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College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

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Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#81

Post by reso »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #54
cperciva wrote: post #22

We live under laws on sexual assault that, in large part, were not written with women’s interests in mind. [...] The legal verdict on whether sex is nonconsensual still often rests on the perspective of the alleged perpetrator rather than the experience of the victim. It would be contrary to the principles of fundamental justice to imprison someone who has done nothing wrong. If the alleged perpetrator of an offence…

Isn't taking all reasonable steps to ascertain consent what the affirmative consent thing is all about? It's one of those sensible things, like recycling, renewable energy, belief in evolution, or decent medical coverage, that somehow becomes a very bitter political issue for no logical reason.

Yeah, it's pretty shocking to me too. I don't know how it happened, but somehow people interpret affirmative consent as meaning we're going to start prosecuting rape cases with presumption-of-guilt.

In my brain these are actually two different things. One is how we teach consent to teenagers and young adults, the other is fixing extremely well-documented biases in how rape cases are tried in court. Key phrase being "extremely well documented".

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#82

Post by chris_wot »

SeanDav wrote: post #70
CthulhuOvermind wrote: post #14

"The legal verdict on whether sex is non consensual still often rests on the perspective of the alleged perpetrator rather than the experience of the victim." I'm not sure I entirely understand this quote to its fullest. It is being argued that it is the experience of the victim that matters if sex is consensual. Isn't this quote logically wrong? Consensual by definitions means both parties agreed. But is the author…

In the UK, there have been several examples of a woman getting drunk, having apparently consensual sex and then deciding the next day that she was raped. The male now has to prove that sex was consensual. The woman gets lifetime anonymity and the male has to undergo a public trial, almost always with commensurate loss of reputation and employment, even if later proven to be innocent. There is a very recent example wh…

Don't have sex with someone who is under the influence of drugs or alcohol?

Edit: I think you are referring to this:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/6958799/City-lawye...

If no rape is found to have occurred, which seems likely given there were police witnesses, then that lady is going to be in a world of bother. Firstly, it will have meant that she has appealed against a sentence, which means if it didn't occur she has perjured herself. Secondly, it's pretty clear that a false accusation like this is slanderous and the offended party would be well within their rights to sue. And thirdly, if a criminal conviction for perjury is recorded against the barrister, then I'd say it's likely she won't he able to practice law again.

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#83

Post by reso »

DanBC wrote: post #73
reso wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No other comments have directly addressed the quote you referenced. My interpretation is it is saying that rape cases are prosecuted about the intent of the perpetrator. Aka, they are convicted if it can be shown that they intended to commit rape, or knowingly committed rape, and acquited otherwise. This puts the standard of conviction much higher than other crimes, because lots of crimes can be committed unknowingly…

You can't "unknowingly" commit theft (intent to dishonestly permanently deprive), emezzlement (intent to deceive) or murder (intent to unlawfully kill someone).

As a clear counterexample: you can certainly commit negligent homicide without intending to.

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#85

Post by chris_wot »

jmspring wrote: post #49

I'll risk down votes...but...this is one of those posts that doesn't fair well here in the sense of balanced conversation...and the comments I have already read...I hope it disappears soon...

My own comment has been bouncing between a score of three to zero and up again. It's fun to see the limits of HN's scoring system - there are plenty of greyed out comments that are reasonably argued and that many people upvoted, but if the same number of people plus one downvoted it, then you get a lighter colour signifying, fairly inaccurately, that you have overstepped some sort of bounds.

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#86

Post by zyx321 »

zorpner wrote: post #67
mikekchar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll vote you up mainly because I also wonder a bit about why this article is here. I haven't been around HN for that long, but even a year ago I seem to remember that the articles voted up were mainly technical in nature or related to startups. I have noticed that as discussion boards get more popular they seem to move to being platforms for expressing opinion on political subjects. It may be my imagination, but the…

Social/political issues are not orthogonal to technical issues -- in fact, the belief that they are orthogonal is fundamentally conservative (protective of the status quo).

You do have a point. It's conservative in the sense that it has been this way for a long time and that it's been working out well enough. Why do we need to change it?

And no, rehashing the old ">2011" meme for the millionth time is not a valid argument.

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#87

Post by Dr_tldr »

deciplex wrote: post #75
Dr_tldr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if gay and transgendered people "creep you the fuck out", or orthodox jews, or people in wheelchairs? Once you start making the case for expulsion and the application of a sliding scale of guilt due entirely to other people's beliefs about an unpopular individual or group as fine in principle, you've basically undone the entire enlightenment in law, governance, and ethics.

Those are all protected classes under the law, so it doesn't hold up. It's the "and is probably a rapist" (or more likely to be than the average student) (according to the university's tribunal) which is the important part. "Is probably gay", "is probably transgendered", "is probably a jew" and "is probably disabled" are not analogous and I hope I don't have to explain why.

Ask anyone sufficiently conservative/radical feminist which groups of people they think are "probably rapists", and you get the same results as baseless discrimination but through a different explanation.

People tend to think "probably" a lot more often with a lot less evidence about individuals or groups they dislike for any reason.

For instance, I think you're probably a crypto-nazi and should lose your job, but that's almost certainly a totally unfair belief based on my very limited and highly subjective viewpoint.

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#88

Post by reso »

fleitz wrote: post #80
reso wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No other comments have directly addressed the quote you referenced. My interpretation is it is saying that rape cases are prosecuted about the intent of the perpetrator. Aka, they are convicted if it can be shown that they intended to commit rape, or knowingly committed rape, and acquited otherwise. This puts the standard of conviction much higher than other crimes, because lots of crimes can be committed unknowingly…

The guilty mind (mens rea) does have bearing on sentencing and the types of charge. For instance if you intend to kill someone it's a different charge than if you accidentally killed someone, and if it couldn't have been foreseen that the actions would kill someone then there is generally no crime at all.

This is very true. Many activists actually want to open up less-harsh sentencing or charge options in sexual assault cases to give prosecutors and juries more ways to treat the specifics of each case.

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#89

Post by sambe »

mc32 wrote: post #60
sambe wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, under English law, I believe it isn't. The definition involves penetrative sex. It's normally something like sexual assault instead (arguably adding somewhat to gender politics).

It's still not entirely impossible for a person without a male reproductive organ to engage in active penetrative sex with the aid of well, sexual devices which mimic the shape or even cruder devices. That's to say, I don't believe, but could be wrong, they stipulate being naturally born or some such uneasy language.

I believe it actually requires a penis too. Quick Google suggests this is still true.

Re: College Sex-Assault Trials Belong in Court, Not Campus (2014)

#90

Post by learc83 »

deciplex wrote: post #75
Dr_tldr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if gay and transgendered people "creep you the fuck out", or orthodox jews, or people in wheelchairs? Once you start making the case for expulsion and the application of a sliding scale of guilt due entirely to other people's beliefs about an unpopular individual or group as fine in principle, you've basically undone the entire enlightenment in law, governance, and ethics.

Those are all protected classes under the law, so it doesn't hold up. It's the "and is probably a rapist" (or more likely to be than the average student) (according to the university's tribunal) which is the important part. "Is probably gay", "is probably transgendered", "is probably a jew" and "is probably disabled" are not analogous and I hope I don't have to explain why.

Gay and transgendered aren't federally protected classes. Many states have laws protecting them, but many do not.
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