Read the last paragraph and ask yourself if it wouldn't have been fair and just to drop this case when it was clear the evidence didn't match the woman's claim. Doesn't this sound like another case of a district attorney just rolling the dice in the hope of getting a lucky conviction?
Rolling the dice with the life of a 23-year-old man. Unbelievable.
Jury clears rape accused in 15 minutes
A jury at the High Court in Livingston took less than 15 minutes to return a not guilty verdict on Andrew Hogg yesterday.
The 23-year-old, of Ryehill Gardens, Edinburgh, pleaded not guilty to raping the 27-year-old woman in her flat in Canongate on November 23, 2008. He lodged a special defence admitting that he and the woman had engaged in a consensual "heavy petting" session. However, he denied that sexual intercourse had taken place.
Hogg told the jury that when the woman had changed her mind about making love, he stopped his advances.
His alleged victim claimed Hogg had made her pregnant and infected her with an STD after allegedly forcing her to have sex with him. But medical experts said a scan taken of her unborn baby suggested that it was conceived in December, not November as she claimed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
10 comments:
OT
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1333976/Binge-drinking-culture-creating-generation-aggressive-control-women.html
”Read the last paragraph and ask yourself if it wouldn't have been fair and just to drop this case when it was clear the evidence didn't match the woman's claim. Doesn't this sound like another case of a district attorney just rolling the dice in the hope of getting a lucky conviction?
Rolling the dice with the life of a 23-year-old man. Unbelievable.”
I agree that the bottom-line IS that they are rolling the dice in a gamble with a young man’s life. Yet, I’d consider this from the story:
”A jury at the High Court in Livingston took less than 15 minutes to return a not guilty verdict”
Given that 15 minutes isn’t usually long enough to elect a foreman and read the jury instructions, it would seem that the jurors had already decided before they even left the courtroom to deliberate (and simply rushed through the formalities).
Given this likelihood, I see it as one of two things: A) a completely incompetent prosecutor, who’s case was so weak compared to the defense case, that it left nothing for the jurors to mull over: or, B) another case of a an alleging victim pushing for the case to continue (and a prosecutor who wimped-out on declining to prosecute), even though the case was a clear loser.
While I realize that from many prosecutors, they’d prefer to take a case that’s virtually DOA to trial, lose the case, and take a tongue-lashing from the judge (privately, in chambers), than risk the more public problems that “dissatisfied” alleging victim might create through the media and by recruiting help from the SGI; I still think that doing so is not only an unnecessary risk to the defendant (juries can do stupid things – there’s just no guarantee), it’s also a tremendous waste of time and recourses (especially those of the defendant who is paying to defend his innocence).
I’d tend to liken the weakness of prosecutors who fear the flack they might receive for declining to prosecute to what we’ve often seen in LE’s failure to charge FRA’s out of fear of some imagined “blow-back” from the SGI.
There’s no denying that there will (at times) be additionally problems from doing the right thing (in defiance of the powerful SGI lobby); and, as happened to DA Ken Buck here in Colorado, having the courage to do so might even cost some in LE “big time”.
Yet, as we have previously seen with the issue of charging FRA’s, once it starts happening, the frequency begins to increase as fears of doing so are shown to be over-blown. This is even true WRT the reporting of FRA’s in the media. Five years ago, it would have been rare to read a newspaper account of a rape allegation that turned out to be false – not because the incident s of that crime were rare, but because it was easier for those in the media to take the cowards way out and “bury” the story so as to not risk retribution from the SGI. I’m sure that as the stories first started to be published, there was a good deal of push-back from the SGI trying to shame them for hurting the credibility of real (rape) victims. But, now, when so many stories do get published, it seems that the SGI has been largely silenced (and can only cling to their “it’s rare” shtick).
Perhaps what needs to happen is that prosecutors need to be “called out” for taking such needless risks and expenditures on cases that are clearly not going to win. I see the possibility of creating a public recognition and outcry that would rival anything the SGI could throw at them for declining to prosecute such cases. Then, they have to weigh not only the loss and the private shaming, but also a public response.
If we could cast their decisions to avoid trouble from the “victims” and the SGI as being the lack of the proper use of their discretion (and, possibly as their misconduct in doing so), then, I believe, we could create a credible deterrent to taking such cases to trial.
Just a thought.
Excellent, SL. And, again, I see a case like this as a rarity. I don't see nearly as much gambling with presumptively innocent lives as there could be. Even still, we need to call them out when we see them.
Nov 29, 2010 2:57:00 PM
Imho, the best way to protect prosecutors is to bring back statutory requirements of evidence.
