The president of the school decided he wanted the quarterback, Johnson, expelled. The president was overruled.
The day after Johnson was reinstated to the team, the football coach raved about Johnson. What a great leader Johnson was.
The football coach was very successful. Two days after the football coach raved about Johnson, the president of the school fired the coach. The president of the school fired the athletic director.
The president of the school didn’t say why he fired these guys. CF, I think the firing has something to do with your post.
I will just note that some of you are arguing that prosecutors (and police) should expend much more time and money on cases that are inherently very difficult to prove, including bringing more cases to trial, even though this will likely result in a lower conviction rate among the cases they bring to trial. Unless you’re going to give them more resources, they will have to drop other cases they think they can win in order to do this. How are you going to convince prosecutors that this is a good idea?
The reality is that police and prosecutors probably rapidly lose interest in an acquaintance rape case when they observe from the initial report that there’s not likely to be much helpful evidence. The complainant reports that both were drinking, and that the unwanted sex happened in a private room with nobody else around. It’s certainly possible that with aggressive investigation, more of these cases could be built into winnable criminal prosecutions. And it’s certainly likely that some bad prosecutors (and police) write off cases that don’t fit that mold in the first place, and that are more likely to benefit from aggressive investigation. But again, you’re asking the prosecutor to take on a lot more losing cases.
My point here is just that the prosecutor’s behavior doesn’t necessarily have to be ascribed to a failure to believe women, or a desire to protect men, or any other base motive other than the motive to win a lot of cases.
How will we convince police and prosecutors to change their focus? One department at a time. One step at a time, same as all social movements.
A lot of prosecutors are elected officials. If they get voted out of office for letting rapists continue raping while they pursue penny-ante drug crimes, they’ll get the message. Pabst got elected by keeping a star quarterback out of prison, but that tactic has limited applicability. And notice that even Pabst is giving lip service to convicting more rapists, not that I believe her.
So, Cardinal Fang, you want the prosecutor to be soft on drugs?
I don’t really mean that, but prosecutors aren’t sitting around eating bonbons–they have to perform triage on what kinds of cases they take. Obviously, you and a lot of others believe that rape cases, including acquaintance rape cases, should get a lot more attention. I’m just pointing out that prosecutors are very much interested in what the yield in convictions would be. If they think there won’t be much yield, then they will expect to be criticized for a declining conviction rate and for neglecting street crime, or financial crime, or whatever category they have to deemphasize to pursue more of these hard-to-prove cases.
As I asked upthread, are there some prosecutors who have already tried to do this? If so, what kind of results did they get?
I don’t accept the argument that all’s for the best in this best of all possible worlds and prosecutors are deploying their resources optimally. Rape is a serious crime. It’s not like we’re talking about asking the cops to crack down on jaywalking and loitering; we expect them to take reports of the crime of rape seriously. And there’s ample evidence that in too many cases they are not treating rape cases seriously.
Hunt, you are the one asserting that if the justice system put more emphasis on rape cases, their conviction rate would plummet. You made that assertion, so it is up to you to verify it. I say merely that if they tried more cases, they’d get more convictions, which is difficult for you to dispute. I say if a prosecutor is getting a 90% conviction rate (counting cases that go to trial and cases that settle) they’re not trying enough cases. I’m willing to see a lower conviction rate and more criminals behind bars.
And I would certainly be interested in any data you have. I think dstark’s link to that researcher about rape trauma (Campbell?) might have some numbers. Dstark?
But maybe people like Pabst shouldn’t be offering to testify on the behalf of alleged perpetrators when that’s not part of her job (and in a venue that was clearly not really hers). That really bothered me. That’s not bonbons, but that’s not triaging, either.
@Hunt, I don’t find your arguments persuasive. You seem to be pushing for the status quo.
This results in victims and women getting the short end of the stick.
Many he said/she said cases are not he/said she/said cases. There is evidence. Evidence might be bloddy walls. A bloody mattress. A video of the accused walking in a building folowing the alleged victim. Walking out with her pants.
Let’s say you are correct. Prosecuters don’t want to take on more cases and money is short.
This argument thal all assaults should be reported to the police and schools should have no say doesn’t work for victims, does it? Prosecuters don’t want these cases so the cases go nowhere.
We can see in Missoula what would happen. The only guy who would have been punished is the guy who confessed. Everybody else who was accused walks free. No punishment.
We kick the schools out of looking at cases and this will be the best time in decades for rapists.
Your impression that prosecutors aren’t trying enough of these cases seems to be based primarily on some anecdotal evidence about some cases that should have been brought but weren’t. My impression that changed procedures wouldn’t result in a lot more convictions, and would result in a lower conviction rate is based on my own understanding about how evidence works, and on an article I read somewhere in which a prosecutor said that would be the result (I guess that’s kind of anecdotal).
To put it another way, if a prosecutor is getting a conviction rate of 93% across all crimes (as US Attorneys apparently did in 2011), that prosecutor is not going to have a strong incentive to increase prosecutions in an area with a lower rate, especially if the likely result would be an even lower rate.
If we did not live in a culture where the sexuality of females ( too often, it is children who are being sexually assaulted), is blamed for violent acts, perhaps the prosecutors & the rest of the legal system, would experience more pressure to bring those who victimized them to justice.
Rape is taken even less seriously than domestic violence reports.
