Letters to the Editor
ondelette
Published Letters: 1957 Editor's Choice: 19
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A Bad Feeling
[Read the article: What else we're reading]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm beginning to get a really bad feeling about the Duke case. All the piling on about how completely unreputable the plaintiffs actions have been, all the impugning of her testimony about events, seem so typical of lawyers of wealthy defendants going after a plaintiff who clearly is having a hard time remembering things. Maybe it is all as it seems, that she is falsifying testimony, making things up and disparaging wholesome Duke sportsmen for money or fifteen minutes of fame. But maybe, just maybe, something bad really happened to her, she can't remember it all half as well as she thought she could, and she is being taken apart over the rest of her life.
Answer one question for me before dismissing her and buying what has clearly been an excellent defense: Suppose a prostitute had been drugged and raped by an upstanding member of society (let's make him a judge to put him above reproach). She wouldn't know what had and hadn't happened to her any better than a prom queen from the burbs that had been date raped, she would have uptyoddzillions of different DNA in her from her work, and she would come to court with a criminal record and an acknowledged history of disrepute. In this hypothetical situation, everything that could go against her in court would. But would that mean she hadn't been raped? Is it impossible to accuse rape and work in the sex trades in our society? Does someone have to shut up and take it, if they know something bad happened to them, but can't remember clearly what took place?
With some revisions and changes (most notably that she probably wasn't penetrated by the defendants), that sounds pretty much like what is happening in North Carolina. The complete destruction of the plaintiff's case and reputation shouldn't be a substitute for proof of innocence of the defendants, but it works, and it is the best move of a well heeled defense attorney.
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Subtemperature IQ
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[Read more letters about this article: Here]All I was trying to say is that it is also possible we are seeing a real case in which the defense is playing the attack the plaintiff credibility game to the max.
And I was asking the question, using a hypothetical to illustrate it, if it would be possible for someone with a zero reputation, who was a sex worker, to succeed in a complaint of rape against a well-to-do person with good lawyers. It is certainly possible for such a person to get raped.
Apparently, you mistook my hypothetical, which are nearly always bracketed by "Suppose..." and "Let's imagine...", for my recitation of the facts of the current case, which it was not.
If raising the point that people without reputations, or with records, can (not necessarily will) get less than justice from the courts makes me an "asshole" who needs to "Get with the fucking program", until my "IQ reaches room temperature", so be it. I knew a guy one time who went into the courtroom with a bad reputation, tried to argue his innocence, and was told by the judge, and I quote, "Let's put it this way, you're guilty, now what do you want the charge to be?" All the foul language in the world won't convince me that everyone who goes before a judge and jury sees justice. That was my only "agenda" here.