Wouldn’t it make more sense for the defense to argue that it’s physically possible some other man inflicted her injuries, rather than to simply try to paint her as a slut, though?
If the victim didn’t know the attacker, then an argument of misidentification can fly. When, as here, the vicitim is resolute in her identification of the attacker, and had some acquaintance with him - even an hour’s worth - before the attack began, then misidentification is a harder sell.
The “victim is a slut” tactic is in essence an argument for nullification, telling the jury in so many words that because the victim was foolish in judgement, or promiscuous, a rape is not as serious an offense against her. It works because the jury, or at least a few members, harbor just those sort of thoughts.
Misidentification is a legitimate defense, by the way, if the facts support it. The victim-is-promiscuous defense is not, but it works.
- Rick
And maybe that’s something to remember.
A lot of people are talking about the way it should be, and that’s sweet. It really is.
Thinig is, the real world does not work like that. There’s a whole lot of people out there in the world who believe that if she wasn’t beaten unconscious, it wasn’t rape.
Hell, I remember a case from Madison, Wisconsin when I was in college in which a judge decided that her skirt was short enough that she was obviously asking for it.
A judge.
So, when people in this thread point out that X will probably happen, that doesn’t mean they’re happy about it, and it doesn’t mean they’re condoning it. It means that’s the way it works right now.
-Joe, it sucks, but deal with it
I interpreted the remark the same way you did, margin, and my reaction was about the same as yours.
Rilchiam: what did you make of the word ‘unfortunately’?
A token gesture from someone who is too accepting of prejudice. Perhaps because he’s never been subjected to it?
I think I wasn’t clear, Bricker. I’m not suggesting the defense try to claim misidentification of her attacker at all. I’m suggesting they call her an outright liar, saying some other man caused her injuries but she’s pinning it on Bryant. Since there’s semen from more than one man in her panties, if they can prove sexual contact in close proximity time-wise, doesn’t reasonable doubt become more plausible when the physical evidence they’re trying to use to prove their case could now be attributed to someone else entirely?
In a “he said/she said” claim of rape, the presumption swings her way when there is strong physical evidence that the sexual encounter wasn’t consentual, such as bruising, blood and vaginal tearing. But when she’s been with multiple men in a short time period, all of that physical evidence that “proves” (or at least convices) that rape is the more likely event to have caused those types of injuries, becomes moot in relation to whether or not he is the perpetrator – identification or not. Now we’re back to “he said/she said,” and the defense simply says, “She’s lying. It wasn’t him, it was ‘Guy B’. She was bruised and torn either immediately before or immediately after her encounter with Bryant. She just thought she could blackmail Bryant, so she’s pointing the finger at him. Or she’s trying to protect her boyfriend.”
** Physical Evidence**
The “sex with three men in three days” charge isn’t neccessarily a smear, and it certainly doesn’t violate the Rape Shield provisions. If vaginal tearing is presented as prima facie evidence of rape perpetrated by their client, they have a professional responsibility to present evidence of other causes of said vaginal tearing.
The other evidence of violence, the neck bruises, may not hold up as well as the prosecution would have hoped. At the hearing, the investigating officer( the sherrif, I believe) testified that he didn’t remember if there were any neck bruises. This is no mere oversight, but a damning admission. Police officers are trained to observe and note bruises, cuts, scratches etc. on the body of any party involved in a domestic violence or sexualt assualt case. There are only two possibilities. Either he wasn’t doing his job very well, or there weren’t any substantial bruises.
Kobe fucking did it man
Well, we know he fucked her. They both admit to it. Well, Kobe lied at first, then he admitted it when confronted with irrefutable proof.
The case hinges on the credibility of the accuser. She may not be seen as credible, because her actions right up to the sex act itself were consistent with someone who has sought out a sexual encounter and given consent to sex.
She and Kobe meet for the first time at the hotel. Kobe asks for a special tour. They go off together, alone, talking and flirting. She shows Kobe to his room. He asks her to come see him later.
She does see him later. Around midnight. She takes the back way up to his room to avoid detection by security, because she knows her visiting Kobe there is against hotel regulations.
They talk, flirt. She pulls up her skirt, ostensibly to show Kobe her tatoo. Did she also mean it as a sexual invitation? Who knows? Clearly Kobe took it as one. Unless she’s completely out of touch with reality, she knew that this would have an arousing effect on him.
