Well then the plea bargain is bullshit. If he forcibly raped her, he should have been charged with rape. If she wasn’t willing to testify, he shouldn’t have been charged with anything. The “rape by decpetion” plea is complete nonsense with regard to those alleged facts.
That’s why it’s a “bargain.” The state gets to convict him on something, and the girl is spared the necessity of the ordeal of testifying (reading the translated article, it seems that Israeli law doesn’t have a “rape shield,” system).
And the facts adduced DO fit the charge: he deceived her about his intentions towards her, inasmuch as he did not reveal his intent to forcibly rape her. The mere fact that this particular deception also would support a higher charge doesn’t mean it can’t be the basis for the plea bargain seen here.
The prosecutor needs evidence, and if the only evidence is the victim’s testimony, and if the victim doesn’t want to testify, then the prosecutor has nothing to present. If they could have proven the case without the victim’s testimony, they probably would have brought it.
Moreover, even if the prosecution doesn’t call the victim as a witness, that doesn’t mean the defense can’t do it. That’s the way it is in the US anyway. Under the US system, the defendant has a right to confront his accuser. Maybe Israel is different.
It wasn’t a settlement, by the way, it was a plea bargain. Settlements are for money in civil suits.
Are you of the opinion that a plea bargain should not be made generally in cases of forcible rape, or are you merely objecting to the form in which it was made in this case?
Huh? It’s a plea bargain. The defence had every right to confront the witness/accuser - all it has to do, is to reject the bargan offered by the prosecution and ask for a trial.
I object to calling it “rape by deception” if it was forcible rape. I don’t object to the plea bargaining in principle (though I would prefer that rapists be fully charged), but I do think it should be pled down to something that still fits with the facts of what happened. If I steal a car, it wouldn’t make sense to plead to illegal parking.
I never said the defnse was denied that right. I was only saying that if the prosecution had tried to go to trial without calling the victim, the defense would have called her anyway.
If they couldn’t prove the case without the victim’s testimony, and if the victim wasn’t willing to testify, then I don’t see why the defendant pleaded to anything. Bad representation, I guess.
A plea bargain is by necessity an agreement to a lesser charge. What real difference does it make to anything what that charge is?
I have no idea why they went with the “rape by deception” rather than something else; perhaps because there as nothing else that would suit better, in terms of having a sentencing range that the two sides could live with … but assuming that a plea bargain was desireable, it seems to me to be concentrating on legal technicalities, rather than substance, to worry about the form of the charge.
The onlt real difference, I think, is to those who charged off half-cocked about how terrible and racist Israel is, based on incomplete facts. The prosecutor could have saved them the embarassment they ought to be feeling now by choosing something else.
It’s seldom that black and white. How about, “I don’t want to testify, but if the alternative is that scumbag walking away with no penalty, I will.”
This plea gives the accused a conviction and sentence, but avoids the necessity of testimony by the victim. Sure, the accused could have said, “I’m not pleading to this; bring on the trial.”
But he risks her actually testifying and his getting convicted for the top count.
Again, Huh? Every plea bargain is based on a balancing of risks. Obviously, if each side had complete confidence in their case, no plea bargain is ever going to be justified.
In this case, the most likely scenario based on the article is that the defense could not be sure that the victim would in fact refuse to testify - and the prosecution could not be sure she would.
Why should anyone be feeling embarrassment? We were operating on the facts we were given. My own conclusions based on those facts are still correct. I wasn’t wrong about anything. The scenario appears not be as originally presented, but that’s not my fault.
Where do you see the perp making an admission? As far as I can tell, he was still claiming the sex was consensual. All he’s apparently admitting to is that he gave her a fake name.
Because it reveals a willingness to jump to unjustified conclusions?
The original facts required jumping to such conclusions for a finding of racism (example: the automatic assumption that, had the ethnicities of the two been reversed, no conviction).
The fact of agreeing to a plea bargain says something to that. I suppose he could argue that he was afraid of not getting a fair shake in a trial, but generally speaking no-one agrees to a plea bargain unless they are concerned about being convicted of the greater charge.