Who the fsck are you to rape a woman, then force her to live on the run?
If you’re innocent, you’d agree to a trial date ASAP, as you know a DNA test will clear your name. But since you’re guilty, you want to postpone the moment of truth. In the meantime, look at what you’re putting an innocent woman through.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115178,00.html
Bryant, your reputation is forever trashed. Unfuck you.
[list=a]
[li]We do not know that Bryant raped her. That is what a trial is for.[/li][li]Bryant is not forcing her to live “on the run”. That is due to a large number of idots and the media (not mutually exclusive).[/li][li]A DNA test will prove nothing. Bryant has admitted having sex with her.[/li][li]Bryant may not be guilty. Again, that is the point of a trial.[/li][li]She may not be innocent - she may be lying. Again, that is the point of a trial.[/li][li]Agreed that guilty or not, Bryant’s reputation is forever trashed.[/li][/list]
So because he is trying to prove his innocence by hiring investigators(I’d say a routine excercise), and having hearings, mediations, and arbitrations, you’re mad at him? A trial should always be the LAST stop, not the FIRST. This isn’t “Law and Order”, this is the real deal. Trials normally take years to be set and executed for regular people, and only nominally accelerated for sensationalistic stories.
I did some poking around, and if you look at what is still being decided, they are pivotal to the case:
from http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115178,00.html
I have reserved judgement of his guilt or innocence, but either way, he deserves his day in court. Just like you or me or anyone else. If you were accused of raping someone you thought you had consensual sex with, you’d want every opportunity at your disposal as well.
Sam
Innocent woman, eh? His reputation is forever trashed, that’s true. But it’s got nothing to do with what actually happened in that hotel room, and everything to do with people like Fox News who’ve decided he’s guilty, trial or no.
Fuck Kobe.
I don’t think Kobe’s guilty. I hate Kobe, but I don’t think he is stupid enough to rape a girl. It’s not like he would have too much trouble finding another girl to sleep with him, consensually.
Has the ‘no joke threads in The Pit’ Rule been temporarily suspended because it’s April Fool’s Day?
While I can’t stand Kobe, I have to say fuck the media and fuck any rabid sport that actually takes the time to compose a threatening letter. Sending a death threat on behalf of someone who wouldn’t cross the street to piss on you if you were on fire is below the fucking bottom.
*sports fan
Goddammit to fucking hell. I had a reply all typed out when the hamsters apparently had a group fart. Let’s try this again.
Shaggarito, your attitude infuriates me. Rape is not about being horny and plugging the first available vagina. It is a violent crime of anger and dominance in which a sexual act is used as a means of debasing and controlling the victim. Educate yourself on the subject and stop spouting insulting fallacies out of the Eisenhower era.
No one will know for certain what happened in that hotel room but Kobe and the woman in question. The question is, will 12 people be convinced of what happened beyond a reasonable doubt. A woman claims she was raped, and the prosecution obviously believes there is enough physical evidence to warrant a trial. I sincerely hope that decision was made based on the evidence and not on Mr. Bryant’s celebrity. It is difficult to get a conviction in rape cases in the best of circumstances, let alone in cases such as this where consent could be argued fairly easily.
I pity this woman. I can’t imagine that someone would put themselves through this kind of ugliness without very good cause. I hope she made the decision to file charges on her own and not subject to any pressure from her family, friends, or law enforcement. Despite rape shield laws, the victim’s behavior and history will always be scrutinized, especially in cases like this where no weapon was used and there aren’t clear defensive wounds. It’s a damn shame that we supposedly live in a civilized country and yet I have conversations with my friends in which we talk about fighting like a wildcat if someone attempts to rape us, just so we could prove to the jury that we weren’t “asking for it.”
I forget the name of Kobe’s lead lawyer, the bulldog bitch, what a piece of work.
I can’t stand this she coudn’t have been raped because she was a slut. A prostitute can’t be raped? WTF?
In the words of Tina Fey of SNL, “A lawyer, like Pamela Mackey of the Colorado firm Haddon, Morgan, Mueller, Jordan, Mackey and Foreman, which is probably in the 303 area code, should know that people can look up a name, like Joe Smith or Pamela Mackey, on the Internet and learn everything about them.”
Mackey repeated the full name of Bryant’s accuser in open court five times AFTER being admonished by the judge for her first “accidental” mention of the name. Regardless of what a person thinks of privacy laws with regard to rape victims, Ms. Mackey swore an oath to uphold the law when she became a lawyer. Unless those laws are inconvenient, I suppose.
And what law do you contend Ms. Mackey violated?
(I agree she violated the court’s direction. But your post seems to suggets there is some law, independent of a court’s ruling, that was violated by mentioning the name of the rape victim in court. I’m wondering what that law is.)