Wins and losses are important because prosecutors should win alot more than they lose because theoretically they are only prosecuting cases where they think they CAN get a conviction…that’s their job, Baseless prosecutions result in civil lawsuits for baseless and malicious prosecution and prosecutors are loath to try cases that even feel slightly baseless. If there is no case, there is no prosecution. If prosecutors aren’t trying more cases it’s because they don’t have the foundation of a case to take to trial and win. It’s the police’s job to gather the evidence and to pull together the information that a prosecutor can then use that to secure a conviction.
In cases where consent for sex is at issue, the DNA results don’t add new information to a case. It’s all good that states are combing through old DNA kits, perhaps it will get some people in jail that are running free and it’s known that it will get people out of jail who were accused but did not commit the crime. But DNA testing has very little to do with the many acquaintance rape cases where there is no evidence and there are two seemingly believable people involved who agree that they had sex with each other.
I don’t at all disagree that there are cases that aren’t brought because police don’t investigate properly, or because prosecutors don’t pursue cases they could win. But I think we have a disagreement here on what the likely magnitude of the disparity is. It seems to me that some folks believe, primarily based on some specific cases, that there is a very large number of provable cases that are being ignored for improper reasons. I just don’t see much evidence for that. As I pointed out above, if 90% of rape cases brought by prosecutors are resulting in convictions, that’s probably about right compared to other crimes. The statistics I provided suggest that prosecutors tend to choose cases that they are likely to win about 90% of the time. If they should choose a different yield for rape cases, what is the reason not to do the same for other serious crimes?
Look again at these statistics from the UK: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/rape-a-lack-of-conviction/
Note the much stronger likelihood that a rape perpetrated by a stranger will be reported. I suspect that investigations and successful prosecutions are also much more likely if the perpetrator is a stranger (if he can be identified). In a case like that, where consent is unlikely to be a useful defense, the rape kit results will send the defendant to jail. It’s much more like other crimes, such as robbery, where the challenge is finding out who committed the crime, as opposed to proving that a crime occurred at all.
I don’t think I’m in favor of the status quo. I think I’m just trying to inject some realism into a discussion that has, in my opinion, a lot of wishful thinking in it.
@Hunt, you are for the status quo…or you want to go backwards. I’m not sure.
Out of those 82 Cleveland cases I highligted earlier, 60 ended up with guilty pleas or a ruling of guilty.
That’s less than 75 percent. That is not good enough for you. It’s not 90 percent.
That’s good enough for me and others.
I posted and read the DOJ report on Missoula. The report is damning.
Florida State area…55 victims go to the police. 2 are prosecuted. Lol.
Hobart and Smith. Gang rape. Guys lie. We didn’t have sex with her. Well…there is dna showing you did. Oh Yeah. We had sex with her. It was consensual. Ok. We rule the victim’s story doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Lol!
Some people have studied thousand of cases.
What starts out as anecdotes ends up as data.
The disparity between what happens and what should happen is too large.
@Hunt, I like your link. I read it. I read it the first time.
In Missoula, The police recommended 85 cases should be prosecuted. The prosecution took 14. We can see a little bit what the prosecuters were doing by reading the DOJ report.
From what I read, Calvin Smith should have been kicked out of UM. I have no idea what Kristen Pabst was doing at the school hearing testifying for Calvin Smith. Blood. Pants. Video. How much evidence do you need?
I have a mentally disabled kid. In Missoula, they did not prosecute sexual assault crimes involving disabled people. Mentally disabled people are more likely to be sexually assaulted. That’s what I have been told from multiple people. I know somebody who is mentally disabled who was raped. Nothing happened to the rapist. Well…he lost his job. That’s it.
I had a good discussion with a lawyer in the Bronx DA’s office. They were having a very hard time getting convictions. Did they give up? Should they with a 50% conviction rate? She moved to Queens where less of her work would be in vain.
My brother’s ex worked in one of the first districts to prosecute domestic abuse even when the victim refused to testify. It decreased the prevalence of domestic violence, kind of the goal of the justice system. That is something that I would hope happens in Missoula, prosecute more rapists and actual number of rapes decreases. It’s tough to do in a city where the police chief believes that 50% of women reporting rapes are lying about it and prosecutors believe in protecting the reputations of young rapists.
It’s easy in an insular community to believe departments are operating effectively, even when analysis shows they are not. As the DOJ pointed out, some of these cases should have been prosecuted and would have resulted in prison sentences. Don’t take difficult cases because you might drop of few point in your batting average? I’m not buying it. The DOJ doesn’t either.
And prosecutors in most jurisdictions are elected and can be replaced if they aren’t prosecuting cases where the police have gathered evidence. Unfortunately the ‘batting average’ becomes a campaign slogan and the end result is self fulfilling Catch-22 - they take the cases they know they can win. I’m with Hunt in that i think the status quo can change, but I’m also not in favor of spending taxpayer dollars chasing cases that are never going to be convicted given the backlog in many jurisdictions, and many jurisdictions try to settle those cases with plea deals, which I think is a good thing for misdemeanor charges and some minor felony charges. In many states criminal sexual assault is not a one size fits all as I’ve mentioned on several other threads - there are degrees from misdemeanor to full on rape with forcible assault.
Colleges turn a blind eye toward under-age drinking, yet somehow they are supposed to “deal” seriously with the negative outcomes and overlook the illegal activity that precipitated the negative outcome in case after case after case. And we think the general population sitting on a jury culled from citizens unfamiliar with today’s college environment is going to suddenly turn a blind eye to the circumstances leading up to the criminal prosecution in a case where neither party was passed out drunk and there is pretty much no evidence? I don’t think so. If society wants to troubleshoot this issue they need to start at the trouble spots and there are more than one with this issue.
