"This case is unsafe to further prosecute; dismissed!"

That, more or less was the language used by a judge in Barbados over twenty years ago.

One of my former students had gone off to Uni, and became involved with a somewhat older student. The relationship broke up, and she filed a rape charge -- which was of course plastered all over the media. I attended, as someone from "home."

While in the waiting room, I saw an old family friend. What are you doing here? Traffic. You? Here to give moral support to a student on a dubious rape charge. But, the law forces this.

(Sitting just across from me was a young lady in somewhat provocative clothing.)

I went in, and watched. To my shock, the complainant was the same young lady. 

As the case played out, it turned out there was a study session in rented lodgings that got a bit steamy. Then, it emerged that there were several other people in the same house, so that had there been a cry for help, it would have been quite obvious.

That's when the judge stopped the case as unsafe to further pursue.

Lynching protest in India

This comes to mind as I see the current "accusation is proof" thrust. That's a recipe for lynch mobs, kangaroo courts and media lynchings. There is a REASON why due process is due process.

We have to stop the mad march over the cliff:

 

Anyway, as in too much of our region we do not get a balanced picture on international issues, let me clip Michele Malkin's sobering warning:

I have a message for virtue-signaling men who’ve rushed to embrace #MeToo operatives hurling uncorroborated sexual assault allegations into the chaotic court of public opinion.

Stuff it . . . .

Ivy League pooh-bah Simon Hedlin asserted: “Accusers go public not because of any supposed benefits but despite the immense costs.” He argued: “When somebody is credibly accused of sexual misconduct, the default should be to believe the accuser.”

That is a dumb and dangerous default. The costly toll of “believing women,” instead of believing evidence, can be seen in the hundreds and hundreds of cases recorded by the University of Michigan Law School’s National Registry of Exonerations involving innocent men falsely accused of rape and rape/murders.

One of those men whose plight I’ve reported on for CRTV and my syndicated column, former Fort Worth police officer Brian Franklin, spent 21 years in prison of a life sentence after he was convicted of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl in 1995 who had committed perjury on the stand. Franklin vigilantly maintained his innocence, studied law in the prison library and won a reversal of his conviction in 2016. The jury took less than two hours to acquit him. But his name is still not clear. He recently submitted a 200-page application for a pardon for innocence and cannot do what he wants to do – return to law enforcement – unless the members of the Texas board of pardons and paroles (along with Texas constitutional conservatives who pay lip service to truth, justice and due process) do the right thing.

In Philadelphia, Anthony Wright also served more than two decades behind bars like Franklin. He was convicted in 1993 for a brutal rape and murder of an elderly woman. It was a female prosecutor, Bridget Kirn, who “failed to alert the Court or the jury to what she personally knew was the falsity of (police detectives’) testimony, or otherwise honor her ethical duty to correct it,” according to Wright’s lawyers with the Innocence Project. They have filed a lawsuit directly aimed at the prosecutor this week to hold her accountable for her criminal falsehoods.

And just this week, Oregonian Joshua Horner, serving a 50-year sentence for sexual abuse of a young girl, was exonerated after a dog that the accuser had claimed he shot dead was found alive. There had been no DNA, no corroborating witnesses and no other forensic evidence – just the word of girl whose contradictions and memory problems were explained away as “post-traumatic stress” while an innocent man nearly drowned.

The idea that all women and girls must be telling the truth at all times about sexual assault allegations because they “have nothing to gain” is perilously detached from reality. Retired NYPD special victim squad detective John Savino, forensic scientist and criminal profiler of the Forensic Criminology Institute Brent Turvey, and forensic psychologist Aurelio Coronado Mares detail the myriad “prosocial” and “antisocial” lies people tell in their textbook, “False Allegations: Investigative and Forensic Issues in Fraudulent Reports of Crime.”

“Prosocial deceptions” involve specific motives beneficial to both the deceiver and the deceived, including the incentives to “preserve the dignity of others,” to gain “financial benefit” for another; to protect a relationship; “ego-boosting or image protection (of others);” and “protecting others from harm or consequence.

“Antisocial” lies involve selfish motives to “further a personal agenda at some cost to others,” including “self-deception and rationalization to protect or boost self-esteem;” “enhance status or perception in the eyes of others;” “garner sympathy;” “avoid social stigma;” “conceal inadequacy, error, and culpability;” “avoid consequence;” and for “personal and/or material gain.”

Let me repeat the themes of my work in this area for the past two years to counter the “Believe Women” baloney:

The role of the press should be verification, not validation.

Rape is a devastating crime. So is lying about it.

It’s not victim blaming to get to the bottom of the truth. It’s liar-shaming.

Don’t believe a gender. Believe evidence.

It is time to return to sanity and soundness. We are not ultimately able to deliver justice, that remains with God the Just One. But here and now we may bear and have a duty to wield the sword of the state in honest and competent defence of the civil peace of justice. Where, mistakes can be made, with horrific consequences.

Under such circumstances, no sane community will yield privilege to any class of witnesses or accusers. No one, but God, is unfailingly right or true. So, we must ever apply reasonable tests and give the benefit of the doubt to the reasonably potentially innocent.

That's why the standard of proof in criminal court is, evidence and argument beyond reasonable doubt, i.e. moral certainty. To convict, evidence must meet the standard that a reasonable, unbiased person would be irresponsible not to convict.

And in a day of media lynch mobs ever willing to swarm down, assassinate character, destroy reputation and livelihood of those they hate on the flimsiest excuse, editors bear a double responsibility not to turn the court of public opinion into a kangaroo court. END