Summary: A DA in Maine has in effect repealed “innocent until proven guilty” for rape, using the judicial process to smear and bankrupt the accused – even without evidence of guilt. This makes a mockery of due process. It is another fundamental right going down the drain. It won’t be the last, unless we act.
In November 2018, Natasha Irving was elected District Attorney for Knox, Lincoln, Sagadahoc and Waldo counties in Maine. Her campaign portrait is as traditional as the 1960s Betty Crocker. Now in office, she begins to implement a radical fourth-wave feminist program – with women more equal than men. WGME reports the news – with, of course, a feminist spin. Let’s look at this.
“{She} says it’s time to reform how the legal system prosecutes sexual assault cases, so victims who come forward know they’ll be supported. Irving says prosecutors shouldn’t decline to prosecute a case just because they ‘think it’s too hard to prove.’ ‘Individually, I think that response is very damaging to a survivor. …”
When reading Irving, note that she describes “accusers” as “victims” – assuming that their claims are valid and that any man accused of rape is guilty. She makes no mention of the presumption of innocence or any rights of the accused.
“Prosecutors might worry if a jury will find the victim’s story believable, in the absence of firm evidence. If a victim was under the influence of alcohol when the alleged assault occurred, traditionally the case is viewed as being ‘very weak,’ according to Irving. People tend to question the credibility of sexual assault allegations, according to Irving.”
Of course people question the credibility of sexual assault claims. People lie. Claims of rape are an effective way to destroy a man. All claims need to be professionally investigated and evaluated.
“But, only 2 to 8 percent of sexual assault accusations reported to law enforcement turn out to be false, according to the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault, which is on par with other violent crimes.”
This is an often-debunked lie. That number refers only to cases that have been proven false. Nobody has done the expensive research to estimate the number. As Ashe Schow said: “Using the same logic employed by Irving, one could say just 3% to 5% of rape accusations are true, since that’s how many go to trial and result in a guilty finding.” See more about this lie here. Note how many high-profile rape cases prove to be false accusations.
“Irving has simplified the criteria for how her office will prosecute sexual assault allegations to a two-step process.
1. Is there a credible allegation?
2. Is the victim willing to move forward with prosecution knowing they might have to testify publicly? …
That is sketchy. As we learned from the Kavanaugh affair, feminists “believe the victim” – so that all accusations are “credible.” Many said that they have psychic ability to determine if somebody is lying.
“‘I do think personally, I would rather show a victim that we will fight for them, than [rejecting a case] because it’s too hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,’ Irving said. ‘We don’t want law enforcement or prosecutors to ever think that something is a ‘he said she said.’”
That’s quite mad. Many rape cases are “he said, she said” because there are neither witnesses nor physical evidence of rape. How can she say that with no pushback from others in the judicial and law enforcement agencies?
“Since ‘rapes aren’t [typically] occurring in front of an audience,’ Irving said prosecutors need to think outside of the box in terms of proving that an assault occurred. …”
Buzzword Bingo: “think outside of the box.” What does that mean?
“Trauma also can cloud a victim’s memory, Clements said, and can fuel misperceptions that a victim is changing their story if their narrative evolves. ‘Instead of that being used against them in terms of “Well she’s saying this now,” it needs to be recognized as a sign of neurobiological trauma that has happened to the body,’ Clements said.”
Irving is systematically removing the grounds to challenge an accuser’s testimony.
What she is really doing
“Few people in the criminal justice system are as powerful as the prosecutor. …politically powerful, directly elected and independent of almost any oversight, and substantially better positioned than defense attorneys. …
“{They} have the unreviewable ability to decide whether to file charges against someone who has been arrested, and they face almost no oversight about what charges to file …prosecutors appear to be using it in increasingly aggressive ways these days.”
— John Pfaff in Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform(2017).