By that I suspect you mean corroboration, proof of force, and proof of resistance?
I could also do without the polygraph double-standard (lie detectors are just fine and dandy when used on men accused of rape but heaven forbid that we should use them on accusers); the statute of limitations extensions or eliminations for rape that allow 40 year old claims to be brought to trial, assymetrical anonymity that allows innocent men to be destroyed but their accusers to be wrapped in anonymity, Fed. R. Evid. 413 (the most awful law in all American jurisprudence), the rape shield laws to the extent they bar evidence of prior false claims, etc.
Given that the news account was so sparse in meaningful detail, I tried searching for something more on this case. It seems that the Scotman ran another piece at the beginning of the trial,
http://news.scotsman.com/edinburgh/Rape-accused-39deleted-text39.6638041.jp
in which we learn that ”His legal team has lodged a special defence of consent.”, and that he had, at some point, contended that he had had consensual sex with the women – directly contradicting the claims from the post-trial report that: ”he denied that sexual intercourse had taken place.”
It may be that inconsistencies in HIS story also contributed to the decision to take the case to trial. [not that I'm suggesting that it JUSTIFIED doing so – her claims of STD and pregnancy still appear to be lies (perhaps as an alibi)]
There's a lot about this case that is not addressed in either of the news accounts (and, I find no others). In that the woman was claiming that she was impregnated as a result of the alleged rape (in Nov '08), and since it appears that she was not actually impregnated until December, I'm wondering if she didn't even make her claim until after she found out that she was pregnant (perhaps in January '09)? If so, it would certainly seem that she was simply looking for an alibi for her pregnancy/STD, and using the incident with Andrew Hogg (sex? no sex?) for that purpose.
Still the medical evidence contradicting her claim of rape & impregnation should have been a major red-flag for the prosecutor that she was not being complete forthright.
Often what is omitted from stories can be quite telling as well.
For instance, if it was found that Hogg DID NOT have the same STD as she claimed he had given her. Additionally, since enough time had elapsed for her to either have the baby or abort it, DNA testing could have conclusively indicated if Hogg was the father or not (was it either not tested, or just not reported?). Such an omission seems rather suspicious to me, as I'd have to guess that if it were known that he was the father, that would have been presented as evidence and also reported on.
My guess is that both the STD and DNA evidence where that she had had sex with someone else, but that her claim of his culpability in both included a denial of sex with anyone else (how else could she possibly hope to pin it on him). I'd further guess that the prosecutor was just too weak to call her out on the obvious lies, and simply took what appeared to be the path of least resistance.
I think theirs way to much passing-of-the-buck throughout LE and the justice system especially when it comes to rape accusations. Cops don't want to take the heat for not referring it to the DA. DA's don't want the heat for declining to prosecute. And, judges don't want the heat for refusing to bind weak cases over for trial. They all end up depending on the jury to "bail" them out from their cowardly buck-passing calls.
I've actually had this very argument with my wife regarding taking loser cases to trial as the easy way out (although, in regards to non-rape cases). And, while she basically agrees with me, she still (in lawyerly fashion) falls back on the notion that justice is best served by letting the accused have their day in court (pretending that the expense and reputational harm to them doesn't matter).
SL, unlike our feminist adversaries, I have no problem "victim blaming" men and boys falsely accused of rape. If you want to insure you'll be in for a load of trouble, just lie to LE, even about an insignificant matter. That doesn't mean he deserves the pain of a false rape charge, and it doesn't excuse LE or the false accuser, it merely acknowledges that if you lie or tell inconsistent stories, it's going to be a lot easier to charge and try you.
What Archivist said...
on my arrest my lawyer was very clear and very specific, do not tell ANY lies, ESPECIALLY lies intended you make yourself sound "Normal" and not like a rapist.
In my case our local court house has 5 court rooms, 52 weeks a year x 5 days a week x 5 court rooms = a MAXIMUM of 1,300 Court-days available per year.
My case has consumed 11 of them and it is still rumbling on.
This is 0.84% of the MAXIMUM available resource for a whole year (which will also of course = 0.84% of the annual LE budget) used up by one psycho Cluster B female... this is a CHILLING statistic.
It looks like another bad day for feminists.
@AFOR
Look at what's happening with the DSM V:
http://www.shrink4men.com/2010/12/01/narcissistic-personality-disorder-and-histrionic-personality-disorder-to-be-eliminated-in-the-dsm-v-welcome-to-starbucks-diagnostics/
Post a Comment