With the Duke rape allegations in doubt, can justice occur?
According to defense lawyers, the lack of a DNA match exonerates the Duke lacrosse players. After reviewing Jeralyn Merritt’s logic, I’d say that’s likely. And if that’s the result, it’s another crime that was committed: a false allegation that’s caused considerable damage.
Reading through the replies of Jeralyn’s commenters, it’s interesting to see various biases come to the fore. There do remain serious questions to ponder, like ‘what would motivate such a false claim?’
However, assuming there is a trial and the trial results in exoneration - and due to the exacting science of DNA identification, I consider that highly probable if a trial happens - I don’t see such questions as hard to answer.
Had the dancers gained a conviction, civil suits could follow, with lucrative results. As the injuries the alleged victim showed up with might be among the injuries consistent with rape, she may have been raped by a boyfriend, a pimp, or a date. If a boyfriend or pimp was the perp, she’s still a victim. And isn’t it possible such a perp could have concocted a scheme with the intent of covering their own tracks while essentially seeking a monetary gain through a convoluted extortion effort utilizing the justice system?
Bizarre as that sounds, it’s just one of many possibilities one could imagine. And it’s not far-fetched to understand that numerous alternatives for motives can be found.
Perhaps the most troubling comment I read was not in the theories advanced by those who want to still believe the women, but in this phrase: “I’m in the due process sector of the left wing, not the feminist sector, so innocent until proven guilty, fair trial, etc.”
That pisses me off. Straw man arguments often do.
Feminism and due process are not exclusive nor opposite. Ignorance is more an opposite to due process. And sure, there are feminists who are ignorant. But in my experience, damn few are.
Most feminists I’ve known, including the one I’ve been, root for justice and equality, not convictions for the sake of proving some point. Suggesting otherwise displays a serious bias in the person who said that, who was trying to present himself or her self as an objective, justice-loving person. That commenter may even be sufficiently non-introspective that he or she is unaware of their own bias against feminism. And yes, as a self-proclaimed lefty, that means leftys can be wrong. (That should go without saying; even an enlightened political bent doesn’t eliminate error and/or ignorance as a possibility).
Other commenters display concern that this reinforces the difficulty rape victims face in getting such crimes prosecuted. Certainly, the publicity the case has drawn is likely to increase the skepticism in the public at large, but I don’t consider that a bad thing. If I were on trial, or someone who’d hurt me was, I’d want a jury of skeptics who require proof to be convinced. That’s the best justice possible, as opposed to a system where a biased jury sits, eager to rubberstamp the presentations of prosecutors and police.
However, it’s certainly true that rape victims will continue to find it difficult to gain convictions. That’s the nature of rape, not a flaw in the system of justice. If anything, the development of DNA science has improved the odds of successful convictions, more than false claims have hurt the pursuit of justice. In this case, it’s likely that DNA science has protected people innocent of the crime of rape.
I’m not going to use this post for related discussions about the objectification of women, the racism of either side, etc. I’m not dismissing the importance of any of those points. I just happen to think that in this case, the critical points remain who did what to whom, and what should be the outcome to the party or parties who are the wrongdoers, according to the law.
The community tensions there, existing biases, the motives of prosecutors, existing jock culture, how men behave in groups while pursuing sexual titillation…. these are not resolvable issues in that courtroom. What will be resolved is whether evidence of rape exists beyond the claims of the two women. As Jeralyn has pointed out, the woman who isn’t claiming she was raped has both made the claim that she didn’t hear that rape occurred initially, and yet she phoned in the 9-11 call.
Once again, I could conjecture and find explanations to make those two facts non-contradictory. But I’d rather let the case proceed or not proceed on its merits (or lack thereof) instead of endlessly speculating based on press releases.
If the alleged victim of rape is ultimately determined to have made a false claim, should she be prosecuted? Probably. After all, the damage done to reputations, to the career of the teams’ coach, and the inhibiting factor the case may cause to victims of rape are all serious and destructive. Yet what also will be weighed, either in the filing of charges or in the sentencing (if one or both of the women are found guilty) is whether the chief accuser was acting willfully or was reacting emotionally or under extreme duress as an abused woman who somebody else had just violently raped.
In short, it’s entirely possible that everyone (or nearly everyone) on both sides was victimized, that each was wronged, each was hurt, by legal definition. And that must be weighed before the best possible justice can result.
Should a judge or jury ‘throw the book’ at the women making the claims if it’s proven they acted with malicious intent and without extenuating circumstances like the possibility of an immediately prior abuse? Certainly. But let’s maintain some perspective, even there.