They make out. Even the accuser admits that she was fine with just making out. Kobe proceeds to heavy petting. She says stop, but Kobe keeps going. Kobe will doubtless claim that she didn’t say stop, that she even asked him to go further.
Legally, she has the right to say “Stop!” at any point in the proceedings, and if Kobe continues, it’s rape. Even if she says “Stop!” once Kobe is inside her.
When the accuser went up to Kobe’s room, she had to know that he expected to have sex with her. The question is: What did she decide to do about it? Did she consent at first, only to change her mind when sex was about to happen? Did she go up to his room knowing that he expected sex, and that she definitely wasn’t going to give it to him?
These questions are crucial because they speak to her credibility. If she says that she had no idea that Kobe wanted sex, I simply don’t believe her. She may be dumb, but nobody is that dumb. (Well, maybe Kobe is that dumb, but his idiocy is really not up for debate.)
If she says that she went up with the intention of having sex, but changed her mind, for whatever reason, (maybe because Kobe too rough from the start and it put her off) I believe her, but I can also see this as a mitigating factor for Kobe. Maybe he just misread the signs.
If she says that she went to see him knowing full well what he wanted, and with no intention of giving it to him, because she wanted to hold him up, make him wait, tease him, make him pay her more attention, make him treat her like a real date and not just a star struck groupie, I’d absoluteley believe her.
She might say,“Of course I gave him the impression that I would have sex with him. When you give a man that impression, he focuses on you like a laser. You’re all he can see, all he can think about. One the most famous, wealthy and attactive young men in the world, and I’m the center of all of his attention. I was loving it. Then it got out of control…”
How the jury will see this is anyone’s guess. On the one hand, as earlier posters have mentioned, juries are notoriously hostile to rape claims by women who seem promiscuous or irresponsible. On the other hand, Kobe is a super rich LA celebrity in a county that has long resented the way that rich LA celebrities fly in, buy up the best land, throw their money around, do drugs, seduce women and generally lay waste to the landscape. Add to that the fact that Kobe is a super star black athelete in a very white county. Kobe may become the target of residual bitterness over the Simpson trial.
I don’t think race factors in in any way but this. If the woman really had a problem with black men, she would have refused Kobe from the outset.
I’m really sick of hearing this bullshit that if a woman goes into a man’s room that she is somehow showing sexual interest and should expect to get raped. That’s a fucking crock. Kobe’s handprints are on her throat, her blood is on his clothes and she was bleeding from the vagina. The guy fucking raped her, man. I don’t give a shit what the jury says. I have no doubt that the defense will smear her as a slut and that tactic already seems to be working with some in this thread but I will always know that the dude is a fucking rapist.
I am a novice re: the legal system. Does the jury have to be convinced beyond reasonable doubt for Kobe to get a conviction? It seems to me it would be very hard to achieve that in a “he said, she said” case.
Yes, the jury has to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt in any criminal trial. I doubt that it will be possible to find twelve people who will all say Kobe did it regardless of how much evidence is shown. With the notable exception of Mike Tyson, these celebrity athletes always get away with it.
It’s plain that the woman had some sexual interest. Otherwise, no flirting, no makeout session, and (in all probability) no skirt raising. She may not have been willing to go all the way with him, or ready to go all the way at that time, but she clearly had some interest. Sexual interest is not the same as consent. Consent is what the law requires, and without it, Kobe is guilty.
The woman didn’t expect to be raped, but she had to expect some kind of sexual encounter. Did she consent and then change her mind? Or did she assume she could manage an aroused Kobe, and have her assumption go horribly wrong?
She raised her shirt, not her skirt. She was showing him a tattoo on her back. A flirting interest does not equate to a desire for immediate sexual intercourse.
There is no evidence that she expected any sexual encounter. That’s an offensive inference.
How much blood are we talking about? Large splashes? A thimbleful? Trace amounts?
Your characterizations are simplistic. I hope you never serve jury duty.
Sorry for posting any not returning- I’ve been moving all weekend and we havne’t got the LAN set up in the house yet. Lemma get caught up and I’ll see what I can do for cites and whatnot.
Diogenes, just in case you think my question regarding what the defense could do with the evidence of multiple semen samples in the (alleged) victim’s panties means I think he’s not guilty, I’d like to clear that up. I have no idea if he’s guilty or not, as I haven’t been privy to all of the evidence, including the eyewitness to her state of mind and demeanor within 4 minutes of the encounter.