This policy will allow D.A. Irving to use her discretionary powers to destroy men accused of rape – even if there is no evidence. She will use publicity to smear him: business contacts dry up, fired from jobs, and ejected from community organizations. From the combination of lost income and ruinous legal expenses, bankruptcy is likely. That is power, but it is not justice. As the saying goes …
“You can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride.”
Defense attorney Scott H. Greenfield takes a deep look at this in “Prosecute, Smear, Acquit.” Even if the victim of Irving’s persecution wins in court …
“Even acquitted, the belief of guilt isn’t dissipated. After all, juries don’t return verdicts of ‘innocent,’ but not guilty. And as the presumption of innocence is reduced to a ‘legal technicality’ rather than a tenet of law, there is no way to overcome the taint.”
We deserve to lose our rights
“Our liberty is protected by “above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America; a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.”
— James Madison in The Federalist Papers #57.
Slowly our rights are being stripped away. The police can seize our property without a warrant, without being charged with a crime – let alone a conviction. Obama ordered hits on US citizens, violating not just the Article I Section 9 of the US Constitution (prohibiting Bills of Attainder) but Clause 39 of Magna Carta (1215). Last week I wrote about Congresswoman Castor telling Google to fix free speech.
Now Leftists want to strip away an even more fundamental right: the presumption of innocence, which goes back to the 6th Century Code of Justinian. We see that in the sexual harassment kangaroo courts in universities. We saw that in the Kavanaugh hearings. Now we see a DA make it part of the legal system. It is the next step in the collapse of our criminal justice system (see my posts about this below).
This is how our system now works. Laws are so 20th century. This is how life works. A people who will not fight to keep their rights will lose them. It is the Great Circle of Life. We can still change, but it becomes more difficult with each passing day. Election 2020 is another opportunity to make your voice heard. Make it count.
“{W}hatever fine declarations may be inserted in any constitution respecting it, {liberty} must altogether depend on public opinion, and on the general spirit of the people and of the government.”
— Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist papers #84. He is speaking about freedom of the press, but this is the general tenor of the Papers regarding our liberty.
Conclusions
The authors of The Federalist Papers believed that the Republic’s success required more than belief in a political ideology. It requires a burning desire for self-government and a willingness to fight to defend the Republic. Despite the poetry of the Declaration, freedom is never free.
Election 2020 is another opportunity to make your voice heard. Make it count.
For More Information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: “Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.”
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about ways to reform America, about police, about police brutality, about justice in America, and especially these …
- More about the collapse of the American Criminal Justice System.
- Final thoughts about America’s Criminal Justice System.
- The Disgrace of Our Criminal {in}Justice System, and hints of reform in the air!
- Police grow more powerful; the Republic slides another step into darkness. Can cellphone cameras save us?
- News good & bad about the fantastic growth of America’s security services.
- We get a new police for our New America, but prefer not to see.
- Ways to reform our criminal injustice system.
- No need for police reform, since only criminals have trouble with police!
- Learning about the police to understand why they so often act badly.
Books about police in our New America
Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America
A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces
Prison Break: Why Conservatives Turned Against Mass Incarceration
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
Locked In
The Collapse of American Criminal Justice
Justice in America: using rape accusations to get DA’s re-elected
From the Daily Wire, 8 Feb 2020.
“…As The Daily Wire previously reported, Grant Robicheaux and his girlfriend Cerissa Riley, a substitute teacher, were accused luring women to their Newport Beach, California home, drugging them, and then raping them. From The Daily Wire:
“Spitzer reopened the case, and said during a press conference that a ‘team of prosecutors with a combined 175 years of experience determined there is no provable evidence that Robicheaux and Riley committed any sexual offense.’