If the justice system does its job, the innocent will be protected in the end. The reputation of each member of the team will emerge intact. They may have suffered from the stress of the trial. Their season was destroyed, so some damage occurred there, to the players, the coach, the school, and the conference they play in. There are costs the men have accrued to defend themselves.
Any lasting reputation damage might occur because of what the men actually did (hiring the dancers, making racist remarks, etc) instead of what the women tried to do to them. That has to be assessed fairly, too.
I have no objections at this point, no reason to assert that the prosecutors, police or defense lawyers have acted improperly. I don’t know who’s guilty of what, because a trial in the court of public opinion is ultimately as useful as a kangaroo court.
It will be a shame if it turns out the women lied, and I would hope a fitting punishment would ensue. But I remain quite certain that, in that event (exoneration followed by the women’s convictions), the men will emerge with far less damage than every victim of rape endures.
It will be a shame, because it’s likely to make more rape victims reluctant to come forward. Yet we also mustn’t lose sight of the fact that the biggest impediment to successful prosecutions is not because of skeptical juries or a flawed justice system. It’s because rape usually occurs without bystanders as witnesses. That’s a conundrum that impedes the best intents and efforts of those who design and administer justice systems.
In my observation of how such systems work when no errors occur in the process, the only factor I can see that can be adjusted to improve the odds of real rape victims is in the cultural influence all of us are subject to in our society, nationally and locally.
In the US, many remain heavily inhibited in our thoughts about sex. Influenced by the proclamations of religions’ professionals and by the existing paradigms of power, control, and role-assignment applied to different genders, these create biases in the minds of juries, judges, prosecutors, police and all observers. A ‘best’ justice system depends on the maximum use of logic (such as scientific proof) and reason (imperfect, but more or less common sense acquired via experience), and a minimal imposition of illogical biases.
Calculating a just conclusion in rape cases means - to me - that the victim’s prior consensual sexual experiences, their fantasies, their race, their economic circumstances, their religious beliefs, how they dress, whether they flirt, and other similar expressions are so rarely relevant to any rape occurrence that the system would be closer to perfection if we eliminated them all from being admissible, than we have in our present system. Too many times, a judge has ruled something admissible that has given root to bias against rape victims and such rulings often reflect the judge’s cultural bias.
If our system prevented such admissions from being introduced at initial trials, but allowed for such things to be admitted during the appeals process with a panel of, say, three judges conferring before allowing that evidence in, I think the justice system would be producing better results for victims of sexual assault. And the rights of the accused defendants would be maintained if it was established that one automatic appeal would occur, no matter what.
My suggestion is to minimalize the introduction of bias by eliminating the potential biases of one judge via a process requiring three to weigh these as a team. Again, it’d be imperfect, but it would eliminate some potential biases from entering the minds of those deciding whether to convict or not.
And precisely because the circumstances of rape present difficulties to rape victims that victims of many other crimes never face, creating a different process to try and limit that impediment seems a perfectly reasonable way to proceed, if we are truly advocates for the best justice possible.
April 11th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Oh, I dunno, I would have thought the media would give these guys a chance before burning them on the stake. Anyway, I don’t watch the mainstream media for news, for the same reason I don’t wipe my ass with hot peppers or chew on glass.
April 11th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
The media coverage of this incident has been incredibly irresponsible. Virtually all interracial rapes are black on white, yet the talking heads jump all over the idea of a white gangbang. I don’t see the national media going crazy every time some black bastard rapes a white woman.
I spent the summer of 2001 as an intern student at Duke, and saw firsthand the resentment that black Durham residents harbor towards white college students. The entire city is a dump. The local blacks couldn’t give two shits about “justice”. They just want to see some white guy put in prison.
April 11th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Virtually all interracial rapes are black on white
Nathan Bedford Forrest, I had no idea you still lived!
Cite the source for your ‘fact’ or STFU.
On second thought, your fact is false, it’s clearly racist and makes me certain there’s nothing more you have to say that I’ll be able to trust. Please go and study the facts. I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man.
April 11th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
Reading between the lines here, my take is that there was a dispute over money which resulted in bad feelings on both sides. Reportedly the women were paid $800; it’s also claimed that the players stole $400 from one of the gals. Sounds to me like they decided her performance wasn’t worth what they paid for it.
April 11th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
I haven’t taken any notice of this case, and don’t especially intend to now, but some general comments on Feminist law are due.
Feminist law is opposed to due process. This is not a strawman argument. In fact I think I’ve mentioned several times here that a lot of the anti-terrorism laws being introduced which attack due process are carrying on the traditions, in both Canada and America of reducing men’s rights in courts of law when they are accused of some gender related offense.
