The rape shield laws are relevant because in a he-said she-said case, the credibility of the testifying person is at issue. Which means you (generally) get to bring up every shitty thing they've done in their life so the jury knows who they are listening to. This happens all the time. Have a fraud conviction 10 years ago? Relevant to your honesty today. Etc. But with rape shield, you generally cannot bring up the past or (depending on the state) even the identity of the accuser. They have to testify in court but you can't impeach them based on their life the same way the defendant can be. Surely you see how, in a he-said she-said case, this is relevant.
If it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim was not capable of reasonable judgment, then her character is absolutely and completely irrelevant.
If it can't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim was not capable of reasonable judgment, then the accused is found not guilty and the victim's character is
stillcompletely irrelevant.
And you want case law, here's an easy one. Guy gets convicted on no evidence other than he-said she-said in an intoxication rape case.
Intoxicated Consent in Rape: Bree and Juror Decision-Making | Phil Rumney - Academia.edu
Its in England, so the statutes are somewhat different, but the discussion of the issue in the article are telling. His case got overturned on appeal due to the improper summing up by the judge. (This isn't something we do in the US, but in Europe judges often comment on the evidence.)
We're looking at case law dealing with the subject at hand, so we're making progress here. Good on you.
I don't necessarily have a problem with this case being from England (although I do question why you couldn't find one from the States if it was so "easy"), but you're clearly oversimplifying here. This is not a typical or regular case:
Bree analysis_sl said:
Bree?s significance lies inthe fact that it is the first time the Court of Appeal has had to address the subject of voluntary heavy alcohol consumption as it applies to the law of rape under the 2003 Act.
This case was marred with confusion. The prosecution first said that the victim was unconscious and therefore incapable of consenting, but the victim's testimony indicated she was conscious but did not consent. The judge did not address this shift in his summing up, causing difficulty for the jury.
Bree analysis_sl said:
Bree was convicted of rape, perhaps surprisingly, given the nature of the conflicting evidence. The Court of Appeal quashed his conviction on the grounds that the jury were given no or no sufficient directions to enable the verdict which they reached to be regarded as safe. Other than reading the statutory definition of consent, the trial judge had offered no further direction to the jury as to the issue of consent and had only mentioned the complainant?s self-induced intoxication with reference to her reliability as a witness and not her capacity to consent. The Court of Appeal found that the jury should have been given some assistance with the meaning of ??capacity?? ... where the complainant was affected by her own voluntarily induced intoxication and also whether, and to what extent they could take that into account in deciding whether she had consented.
The jury were not given the proper tools to make their judgment, their judgment was overturned. Nobody was punished unfairly. Explain to me how this is a case of the victim's side unfairly being given more weight than the side of the accused. Explain to me how "rape shield" laws are in any way relevant to this case.
While I don't think this particular case helped you make your point (since we have no reason to believe the jury's decision was anything less than a result of them simply not having the right information in order to make an informed decision, AND since the case was overturned on those grounds anyway), it actually does help me with the point I made three posts ago.
Bree analysis_sl said:
Kramer details research that indicates the existence of a fundamental double standard in public attitudes to rape: intoxication tends to reduce men?s culpability and increase women?s culpability. Likewise, in a review of literature on attitudes to rape, Ward notes: ?People are ... more likely to see intoxication as contributing to the woman?s responsibility in sexual assault.? Most recently, an ICM poll of 1,095 adults prepared for Amnesty International, found that 26 per cent of participants thought a woman partially responsible for being raped when drunk, and four percent thought she was totally responsible. In order to establish whether such attitudes actually influence juror decision-making, several studies have examined the effect of complainant intoxication on rape juries. Early researchfrom the United Statesfound that ?[rape] jurors were influenced by a victim?s "character". They were less likely to believe in a defendant?s guilt when the victim had reportedly '... drank or used drugs ...? It was also found that jurors were likely to take into account a bewildering array of complainant character traits, ?carelessness? and the extent to which her ?gender role behavior? departed from that expected of a woman.
So, like I said, many jurors (just like most of the posters on this thread) jump to the conclusion that if the victim had been drinking voluntarily, she takes responsibility for what happens to her as a result. These are assumptions that are made
even with"rape shield" laws in place. You make it sound like rape victims are given so much protection and benefit of the doubt that it's all too easy for them to make false rape accusations and send innocent men to jail. You haven't found me
one casewhere this has happened, so this whole train of thought of yours seems entirely based on... say it with me... "feels".
