Christopher Lynn Matthew, a Charlottesville barber, was arrested as he walked home one evening. As he was held in custody handcuffed at a police car, a 23-year-old sexual assault victim told police that he was the man that had assaulted her.
After being held for five days, and after media reports broadcast his name and picture, and speculated on whether he was the serial rapist that had been terrorizing the area, his DNA test results came back. Those tests cleared him and implicated another man.
Now Matthew has filed an $850,000 defamation lawsuit against his accuser, claiming that she acted recklessly when she told police he was the man that had raped her.
University of Virginia professor Anne M. Coughlin, who specializes in women’s issues, is not in favor of the lawsuit. Says she: “Rape is the most underreported crime in the nation and women are already very reluctant to complain. If it became standard for men to file these lawsuits, that could certainly put a chilling effect on the victims.”
I don’t agree with Professor Coughlin. I think that if the woman made an honest error, there’s no tort involved, but if she did act recklessly, then she put Matthew through hell for no good reason, and she should pay for that.
And i think the question of whether she acted recklessly is a question of fact, and should be settled by a jury.
What’s “recklessly”? If she honestly thought it was him that raped her, and accused him, I can’t see how that would be reckless, even though it turned out she was mistaken.
If she didn’t think it was him or was unsure, and accused him anyways, then I don’t think it was reckless so much as illegal (knowinlgy making a wrongful accusation is illegal right?) and obviously she should pay a penalty for that.
I agree. The stigma attached to rape is so damaging to even those just accused of it are in danger of having their lives ruined. If it’s found that she was reckless, then she should be forced to pay up.
I would be more concerned about the police acting recklessly than the young woman. She’s obviously been traumatized, and the police should know to use more than just her word to identify the alleged rapist. Without more info, though, it’s hard to tell.
Again, what is everyone picturing when they say “reckless”. I don’t think that there will be much of a debate if she honestly thought the man was her rapist. Certainly she should be able to finger him then without being sued, even if it turns out she was incorrect.
Similarily if she falsely accuses someone, I don’t think she should “pay up”, but rather she should be tried in a criminal court. Again I don’t think there will be much of a debate that people shouldn’t falsely accuse others of rape.
What is this third option of “recklessly” accusing people that the women should “pay up” for?
Yes, it would seem to me that the it was the police who acted recklessly in announcing the capture of a serial rapist before the DNA results came back.
I’ve done a little poking around on Google - and there’s not a lot to go on. However, I did find out two additional facts for Doper consideration:
(1) The police brought the victim to the scene where they were arresting Matthews. The rape victim identified Matthews in the headlights of a police car while admittedly still in a “state of duress.”
(2) The police were working a multi-year serial rapist case in the area.
These facts (to me) indicate that the police may be in the wrong. They may have been sure that they had their guy and sent up Mr. Matthews without a firm basis. The girl, it seems to me, had just been raped, and was looking at a guy the police thought was the suspect. This was no line-up, this was no photo array. This was being brought to the scene of an arrest and the police saying “this is the dude who raped you, right? Right?”
I think it will be extremely hard, if not impossible, to say that the woman acted recklessly in making the identification. Moreover, based on what little facts we have, I think that she will be able to easily get out of the civil case or any subsequent criminal proceedings.
Where’s the line between “honest error” and “reckless”? How would the facts in the following scenarios bear on such a distinction?:
[ul]
[li]The perpetrator of the rape is white. The person she falsely identified is black.[/li][li]The perpetrator of the rape looks similar (same color, height, and build) to the person she falsely accused, but it comes out that she never got a good look at her attacker.[/li][li]The perpetrator looks similiar to the falsely accused. The victim did get a good look at the perpetrator. However, it comes out that there was bad blood between the victim and the falsely accused prior to the rape.[/li][/ul]
In all the above, the woman swears that she honestly thought she was identifying her attacker.
This is a good point. Anyway, the man’s reputation was damaged by the media attention given to a suspect, rather than the accusation of the woman herself. Whoever printed/showed the name and picture of this man before he had been convicted did the damage. I’m all for freedom of the press, but it seems to me that reportage on things like this should be held up until there is a conviction.
He should be suing the cops for having him identified in that way, and the media for jumping the gun on reporting him as a rapist based solely on an eyewitness ID. We all know by now how reliable those are.
Well yes, I understand the basics of how a civil trial works. But malpractice is an actual word with an actual deffinition, presumably written down in a book somewhere. It’s up to the jury to decide if the actions of the defendent match said deffinition.
So my question then is what is the deffinition of this “recklessness” that we’re talking about. Several posters have mentioned it, what specific acts are they picturing?
And given the info posted by Peter Wiggin, I’d agree that any fault (and I’m not sure there was any fault) would lie with the police here.
It’s interesting that he’s suing the women, and not the police/press who publicized his arrest. On the surface, with the information supplied by PeterWiggen, it sounds like they’re more culpable, and in a purely mercenary sense, they’ve also got deeper pockets and would be easier to portray unsympathetically in a court. I half suspect that there’s some other factor in her accusation of this guy that makes her more culpable than is readily apparent.
I don’t like the precedent. I think if it can be proven that she knew she was fingering the wrong guy then she should face criminal charges but allowing a civil jury to do a mind reading act on what her intentions were is scary and could have an even greater chilling effect on what is already a tragically underreported crime.
This kind of tort is especially scary since the there is no question that the woman really was raped. The potential for further traumatization in the process of discovery and trial as well as the crapshoot of having a jury somehow psychically decide if she knew she had identified the wrong guy just cannot be justified, in my opinion. A tort against a woman who fabricates a rape charge from thin air might be a different story. I think this is a shaky, vindicative and moneygrubbing tort against a woman who has already been horribly victimized.
I also wonder what kind of precedent this case would set for any other witness or victim in any other crime.
I just googled the case and couldn’t find much about it, and nothing about the lawsuit. For the record though, the blurbs I did find indicate that the man was cleared by DNA evidence collected from the victim. I can’t see how the women could’ve knowingly provided a false accusation then, since she would’ve known that the samples wouldn’t match and that the man would be cleared anyways.
Also this can’t have been the first time this has come up. There must be some body of law that deals with the liability of a person seemingly unintentionally fingering the wrong person for a crime. Any lawyers know of relavant cases?
If I were on a jury, I’d certainly want to see the man who was actually guilty, and ask myself if it was reasonable to confuse the two. If they bore even a small resemblance to one another, then I’d be very unlikely to find her reckless. If they were 6 inches different in height, or fifty pounds in weight, or something else grossly dissimilar, I’d be more likely to agree with the idea of recklessness.