Rape is a good example. Rape trials have a completely different standard of evidence than normal trials. Why? To make it easier to convict men accused of rape. It’s politics. America already puts away vastly more men in prison on rape charges than European countries, and still feminists clamour for more and more convictions. The only way to get more convictions is to loosen the rights of the accused and this has been done. In the diary you say due process should be further eroded in these trials by making the standard of evidence even more biased against the defendent.
The same comments apply to sexual harassment law and to domestic violence laws. The idea is to convict as many men as possible in response to Feminist claims, repeated in this diary, that “too few” rapists or men are put behind bars. This in a country where a quater of the world’s population of prisoners is held.
The ease with which false rape accusations can be made and the vastly inflated rate of false accusations that results used to be addressed by law. Feminists deliberately targeted the warning that used to be given to jurors so they wouldn’t be emotionally swayed by the “accused = guilty” rap that accompanies all men accused of rape. Now the law has to pretend that you’re no more likely to be falsely accused of rape than any other crime.
Should a judge or jury ‘throw the book’ at the women making the claims if it’s proven they acted with malicious intent and without extenuating circumstances like the possibility of an immediately prior abuse?
Extenuating circumstances? Would extenuating circumstances let a man off a rape charge? The real problem here is not that even if the judge threw the book it would be a very light sentence indeed compared to the crime, in fact it would be the “victimless” crime of lying to the cops, as if what the men went to is nothing, when in fact it’s worse than being raped. All true even if it turns out that this woman is a serial false accuser.
The real problem is that the system makes it so damn easy to make a false accusation, and so damn hard for a man to prove his innocence — and that’s what you have to do effectively — the defence here literally had to get evidence they were NOT guilty. The system encourages abuse. By its nature the act is one which generally has no witnesses. How is it possible for any court to decide on the basis of no evidence whatsoever except the one witness, that a man is guily “beyond a reasonable doubt”? Yet that is what happens time and time again. Once accused and in many cases even once proven innocent the man’s life is wrecked.
It will be a shame if it turns out the women lied
Really? I figured that was a preferable scenario to it turning out one got raped.
It will be a shame, because it’s likely to make more rape victims reluctant to come forward.
Right. And whenever I hear of a rape conviction I immidiately think, “that’s a shame because now people flasely accused of rape are less likely to get justice”. because obviously I’d never think to have sympathy chiefly with the victim of a crime — the men in this case as it seems.
I remain quite certain that, in that event (exoneration followed by the women’s convictions), the men will emerge with far less damage than every victim of rape endures.
Upon what basis?
The bias of the feminist community in these cases is illustrated by the way the accused is always spoken of as if already guilty.
the circumstances of rape present difficulties to rape victims that victims of many other crimes never face
That’s because other crimes don’t have official “victims”. They might have witnesses but the witnesses are not called victims because the defendent is presumed innocent, not presumed guilty. Feminist law has been pushing to reverse the presumprtion of innocence (I think in sexual harassment cases it is already reversed); another example - there are many - of the feminist attack on due process.
If this woman is prosecuted for making false statements THEN she will be given the benefit of the doubt by the court system. That is due process. The presumption of innocence. In a rape trial that is all but reversed. In the same way anti-terrorism laws are now attacking due process on another front.
So, it looks like the prosecution is going to go ahead with persecuting these men even though their defence has managed to prove their innocence. It’s all politics. And which group is it that is pushing this? Feminists.
April 11th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
Incidentally there’s no need to think of elaborate scenarios for the motivation of a false accuser. It’s quite a normal situation and the motivation is usually mundane. In this case probably revenge for some sleight. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this woman is known to be a serial false accuser by the prosecution.
April 13th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
“Cite the source for your ‘fact’ or STFU.
On second thought, your fact is false, it’s clearly racist and makes me certain there’s nothing more you have to say that I’ll be able to trust. Please go and study the facts. ”
It happens to be the truth. See here
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cvus/current/cv0342.pdf
Why do react in such an angry fashion to the truth? Seriously, I would like to understand your reaction. It says something about you that you respond with such vehemence when confronted with the reality of interacial rape.
April 20th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
It’s a very sad day when a 27 year old stripper/student what a joke ho ho ho
Can tell the lies she does just to reap rewards it makes a mockery of the hundreds of women that have been really subjected to the hardships of rape and other demeaning trials that they have to go through. When the truth comes out and shows her for what she is a nasty excuse for a human being. She should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. If you notice already her story has more holes in it then can be blocked. Pictures of her entering the house with bruises and drunk out of her head. The security person who had to call the police because she couldn’t even identify her own car, let alone who supposedly raped her. The fact she never said any thing to her friend why because nothing happened till she got herself in trouble. This case screams of the raciest town of Durham and that fool Prosecutor Who is running for reelection.
