Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Duke Rape? They are Devils.

I don't know if the Duke Lacrosse players accused of rape did it, but I certainly find reasons to question the allegation. And I admit, though normally my radar is up on false allegations, when I first heard about this on the news, I didn't think skeptically about it. Now, I suspect that a conviction is all but impossible, and perhaps because the charges are false. But I don't know. I'm not saying they are.

VC examines the issue of race and crime in depth today. It is a very good read deserving of a feature article in a national publication.

To make the subject more interesting, when I was in my last year of law school, I read a report about false rape accusations at a city in the midwest which housed a large university. With a sample size of 109 rape allegations over a 9 year perior, 41% of them were "false." By false, this meant that the accuser admitted to making up the charges, and the recant was deemed credible. No disputed cases, however unlikely, were included in the 'false' category, so the actual number of false charges obviously could be larger. Links to the abstract of the study I found in a few seconds this morning are here and here and here.

This isn't on point to Cassandra's post, but it is related. The motives of admitted fake accusers were usually (1) alibi (2) revenge or (3) sypathy/attention.

I also found Ann Coulter unusually subdued but very insightful on this subject. Her column focused on what each side has to learn.

However the Duke lacrosse rape case turns out, one lesson that absolutely will not be learned is this: You can severely reduce your chances of having a false accusation of rape leveled against you if you don't hire strange women to come to your house and take their clothes off for money. Also, you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men's houses and take your clothes off for money. (Does anyone else detect a common thread here?)
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Whenever a gun is used in a crime, there are never-ending news stories about how dangerous guns are. But these girls go out alone, late at night, drunk off their butts, and there's nary a peep about the dangers of drunk women on their own in public. It's their "right."
Yes, of course no one "deserves" to die for a mistake. Or to be raped or falsely accused of rape for a mistake. I have always been unabashedly anti-murder, anti-rape and anti-false accusation -- and I don't care who knows about it!

But these statements would roll off the tongue more easily in a world that so much as tacitly acknowledged that all these messy turns of fate followed behavior that your mother could have told you was tacky.

Frankly, I'm all in favor of trying this case in the media, but we can't because the accuser is protected by the media's voluntary compliance with "rape shield" laws about identifying rape victims/accusers. Thus, we get "indefinite" details about the accuser, but we don't get to probe the accuser like we do the accused.

The DA seems to want it tried in the media b/c I fear he doesn't think he has a chance at a conviction, but he does have a chance at re-election.

Since we know an awful lot about this case, unlike other cases (see, e.g., Kobe), we might as well try it now. The evidence is mixed. It should make for an intersting drama. Sadly, the people involved are all too real.

6 Comments:

At 5:07 PM, Blogger Cassandra said...

1. Thank you KJ :) You're very kind.

2. re: The DA seems to want it tried in the media b/c I fear he doesn't think he has a chance at a conviction, but he does have a chance at re-election.

Yeah, that was my take too.

Sadly, I don't think this trial is going to be "fair" to any of the participants (including the victim). I suppose on the bright side, if we didn't have a CJ system the accused would have been strung up by their.. well, you know.

Or the victim wouldn't have come forward (and isn't *that* an ambiguous statement, but I mean in both senses, so I don't know if that's good or bad).

 
At 10:41 PM, Blogger camojack said...

Let the games begin.

But precisely who is the victim here?

 
At 4:36 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The DA has it in for these boys. There is more than just the acting/crying done by Ms. accuser and MS. Rapberts the night of the alleged claim.

First. I don't believe anything Ms. Roberts says. She wasn't crying when she called the police stating that she was "just driving by and these boys started yelling racial slurs". she lied by ommitting that she started the argument. Then she contacted a PR firm to "Spin the scandal to her advantage" because she needs to support her kid.

The accuser:

claimed three boys raped her in 1996.
claimed her husband kidnapped her and tried to kill her in 1998.
claimed that 20 men raped her, then "eeny meeny miney moed" two that weren't even in the house when she claimed the rape occured.

She was arrested for larceny, auto theft, lewd public behavior, and trying to kill a police officer in 2002.

Her time line conficts with the boys she "eeny meeny miney moed" out of a manipulated phot line up.

She lied and destroyed these boys lives. The actions of the prosecuor and his office is nothing less than abuse of power.it in for these boys.

 
At 1:19 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

another wy to prevent these false accusations from happening is to imprison the women who make these false accusations with a minimal of 20 years in prison. After 20 years, no college boy would want to see them naked.

 
At 2:17 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Evidence in the records released by the DA:

When investigators questioned the stripper after DNA tests on the semen found inside her vagina and rectum didn’t match any of the Duke players, the stripper admitted to having had sex with at least three men around the time of the alleged rape. The stripper named her boyfriend and two men who drove her to Duke.

 
At 9:45 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just when you think this case couldn't get any weaker, more information comes to light showing the complete incompetence of district attorney Mike Nifong.

The only thing left to make this case even weaker would be the accuser herself finally coming forward to admit that she lied about the whole thing, which would make it even harder for district attorney to win the case, but Mike Nifong would probably ignore that piece of evidence as well in his quest to maliciously prosecute these young men.

 

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