State Responds to Lawsuit: Woman Contributed to Her Own Rape

robeiae

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You said the state was stupid to do so. And in the part I quoted, you suggested there was something wrong with making that argument because the state successfully convicted the guy who raped her.

It wasn't. And there isn't.

The state and its attorney is obligated to look for ways to mitigate damages in a civil proceeding against it.
 

robjvargas

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You said the state was stupid to do so. And in the part I quoted, you suggested there was something wrong with making that argument because the state successfully convicted the guy who raped her.

It wasn't. And there isn't.

The state and its attorney is obligated to look for ways to mitigate damages in a civil proceeding against it.

The right in broad does not justify the specific argument made. Even the state Attorney-General agrees to that.

I won't rehash this. All my responses to this I already said to Cassandra.

We'll just agree to disagree, I suppose.
 

Amadan

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I have, twice, said the state has a right to make the argument. That's not in question. Never has been.

It should not have exercised that right.


The state should not present the best defense possible in a lawsuit?
 

Amadan

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This is nowhere close to the bolded above.

IMO, of course.

Well, I am not above occasionally second-guessing attorneys in a trial about which the only details available are a couple hundred words in a sensationalistic news blurb myself. Hopefully, however, this discussion has illuminated some of the misconceptions that ran rampant earlier.
 

calieber

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Morally, of course, Devil Ledbetter is absolutely correct. But I would hold attorneys to different standards from people. In particular, a defense attorney's job is to defend. Attorneys in this case representing anyone other than the victim are not obligated, in that capacity, to take her side.

So how does an entity like the State of Pennsylvania convict beyond a reasonable doubt, and then allege later that the victim of said conviction contributed to the crime?
This defense isn't about her culpability relative to the rapist's (which is none); it's about her degree of responsibility relative to the DOC's.

Two other things:
  1. The Commonwealth is not yet asserting that she contributed, it is merely not yet conceding that she did not.
  2. This is a trial. It is not about the Absolute Truth, but about the legal truth, and "contributory negligence" is at most the Commonwealth's assertion, and has not even been deemed legally true.

In fact under your standards, I'd argue it is prima facie harmful to their case, as it lends a kind of avenue of appeal to the criminal defendant. If the state *now* posits that the woman played a contributory role to her rape, can the criminal defendant now argue that the state may have withheld exculpatory evidence?

The question being settled at the criminal trial was whether Best engaged in sexual intercourse with the victim by forcible compulsion, by threat of forcible compulsion that would prevent resistance by a person of reasonable resolution, while the victim was unconscious or unaware that the sexual intercourse is occurring, or where Best substantially impaired the victim's power to appraise or control her conduct by administering or employing drugs, intoxicants or other means for the purpose of preventing resistance. The question being settled in the current trial is whether and to what degree the Department of Corrections could have prevented it but failed to (rather, could have prevented it; it's pretty clear they failed to). The answer to the second question has little bearing on the answer to the first.

That does accord with our intuitions about rape, or at least with mine: if Robin locks Pat in a room with Sam, a known rapist, and Sam rapes Pat, Sam is criminally liable, but Robin created the circumstances that allowed it to happen and is liable for that. And if Pat asked to be locked in the room with Sam, Sam is still criminally liable, but Robin is relieved of some of their responsibility. At no point does criminal responsibility for the rape fall on anyone but Sam, who 100 percent ought to have chosen not to rape Pat, but Robin's failure to prevent it is cast in a very different light in the second scenario.