’t understand the difference in positions, how can they possibly assume that a jury – instructed by that judge – will be able to.
Victims of rape have a hard enough time getting their cases brought to trial; this just makes it nearly impossible. I’m all for “innocent before guilty” – but rape is rape. You can’t sugarcoat it; it’s not a “P.C.-applicable” word. The pendulum has swung so far in favor of the accused, pretty soon victims will just walk away and let the criminals stand un-accused.
Absurd indeed.
Ah, time for the appellate court to stick it’s nose in.
Say whaaaa??!!
Imagine this scenario:
1) In a trial for a home break-in that occurred at 12 noon, the victim is placed on the stand. The prosecutor asks the victim what happened. The victim says “My home was burglarized”.
2) Defense objects and requests to talk to the judge at sidebar, out of hearing of the jury. “Your honor, according to our statute, burglary can only happen at night. This is a trial for violations of the “home invasion” statute as well as common-law burglary. Describing my clients alleged behavior as a burglary is unfairly prejudicial and has no probative value, so I move to strike. It is inappropriate for a witness to make a conclusion of law on the stand. We understand that she feels that she was burglarized, but that doesn’t make it so.” Judge asks the Prosecutor to rephrase the question and directs the witness not to use the word “burglar”.
3) The defendant gets upset and insists on using the word “burglar” to describe the defendant. The jury is compromised and the judge has to toss the case.
The whole point is that the witness does not get decide what rape is, or what assault is. Most judges would not let a witness make any sort of legal conclusion, such as “I was assaulted” or “I was burglarized” or “I was raped” or “defendant broke criminal statute section 1395(d)”.
I’m sorry for many women’s experiences with horrific rapes. However, we have been treating rape as a special crime for far too long, with special rules of evidence and too many innocent people have gone to jail because we haven’t afforded them the same rights as other defendants.
What if your trade was getting your customers out of certain, like, trouble. What if, for historical reasons, and merely for historical reasons IMHO, you and your fellow ‘craftsmen’ had a lock on the trade, controlling what was defined as trouble, who could and could not enter your craftsmen’s guild, inventing a completely separate language which, among other things, serves to make their customers even more dependent on them, and on and on.
Don’t you think, over the years, it would become easier and easier for those craftsmen to practice their trade, i.e. getting their customers out of the very same ‘trouble’ that those self – same craftsmen control, obfuscate and perpetuate? Don’t you think they, like monopolies historically, would perpetuate a system that maximized profits above any mere functionality, like settling disputes, shoring up the social contract? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract Well, I hope you get my drift.
Lawyers might have been necessary in days of yore when hardly anybody, including kings, could read. But in these days of computers and the obvious, to me, applicability of systems engineering to the ‘legal system’, the legal ‘profession’ should be obsolete. But as Gore Vidal* sadly pointed out, we have, for all intents and purposes, a nation “…of the lawyers, by the lawyers and for the lawyers.”
*A minor blast from the past, folks. I’ve virtually no allies in this – you got to take what you can get. Old quotes from Shakespeare Re: first killing the lawyers miss the point.
Again, we are tangled in the dark skeins of political correctitude. This is a shocking case, not only for the sensibilities of the young woman who was raped [yes, indeedy, she was raped, judge and jury] but for what it forbodes about our country’s future attitudes toward its citizens. Of course, it’s against our rights of free speech to forbid the victim to use the word rape to describe the outrage committed against her, but it’s all of a piece with the politically correct attitudes of academia toward language and terminology. It’s not “rape,” it’s “forced seduction” or “non-consensual sex” [Lord protect us from academics]. Perhaps the lawyers, the judges and the academics think that if we water down the terminology enough, we’ll close our eyes to the crime and to the criminal. Fat chance.
You hang in there, Tory Bowen. You’re a shining star when compared to the lawyers and the judges.
Marianne
We are in agreement again, Lex.
Well, she certainly is getting raped pretty good right there in the courtroom, with witnesses this time.
This “judge” is worthless scum.
Ah, time for the appellate court to stick it’s nose in.
As long as it isn’t the 9th Circuit, at least.
Why are we so determined to give all of the advantages to the criminals? A few weeks ago I was using my laptop at a laundromat. When I went to change my clothes from the washer to the dryer a 16 year old kid grabbed my laptop. I was quick enough to catch him and get it back. I called the Police and had him arrested. I then had to go and meet with an Assistant District Attorney about the charges. The ADA basically told me that he wasn’t going to prosecute the kid for the attempted theft and then proceeded to tell me that I caused the incident by taking my laptop with me to do my laundry. I provided a temptation to the kid by leaving my computer on the table while I walked away.
Jim C.
Please tell me you hit him, because he provoked you by being such a incompetent A**!
Jim C: Take the guys name to the local paper and talk to your supervisor…demand that he be fired for being such as A**. My personal rule of “non-reciprocity” would say, however, that had you done anything to that moron in the DA’s office that could be called a threat, you’d be writing from behind bars.
Remember: The DA’s office is government. These are the kinds of people who will be in charge of your health care and every other aspect of your life if you allow government to continue its growth. Nice thought for the day.