April 21st, 2006 at 3:00 pm
When we think of a single mother, we picture a woman struggling to support herself and her children. Laura Grissim [Letters; April 14] plays on this stereotype to portray the Durham rape accuser/stripper as a stereotypical working single mom.
It’s amazing how just by claiming a person to be a “mother” puts a “halo” on her head. Ms. Grissom claims that some women have no other option to provide for herself and her children which paints a picture of a selfless martyr, but this is misleading especially regarding this particular “single mom”. This single mom and her children live with their grandfather so the threat of being homeless or hungry is unlikely. This single mom has been arrested in for larceny and evading police, which doesn’t fit the mold of “martyr”. This single mom arrived at the party inebriated and was found drunk and disorderly in a parking lot, but looking at this woman as an individual instead of a sexist stereotype reveals a more realistic picture of this single mom which dims her halo.
Ms. Grissom goes on to rants that criticizing this woman “hinges on blaming the victim”. This single mom is not a victim. This single mom is an “accuser”. There’s enough evidence to question her integrity and whether a crime actually occurred. I find it hypocritical that Ms. Grissom so easily gives this “single mom” the benefit of the doubt while condemning a group of boys who happen to be on a sports team. People should avoid stereotypes and focus on each individual, including the “accuser”, as a person.
The actions of District Attorney Mike Nifong have been reckless and irresponsible in playing out this case before the national media. This has inflamed racial stereotypes throughout Durham which makes it more important that everyone take a step back and let the police do their job. If this woman lied; thus exposing Nifong as a fool, then she should be prosecuted for this crime, which have destroyed these young boys’ lives and reputations. Being a “single mom” shouldn’t be an excuse to condone this type of behavior.
Rape shields were created in the 1970s to protect the alleged “victim” from having her reputation ruined by baseless assumptions, unfair judgments, public humiliation, and character assassinations, but any of this could describe what’s happening to every member of the lacrosse team.
Irresponsible “special interest groups” have held protests everyday holding the name and pictures of anyone on the lacrosse team, to having their pictures and hate slogans pasted all over school. The actions of these groups against these men are nothing short of harassment and unfair character assassination.
Media hungry District Attorney Mike Nifong stated he is positive a rape has occurred, but he isn’t sure if it’s by the members of the lacrosse team, yet he obtained an order to get DNA samples from only the members of the team, then he stated on a national news program that the lacrosse team has a “rowdy” reputation on campus – obviously playing up to sexist stereotyping of jocks to further play his case for the media. As Nifong continues to publicly massacre the characters out his case for public consumption, he claims that the team is “stonewalling the investigation” because they claim not to have any knowledge of what transpired, but is Nifong now believing the men to be telling the truth as he recently changed his tune stating that even if the DNA evidence clears these boys that he’ll have other evidence.
Opportunistic political groups have descended on Duke’s campus using unscrupulous methods to get media attention at the expense of innocent young men who happen to be on the lacrosse team. Young men who were too recently, only boys not yet ready to handle this ugly side of the world. In today’s climate, we need the rape shield laws extended to protect all the innocent, including those who just happen to get in the way of media hungry district attorneys and opportunistic political groups.
District Attorney Mike Nifong’s should be held accountable for the irresponsible actions he’s taken in this rape investigation.
The boys are being tried in the national media before there is any charge are made. Nifong stated that someone else could have assaulted the 27 year old stripper, yet he publicly damned the men’s lacrosse team and only the men’s lacrosse team as gang rapist, and still not knowing whether or not the “alleged victim” was telling the truth, or if the three men sought are on the team, Nifong claims the team is stonewalling to protect its own.
In response, daily protest are held with hate comments made directly to the lacrosse teammates, pictures of the teammates with rape slogans are plastered all over Duke’s campus, and now gang members are driving by the east campus threatening students.
Nifong’s circus-like antics to perform for the national media has put the whole campus in danger.
Nifong proclaimed in the national media that the DNA sweep of 46 boys would find the guilty and clear the innocent. DNA tests prove that the boys of the lacrosse team were telling the truth, but Nifong wants to go ahead with the case only weeks before his election against a woman and a black man. There should be laws in place to prevent unscrupulous politician like District Attorney Mike Nifong from bulldozing over 47 innocent boys just to bask in the international media spot-light.