Letters to the Editor
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@ fetboy
There was no secrecy, not at any point. I am not the sort of person who takes pleasure in lies. My lover knew about my husband from when he first met me. My husband knew about my intention to have a relationship with the lover from the very beginning. The only thing I never told was how much fun it was to have sex with one man after the other. I was primed all the time.
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To Anonymous on December 21, 2007 02:12 PM
I always wanted to come clean to the husbands of the married women I dated, and tell them I had no problem with being the second man, but I didn't want to hurt them (the husbands). And I was too in love with the married women, all of whom were powerful and sexy, to break it off with them when they refused to stop keeping everything secret (to the best of my knowledge no one, except me, ever got hurt).
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fetboy
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?"
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To Robert Franklin
"There are millions of trials conducted in this country every year, and in a miniscule number of them, a travesty of justice occurs."
I personally know several rape victims who would disagree with you, and I am sure there are thousands, if not millions, of male and female rape victims that would likewise disagree with you, and you are discounting the large number of rape cases that never get to trial (every policeman and law enforcement official will tell you about those).
I am not a lawyer, but when I was 20-21 I worked as a receptionist in a law firm (actually for several law firms on a floor of a building), but I also did the tedious work that lawyers hate to do, such as high lighting the key point in printed out depositions, and I was also kept on hand during a few jury selections (I had no part in the process, but I saw what was going on) where I learned how clueless the defense lawyers wanted the juries to be. With all the creditors that came to my floor looking for lawyers who weren't making payments on the money they borrowed to pay for their lavish lifestyles, I quickly learned that lawyers will do anything to win a case, including completely befuddling a jury with arguments about the gray area of a case.
Yeah, I know Judges instruct juries on the laws prior to trials, which is exactly why I wrote the fetboy ballot initiative. There is too much gray area around the subject of rape, mostly because people hate to talk about the graphic violent sexual details of rape, and that gray area needs to be cleaned up, which is why I spread as much awareness as possible about how date rape is carried out. And why I am in favor of establishing guidelines and principles about what is rape, and what does not justify rape (absolutely nothing justifies rape), and having those principles and guidelines dictated to a jury prior to a rape or sexual molestation trial.
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Maybe Mr. Franklin,
You care to enlighten us on how a defense attorney defends a client he knows is guilty by telling the jury the truth. If the defendant is guilty and his attorney knows so how can the defense attorney be truthful with the jury. Either he directly lies in his summation or he omits the truth. Either way is a form of lying.
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Anonymous
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?