“Spitzer then accused his predecessor of manufacturing the case. ‘The prior District Attorney and his chief of staff manufactured this case and repeatedly misstated the evidence to lead the public and vulnerable women to believe that these two individuals plied up to 1,000 women with drugs and alcohol in order to sexually assault them – and videotape the assaults,’ Spitzer said. ‘As a result of the complete case review I ordered beginning in July, we now know that there was not a single video or photograph depicting an unconscious or incapacitated woman being sexually assaulted,’ he added. …
“An attorney for the accused couple, Philip Cohen, told the outlet that even if the charges are dismissed the defendants have had their lives ruined. ‘what do Grant and Cerissa do with the rest of their lives and what confidence can the public have that they are not rapists, they’re not monsters, that they’re not villains?’ Cohen said. …”
Scary times to be a young man.
Sven,
It’s often scary times to be a young man. The relevant question is how they will respond: actively or passively. That’s what makes history.
They won’t “respond” in any real sense of the word. It will simply push a few more men out of the marriage pool.
I love to use my high school graduating class as an example. White, upper middle class town in the Northeast. Our graduating class was around 105 people. We’re now all approaching 30 and we have 3 marriages with 3 more on the way. That’s essentially a 5% marriage rate before 30.
A significant number of people aren’t even dating anyone. With all that in mind I expect my graduating class of 105 will produce 10-15 children in TOTAL. Nearly every woman went to college, and are in fact more successful than the men. But from an evolutionary perspective, they might as well caught the plague.
J Allen,
Wow! I and others have been wondering how Gen Y (Millennials, born 1981 – 1996) and Gen Z will react to the changing gender role dynamics. Your example is interesting.
The usual numbers given for the median age of first marriage is 27 for women and 29 for men. But those are not by generational cohort, and the cohorts might have different behaviors. So your high school class is roughly at or near the median age of marriage. Assume the number doubles by age 30, and quadruples by age 35. Are there 6 marriages with six married people from your class, or 12 married people from your class? Assuming you meant 6 married people – that would be 1/4 marry by 35, perhaps 1/3+ by 40.
That’s structural change! Marriage rates are lower in the lower socioeconomic class. What is the class of your high school peers?
J Allen,
Follow-up – The low marriage rates until now for the women of your high school class result largely from their decisions (surveys are clear about this). But at 28, they are at the point where they see the wall coming. So many are now – or will soon – be pushing hard for marriage. So the next 5 years will determine if they can still do what other generations of woman have done – and get men to marry them.
Women are, so far as I can see, very confident that they can do so. Time will tell if they are correct.
This is one of the many large-scale social engineering experiments the Left is running – with us as their lab rats.
Men will roll over and be passive. They’ll say they dont rape or hit so it’s not my problem. Then they’ll date or marry and end up with a woman like my ex (read like Amber Heard). And they’ll cry woe is me. No one believes me as they sit in jail.
Sven,
Who can predict the future? Perhaps you are correct about the inevitable victory of feminists. But on 20 June 1789, France’s elites were confident of victory when the locked the doors of the French National Assembly. I doubt anybody expected what came next.
I suggest you read these to see different futures.
A surprise end to the gender wars: men stand together.
Will African-American men break open the gender wars?
You take issue with the “LEFT’ a lot. How do you define it and does it have much to do with the social democratic traditional left? A reading of other posts recently single out jewry as a major influence on the direction politics is taking. From “most of the bolsheviks were jews” to the democrats today being heavily jewish influenced. Where do you think this is going?. I don’t have now the link that made me aware of all this. My internet provider trashed my “save” file
John,
“You take issue with the “LEFT’ a lot.”
No more so than with the Right. See my posts about the Libertarians, the gun nuts, the Right’s faux economics, the Right’s faux history, and the Right-wing.
Describing politics as a Left-Right political spectrum goes back to the French National Assembly in 1789. Nobody serious puts “scare quotes” around Left or Right.
“How do you define it”
LOL. Too silly to answer.
“A reading of other posts recently single out jewry as a major influence on the direction politics is taking.”
Anti-semitism is an endemic disease in the West, and has been for a millennium. It is rising again in Europe and America.