Schadrach said:
Actually I used STV and the BBC, who are of course totally MRA sites. Do you have a source somewhere that supplies more information than the BBC and STV articles on the case, or am I missing something besides the victim testimony and "clearly damaged"?
You do know that
the justice system can choose how much information to release to the press based on the profile and sensitivity of the case right.
I looked at STV and the BBC, neither says that the only evidence was victim testimony. That claim only appears on a bunch of MRA sites. In fact, it's already clear that expert testimony was used from the fact that the psychiatrist's words were included in whatever information was released to the press.
Schadrach said:
A black man facing a rape charge, why ever would he go for a plea deal against a crime in which victim testimony only is frequently enough for a conviction in a justice system where both conviction and sentencing are biased against both blacks and men (it's actually better to be a black woman than a white man when it comes to sentencing)?
Do you have any evidence of this fact?
Because you introduced these people as if they were your evidence, now it turns out that one of them wasn't even convicted. Can you back up your claim that victim testimony is "frequently enough for a conviction?"
Because my experience is that
nothing short of a confession is reliably good enough for conviction.
Also, why should the fact that your legal system may or may not be racist impact on anything?
Schadrach said:
Really? The main reason he wasn't convicted is because it was shown to be physically impossible for him to committed the crime (the utter lack of physical evidence that he had committed the crime didn't seem to be an issue to the prosecution after all, so they at least felt they had a decent chance using only victim testimony).
It is the prosecutions job to, you've guessed it,
prosecute. This is a how a trial works. There is another side, the defence, whose job is to
defend the client. Whichever side has the strongest legal case wins (in theory).
Again, is your point that he should never have been arrested or bought to trial when the victim had specifically named him?
Schadrach said:
As for Tracy West, wasn't there some evidence that suggested she may have set it up (for example, that she researched the knots used to tie her beforehand)?
Hang on..
The argument was seriously made that because she named a specific attacker at the scene she could not possibly have been raped except by that person.
They just decided that she self-inflicted serious injuries on herself because.. yeah, that's easier than believing than that someone might name a suspect at the scene and then become irrationally convinced of their guilt through a well-known psychological phenomenon with very clear evidence behind it.
..you are not making a good account of the American legal system here, and not for any of the reasons you're trying to claim it's bad and unfair.
Schadrach said:
Of course, Gonzales was completely unaffected by his nearly three months in jail, and narrowly avoiding a lengthy sentence for a crime he didn't commit solely through having a very thorough alibi:
..as this pointless emotional narrative, narrated presumably through the prophetic power of the sacred muses, will illustrate.
I find it outright weird that you can be sceptical to the point of believing that a woman self-harmed rather than accept that she may have been attacked, but honestly expect me to be somehow moved or persuaded by this shlock. It's this kind of thing which really makes me wonder why you are so invested.
I'll be honest, I don't believe for one second this is about justice for you or for any of your men's rights buddies. This becomes painfully obvious when I try to research this case and find countless calls for Tracy West to be hunted down and raped.
It's about team blue and team pink, and the fact that you've become so caught up in trying to score points for your team that you've blinded yourself to any real issue which doesn't get you closer to the goal line. More on this later.
Schadrach said:
So, you're fine with it so long as accusing someone specific and known to you of a crime they didn't commit isn't falsely accusing them unless there exists hard physical proof that no crime occurred at all (go proving a negative!)?
Are you trying to prove my point?
Proof beyond all reasonable doubt. Wasn't the thing you were arguing for a few seconds ago?
But now that's suddenly not good enough, now you want it so that if you can't prove beyond all reasonable doubt that a crime was committed then you are
definately innocent and the person alleging otherwise did should be considered to have committed a crime without it needing to be proved?
Also, do you know what a "false" rape accusation even is? It doesn't mean what you think it means. "False" does not mean "malicious". Making a malicious accusation is a serious crime, making a false accusation is not. False reports, even false accusations, happen all the time.
Schadrach said:
Is it reasonable to at least consider the possibility, in cases in which the accused was known to the accuser, named by the accuser as the perpetrator, and a motive exists as to why they might choose to lie, that it might actually be a lie?
You can certainly allege as much. People routinely do, and I can assure you it's a lot more common and causes just as much misery as you're claiming malicious rape accusations cause.
But by the same token, is it reasonable to consider the possibility that, in cases where the accuser was known to the accused, named by the accuser as the perpetrator and could theoretically have committed the crime that they might actually have committed rape?
Maybe. But that doesn't mean anything, because that's not the standard on which the law operates.
I'm sorry, but you cannot just walk up to someone who has come into court to testify about a traumatic event in front of the person they allege is responsible and accuse them of lying. That isn't how a court operates, it is not there to punish the people who come forward by placing unfair burden of suspicion upon them without meaningful evidence.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Schadrach said:
Name legal reforms you would feel are appropriate.