Who the kid or the ADA? I didn’t hit the kid, because I needed both hands to grab my computer from him. I really wanted to belt the ADA, but I didn’t feel like spending time in jail. What gets me is that this isn’t an isolated incident. I just heard on the news, where people are trying to get a small town North of where I live to revoke the business license of a gun store, because somebody broke in and stole several handguns. They say that the business attracts criminals.
I have no problem with someone getting a fair trial, but do we have to stack the deck in favor of the criminal? I wonder what would have happened if Ms. Bowen had stood up and yelled “that’s the SOB who raped me!”. He would probably have gotten off and she would have gone to jail for contempt. Ever hear the definition of a conservative? It is a liberal who’s been mugged.
Jim & Steve
Yes I meant the ADA. Of course it probably would have been a death penalty case if you had hit him, but by his own logic, he was tempting you…he should not prosecute you either.
I sure would have told him that.
V
Steve,
Our local paper leans so far left that it isn’t even funny. Our DA leans even further. You are better off getting shot than trying to defend yourself in this town. We’re victims of the fallout from the ’06 election. I was lucky that my computer wasn’t confiscated as evidence and then sold at auction.
Political correctness… here we come, to the point of being absolutely absurd!
I agree with you all: Lex, Marianne, et al. and this is what we’re going to see more and more of in our futures. The change of the mores and folkways of society, indeed, our way of life, is here.
The changes of our social, religious and governmental institutions has worked its way down to the people and will affect our day-to-day lives to the tune of ever increasing frustration on our part. Not only are we engaged in two wars overseas, we are also in the throes of such social change that we won’t recognize the lives the next generation.
Is it for the better? Was the slippery slope too steep or too slippery? I remember my betters warning me, back in the day, about the perils of ever-loosening the bounds. It seems as though we have arrived, that we’ve met the opposing force and it is … ???
Jim Collins -
Wow, the very same thing happened to me in 1984 with my car. It was stolen from the repair shop. Funny, they parked it with the windows down andthe keys in it. The judge said that since I had given my boyfriend a key to my car (not the key used to steal the car) that I had been frivilous with my keys and he dismissed the case against the creep that stole it.
Crazy …
I respectfully disagree with many of the opinions expressed and IMHO Ubu Walker has a valid point. The rules of law are not bent and in most criminal cases you are prevented from possibly making prejudicial statements. Rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment cases are treated differently e.g. the victim’s name is protected while the alleged assailant or perpetrator’s name is bantered about freely, thus tainting a jury pool. Reciprocity is best until a verdict. A detailed description of the act is far better for her case than to say, he raped me. It will illicit more empathy and permit the jury to draw the conclusion it was rape. It has been long believed that women do not lie about rape. Having worked in the field of psychology for quite a few years, it has become evident to me that people lie about everything, and we do not always understand the motives. Thus a fair trial is necessary where innocence is presumed until guilt is proven.
Let me be clear that I do not know the facts of the case, I merely want justice to be served. You never know when it may be you or your family/friends at the table defending themselves.
I must admit I do not understand. Ol’ UW and the rapist 1 believe that she should be using the correct terminology? WTF? We’re nae frackin’ lawyers to quibble over what the meaning of ‘is’ is!
So, she should just say instead (for instance), “Yes, that’s the man who tore my clothes off, shoved me against the wall, unfastened his belt and zipper, unbuttoned his jeans and proceeded to f*k me, not stopping even while I was screaming ‘NO!’.”
And you think this is actually less inflammatory? And this doesn’t constitute rape? WTF?!! The mind boggles!!!
See, that’s just the problem. Half of you are assuming from the get-go that he raped her, just because she says so. Funny, tell that to all those men released from years and years in prison once they finally were able to get physical evidence, usually DNA, examined by the court. Worse, the women who lie, and they are many, damage the credibility of those women who aren’t lying and who actually were assaulted.
Given that, the judge has a good reason to be particular about the language that gets used in the testimony. Don’t know that this effort will work, though.
I’m not assuming anything in the way of guilt – that’s for a jury to decide. I do think it’s Kafkaesque for a man to stand accused of a crime that cannot be named by his alleged victim.
Suggest you all, Lex included, carefully re-read comments # 4 & # 18 above…both are excellent instructive summaries of how our criminal justice system is designed work… to protect the rights of all defendants, however odious the Defendant may be and not, thankfully how you might want it to work in this particular case. Best
Excellent points, I’d suggest that a jury should be able to comprehend that when a woman says “he raped me” that the statement is the opinion of the woman, and not the declaration of the, you know, jury. Which has a kind of chicken-and-egg sort of thing going on for it, the jury being the ones tasked with deciding these things.
Having never been allowed to serve on a jury (when asked I tell them I’m an engineer and suddenly I’m deemed to have more important things to do than participate in the Rule of Law that upholds western civilization) I cannot comment first-hand upon how prejudicial the language might be in a trial environment.
On the other hand, “forcible intercourse” or “non-consensual sex” seems like professional-speak, a platitude for the actual description. I’d personally take this as a sign of the victim being restricted in their testimony and lend greater weight to her claims.
That’s probably why I’ve never been on a jury.
– Max
Excellent! If I could write like this I would be well happpy. The more I see articles of such quality as this (which is rare), the more I think there might be a future for the Web. Keep it up, as it were.