However, I don’t believe for a moment that a woman who has sex with multiple men in a short time-period has no credibility as a witness, nor do I believe that a woman who goes to a man’s hotel room intending to have sex and then changes her mind at some point deserves to be raped. In fact, (except for the fact that I was not raped), I did exactly that, myself, one time. I was on vacation at a Club Med, I was dancing in the nightclub with another guest there (we’d been chatting and flirting during the week) and eventually we went back to his room. We’d both been drinking, and he continued to drink more once we got there. But he’d obviously had more than I realized, because at one point he HURLED his glass (still filled with whatever he was drinking) across the room, and it hit the wall and shattered all over the floor. At that moment I decided to leave. I told him I’d changed my mind and I was out the door. He was pissed off as hell and wouldn’t speak to me the next day, but I couldn’t have cared less. I felt the situation was dangerous and I took myself out of it. But if I’d’ve been unable to make it out that door (if he had blocked my path or physically restrained me in some way) and I’d been raped, the fact that I initially intended to have sex with him would be completely fucking irrelevant.
I hope that clears up my position.
The problem is not that she deserves to be raped even if she changes her mind because of the previous facts, but rather that the previous facts make some think it less likely that she did change her mind. I’m not sure I see that latter logic either, but you should be aware that it’s the latter logic, not the former, that is the serious position to worry about refuting.
See, here’s the thing: a few people noted that my first post here sounded very unlike me. While I’d agree that the tone is certainly not something I post regularly, the passion behind it is long-standing and rooted in real world events involving the rapes, by strangers and persons known to them, of people close to me and my utter contempt for people who try to diminish the veracity of real victims claims.
Perhaps I should have kept my opinion to myself, but the gall some people already displayed was enough for me to step up and hang it out there. I’ll admit to using overly negative descriptors of the accuser, but I was pissed off, still am, too, by what I see as a mockery.
I suppose I should note for the record, so it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle, that* I think Kobe is an idiot, too*, for his willing ness to have sex with some random groupie. Groupies or one-nighters are, in theory, all well and good, but not when you’re married. All I have to add to that is that, even when/if it comes out that he didn’t rape this woman, but did have sex with her, his wife should clean him out (and isn’t she only 19 or 20, too?)
Okay, back to it.
wring, I don’t know that she bragged to her co-worker- my gleaning was that she went back to work and that something she was supposed to have done by 11 hadn’t been done yet and it was nearing midnight (cashing out a register or something.) Her co-worker asked her about it and she told them where she’d been.
DtC, you’re an idiot. Re: the pictures submitted, as noted by annaplurabelle- “[t]he only documented bruising is on the jawline (one bruise, smaller than a penny) - nothing on the neck consistent with the accuser’s story.” Which ties in rather nicely with the officers utter inability to see any bruising on the victim when he interviewed her, yes?
Fuck you, you knee jerk, barking dog, half-wit. For someone who openly admits to making over-the-top statements or characterizations, you sure don’t like seeing them when they happen to run counter to your frothing spouts of judgement, do you? How about if we just agree she really, really likes sex? Not that this means she can never say no, she has every right, every time, but I guess I fall in to the camp of people Apos mentions and, going out on a limb, I don’t believe she changed her mind, I don’t believe she said no, I *do *believe she feels embarrassed and/or stupid. Being regretful != being a victim.
margin, you know nothing. Not about me, not about my character. So what if what this girl did happens to be a cliché, it doesn’t make it less true. I do, in fact, believe the facts bear out her promiscuous nature leading to her intent to have consensual sex with Kobe and I believe the evidence will show this. Whether or not she’s a “starfucker,” I’ll leave to your overzealous and exasperated sensationalism. You should feel free to sit in your rose-colored glass house and look at this how ever you want, though.
I’m curious as to what makes you not believe her. Specifically. The fact that Kobe is a celebrity? The fact that her bruising was “minimal”? What is it exactly that makes you think she’s not being truthful about having changed her mind?
Read my last post above again, please. I went with a man to his hotel room for the purpose of having sex with him. I knew it and he knew it – it was understood. At some point an event occurred that caused me to re-assess the situation and deem it unsafe to continue. I changed my mind and left – thankfully, unscathed.
Do you believe I changed my mind, or am I making that up?
If you do believe me, what makes you believe I’m telling the truth, but disbelieve her?
Which facts bear out her promiscuous nature? I’d like a cite, if one’s available.