Like I said. The big one is to stop assuming that a not guilty verdict means that no crime occurred. This will already solve 90% of the problems, because now it is possible to treat the alleged victim with the sensitivity due to someone who has been raped even if it cannot be determined that he or she has.
No crime has a 100% conviction rate. We cannot structure our legal system on the principle that everyone who commits a crime and gets taken to court will be convicted. Sometimes, we have to let people off. The biggest, the absolute biggest problem in rape at the moment is not lowering the standards of evidence or whatever the fuck you people think feminists are getting hard over, it's getting people to come forward, or in some cases to even recognize that they should come forward, it's getting people to feel like if they do come forward the justice system will not dismiss them, doubt them or hold them in suspicion without evidence, it's making rape trials into something other than systematic punishment of the alleged victim with very little chance of conviction and the risk of prosecution.
Fix that, and you've fixed a large part of the problem of the problem.
Schadrach said:
Do you believe Greig would have fared better had it not been a jury trial?
Not necessarily, it depends what evidence was actually used at his trial.
If what you've claimed about the case is true though, I'm pretty sure he would have stood a much better chance.
Schadrach said:
For a social justice-y person, you really don't seem to get that both conviction and sentencing are both slanted strongly against blacks and men.
Look, I apologise if you're not involved with the MRAs, but you repeat so much of the bollocks which they come out with.
Look, I get that some courts in America are pretty racist, and given the history of rape trials involving black men.. yeah, I can understand that element. But the idea that conviction and sentencing are "strongly slanted" against men is a bit weird. There is some evidence of a slight discrepancy in sentencing, but the idea that this factors into any decision making process outside of the fanciful imaginations of the men's rights lobby really doesn't work.
If you're innocent, you aren't meant to assume that a court will find you guilty unless there is overwhelming evidence against you.
I understand he took the plea on the advice of his legal team, and that had he actually been convicted his sentence would have been extremely long given the severity of the alleged crime, but the point is that
he was not found guilty, he pleaded guilty.
We don't know what was going on in his mind, we can't speculate. But this is a circular example. We cannot conclude from his case that wrongful convictions are common because he was not found guilty, and we cannot conclude that he knew that wrongful convictions are common while using him as an example to prove the fact.
Schadrach said:
Had Banks taken it to trial, how would he have defended himself?
A jury can't be emotionally manipulated unless you request to be tried by a jury.
And a judge would have almost certainly found him innocent unless the prosecution could produce some evidence which you aren't mentioning.
Now, clearly he or his legal team felt that accepting 6 years was better than risking 40 years. It's never a judgement I've had to make, so I can't really comment. However, your account is flawed on the basis that it didn't happen. It didn't even need to happen. There is never the obligation for a jury trial to occur at all, and I don't understand the American legal system's obsession with them in cases where they are clearly inappropriate.
Schadrach said:
The beauty of the way the topic is usually discussed is that men and women are currently subject to similar rates of sexual violence, the most common form in both cases involves forced sexual intercourse, and like the general populous, the majority of it is heterosexual.
Where are you getting that from?
That is the dodgiest claim I think I have ever heard in one of these topics, and I would really like some evidence of it.
In fact, this is where I'm going to conclude the team blue argument, because this is what you seem to need. Unless men are being "raped" by women in equal numbers to women who are raped by men, you and your peers cannot seem to take rape seriously.
I'm sure as soon as we acknowledged that rape is not a crime disproportionately perpetrated by men, you know, like
every other violent crime, then you'll suddenly find you can take rape seriously and suddenly develop a lot more sympathy about victim's rights. I mean that as a compliment. I don't doubt that you have good intentions, I do doubt that you are capable of fairly applying those intentions.
..which leads to this fucking playground bullshit which basically comes down to getting one up on the opposite sex because, oh no, that's
obviously what they're trying to do to you with all their scary rape allegations. They just want more stuff for their team, which means you need to get more stuff too! No, this isn't about correcting a horrible crime which has been largely ignored until the last few decades precisely because the people it occurred to often happened to be women or men whose sexual orientation was now questionable, this is about
women wanting more things when they're actually just as bad! Fuck evidence! They must be just as bad otherwise
our team is bad and we can't have that!
I think this is probably the point where you've become so caught up in that bollocks that you've now actually lost touch with basic reality.
Schadrach said:
You cheated. I said if falsely accused, implying that you already didn't rape someone. This can include cases where no sex actually occurred, or where there seemingly was consent, but afterward an accusation was made and the accused is claiming there wasn't consent and you didn't do whatever you did to try to establish consent.
You claim you did.
You point out the exact ways in which you established consent. You are willing to go into detail about precisely how you did so, you back up your
belief in your own innocence with evidence.
At that point, you cannot be found guilty unless it can be demonstrated that you are lying and in fact know you are guilty.
Do you want me to tell you how to get out of a rape accusation which isn't false? I can do that too. I've seen someone do it.
