You're laboring under some serious misconceptions. I tried to explain it in my post to fetboy which you obviously read since you quoted part of it. And yet you seem to think that I think rape is a good thing or that having sex with minors is a good thing. I find it astonishing that you seem to think that.

Let me try again. By abolishing statutory rape laws, a state would in no way abolish the concept of rape, it would merely place the issue before juries to decide. So if sex occurred between a 20-year-old woman and a 14-year-old boy, the issue of his consent would not automatically be decided by the fact of his minority, but by the jury that heard all the facts in the case. They could convict and, in cases where the complainant was very young, likely would. Understand? It's not a difficult concept.

Allow me to explain my thinking generally. Having tried my share of cases, it is my experience that juries are a vital democratic institution. In no other area of life do we allow a group of one's peers to render a binding decision about matters as important as life or death, freedom or incarceration, the transfer of great wealth, etc. It is an exercise in direct democracy the like of which is known nowhere else in our society. Therefore, when laws, regulations, etc take matters out of the hands of juries and place them elsewhere, it is an anti-democratic act. There is a lot of that type of thing going on. Binding arbitration clauses in contracts are a good and distressingly widespread example. So my opposition to age of consent laws comes from the desire to keep the process as democratic as possible.

Also, I don't make money off these cases and never have. I've told you before that I'm not a criminal defense lawyer and never have been. I've tried, if memory serves me, a total of 4 criminal cases in my life, all of which were Class C misdemeanors which is the most trivial type of criminal offense in the State of Texas.

So kindly dispense with your fevered imaginings.

But since we're corresponding, what do you think about my first post in which I take Harris to task for claiming that the requirement of a single piece of corroborating evidence is an "extremely high" standard in rape cases? That's my real point in all this. What do you think about that?

So thinks the person who has never tried a legal case. First, you're completely wrong that the jury would have no guidance. Of course it would. In every case, judges instruct juries about what the law is, including what constitutes consent in rape cases if that is an issue. In the case of minors, the judge's instructions could be tailored to that fact.

I must say that I'm astonished that you don't know this. Isn't it obvious?

Second, your take on the naivete of juries is as wrong as your understanding of jury instructions. Think about it. Have you ever been called to jury duty? If so, did you check your knowledge of people and experience of the world at the door when you entered the court? Of course not. You and every other juror brings a lifetime of experience to their jury service. Moreover, jurors don't trust lawyers. The idea that juries swallow anything a "slick lawyer" tells them is far from the truth. Any lawyer with half a brain bends over backwards to convince the jury that he/she is trustworthy, and they do that by telling the truth. Finally, I'll tell you a deep dark secret. In every case there are at least two sides, each with its own attorney who's fighting hard to win. See? The state has an attorney too, and for every claim the defense attorney makes, the prosecutor gets an opportunity to rebut it. Didn't that occur to you?

There are millions of trials conducted in this country every year, and in a miniscule number of them, a travesty of justice occurs. I'm not arguing that juries are perfect; I'm arguing that any jury looking at the facts of a specific case is in a better position to judge those facts than is the state legislature which knows nothing of those facts.

So what do you think about Lynn Harris's claim that the corroboration requirements in Scotland are "extremely high?"

In the first place, an attorney cannot knowingly put on evidence he/she knows to be perjury, so, if he/she "knows" the client to be lying, he/she is obliged to withdraw from representation. Of course I would ask you how the attorney "knows" the accused is guilty. Was he/she there at the scene when the crime occurred? In that case the attorney is a witness and cannot act as counsel for the accused. In no other case I can think of does the attorney "know" the client to be guilty.

But, if the attorney thinks it's an appropriate defense, he/she would not put the accused on the witness stand and argue to the jury that the state has not proved its case.

Do you have aproblem with that?