As other posters have pointed out, this complaint doesn’t seem very well reasoned. If identity were at issue here, a DNA test might have some value. But Mr. Bryant admits to the sexual intercourse. He contends it was consensual. What value, precisely, would a DNA test have? And how would agreeing to a speedy trial shed any light at all on the issue of his guilt?
Good points. I find it very unlikely that a “violent crime of anger and dominance” occured in a hotel room where the “victim” worked and perpetrated by someone who is easily recognized.
Which brings us to the second part: Could you imagine someone putting themselves through that kind of ugliness for a enormous out-of-court cash settlement? My guess is that is what she’s looking for.
I couldn’t care less about Kobe. Or the tramp he nailed. I think they both are getting what they deserve.
Come on, Bricker, will you give the non-lawyers a break every once in a while? I’m sure you’re a great lawyer, and you’re certainly a boon to this message board when legal issues are up for disucssion. But i just wish that you would realize that not all people are lawyers, and that you would, occasionally, be willing to make those tiny leaps of inference or interpretation that would allow you to address the spirit of people’s posts rather than picking apart their every legal nuance.
It was perfectly clear, to me at least, that Amanita was criticizing the lawyer’s refusal to follow the judge’s direction in the trial, and was not claiming to know of a specific law that forbids mentioning the name of rape victims. Most of us non-lawyers tend to assume that part of a lawyer’s duty, in upholding the law, is to follow the instructions of duly-appointed or elected officials of the legal system, such as judges. While i’m sure you’re correct about the legal distinction between breaking a law and failing to obey a ruling, it was pretty obvious what the point of Amanita’s argument was.
Nope. Because it wasn’t an off-hand comment:
That is a very specific commentary about swearing oaths, breaking an oath, and acting contrary to law. If Amanita had made an casual reference,I’m sure I’d have let it pass. But there’s a huge gulf between zealous defense of your client, and flouting a criminal law in defense of your client. If Amanita’s comment was correct, people might wonder why no action was taken against the lawyer. I think it’s important to understand the distinction so the casual reader realizes why Mr. Bryant’s lawyer wasn’t hauled away in handcuffs.
And, frankly, for all I know Colorado has some sort of law that applies here. I was dubious, yes, but not entirely convinced she was wrong.
In any event, correcting misapprehensions and misstatements like that are one of the things that, in my view, make this board valuable. If I sounded snarky, I apologize – but I do think there’s value in tempering hyperbole with fact.
The rape shield law is here. It treats the sexual history of the victim. It does not treat the use of the victim’s name. To my knowledge, there is no law in Colorado preventing the use of the victim’s name in either the media or in court. It is tradition not to print or use the name in the media, but, again, not a law.
I’m sure you’re right.
Just out of interest, is flagrantly disobeying the direct order of a presiding judge generally considered to be nothing more than “zealous defense” in lawyer-world?
Bricker, thank you for asking for clarification. I wrote that last bit in a rush and should have chosen my words better. In all the articles about Ms. Mackey’s disregard of the judge’s instruction, Colorado’s victim privacy/rape shield laws are referenced. That was the law to which I was incorrectly referring. Although I am not a lawyer, if I had thought about it for a moment, I would have realized that such a law couldn’t possibly encompass speaking the accuser’s name aloud in court. (As I see that This Year’s Model has confirmed.)
As I understand it, the judge instructed the parties to avoid saying the victim’s name in court in order to protect her privacy due to the media coverage of the proceedings. Ms. Mackey ignored the judge’s instruction not once but several times. I don’t understand why the judge didn’t smack her smirky ass with a contempt charge, but I am neither a lawyer nor a judge. Perhaps a contempt charge would have been overkill in that situation. My personal feeling is that she violated the spirit of the law and acted irresponsibly and (arguably) unethically by doing so. I also wish I could see her with an expression on her face which indicates respect for the gravity of what’s going on, instead of a smug bouncy grin.
Actually, I would imagine such a scenario, as well as several of the other scenarios for a false accusation floated in the various articles I’ve read about the case. Don’t get me wrong… I find this whole case problematic at best. I suppose if OJ can lose a civil case for wrongful death after being acquitted in criminal court for murder of the same individuals that anything is possible. Let me rephrase my original statement then and say that I can’t imagine anyone putting themselves through such ugliness for any amount of possible future money. But I tend to overestimate people on a regular basis.
It’s skirting the edge of zealous defense.
In my view.
And that is what makes her a fucking rag. She knew full well what she was doing, and my guess is she took a premediated chance that she would get a way with it, and she was right.
Doesn’t make her any less of a scumbag.
Assholes splintering up the constitution with semantical hairsplitting are the real problem, but that’s another rant.