Ooops, pardon, a small regurgitation

From time to time I check the titles of the posts that you, dear readers, have looked at.  I am occasionally surprised that some readers go down into the cellars of D&N and after blowing the cobwebs off an old post then proceed to read it.  I rather like it when it happens because I, too, read it and thus partake of a trip down memory lane.  Anyway, when it happens I have decided I might republish them, unless they are too tedious/illiterate/wrong-headed (delete as necessary) or one of my more spectacularly inaccurate forecasts.  Here is one dated 21st January 2008 which someone looked at recently:

"A rape!  A rape!"

The full quotation from Webster's The White Devil runs thus:

"A rape! A rape! ... Yes you have ravished justice.  Forced her to do
your pleasure."

This provides me with an excellent introduction to the reason for my recent
visits to Nottingham.  Also, by an odd co-incidence, the exceedingly nasty
villain of the current 'crash-bang-wallop' thriller I am reading is an admirer
of Webster who calls himself 'the White Devil' (1). Anyway, rape is the
subject of this post.

My 'AmDram' society was approached by a couple of university professors of
law looking for actors to play in a courtroom scenario in which a young woman
accepts a lift home from a colleague after a departmental party, invites him in
for coffee, gives him a goodnight kiss at the door and is then raped in her
hallway - or not - depending on ... well, what a jury depends on was the object
of the exercise.  The two professors had engaged the services of a marketing
company to produce a 'jury' of 24 people for each scenario.  At the end of each
scenario, the 24 people were divided into 3 'juries' of 8 and sent to different
rooms where their discussions and verdicts were recorded and filmed.  I should
stress that there was a completely different jury for each scenario.  Also, each
scenario differed slightly, so that the following variables were introduced: the
victim being either emotional or calm; the victim either reporting the rape
immediately or waiting 3 days; the victim having minor injuries or not; the
judge (er, that was me!) giving slightly different summations; the presence or
not of an expert witness, and so on.

As you all know, real-life juries are completely private, so this was a
rather good idea to gain some insight as to what influence these various factors
exerted, if any.  We tried to make it fairly realistic in that the two young
barristers (real-life barristers) wore their wigs, gowns and judicial collars. 
They kindly loaned me gown and collar but, alas, no wig.  Despite my pleading I
was not permitted to hang anyone!  The scripts were written by the two
professors and seemed fairly realistic to me. I shall be fascinated to read the
results of this research later in the year.

Mostly, I think, the juries reached 'not guilty' verdicts which was entirely
correct but even so I was amazed at how many went for a guilty verdict.  In none
of the scenarios was there anything definitive by way of evidence. No witnesses,
obviously, no medical evidence of physical trauma beyond slight bruising to the
victim's chest and wrist for which the medical report refused to offer any
explicit reason. (My wife, for example, only has to brush against the corner of
a table to produce a bruise the size of a soup plate!)  So, to my mind, there
was absolutely no objective reason to find the man guilty but, of course, some
jurors are not objective, they are very subjective.  They might, as I did, feel
that in some of the scenarios, the probability was that the man had raped her,
but as the lawyers and the 'judge' constantly reminded them, they had to be
absolutely sure of the defendant's guilt if they were going to bring in
a 'guilty' verdict. In none of the scenarios was that the case.

My tentative conclusion is that the demeanour of the witnesses is critical. 
Oddly enough, my experience in directing plays confirms this observation. I
always remind my actors that when they are standing centre stage declaiming
Shakespeare's immaculate verse they should not assume that the entire audience
are watching and listening, spellbound.  Some of them can't understand
Elizabethan language, some of them are only there because the son or daughter
are in the play, some of them are wondering if the curtain will come down in
time for them to catch the last bus home, and so on, and so on.  Ours is a
visual age not, like Shakespeare's, an aural age. Therefor, what is loosely
called 'body language' is of the utmost importance.  The way an actor stands,
his gestures, his movement, tells an audience that can't quite follow all the
words, what is going on. In summary, one gesture is worth a thousand words! In
my opinion, much the same dynamic takes place in a courtroom.  Visual images, I
would suggest, have a disproportionate effect on viewers - and the entire
multi-zillion pound advertising industry will confirm it!

Thus, I offer up, very tentatively, one suggestion; that in rape cases, and
perhaps others, the main protagonists, by which I mean the victim and the
defendant, should be screened in the way that security officers are screened in
terrorist trials.  This, I think, would concentrate the minds of the jury on the
facts of the case rather than on visual, subliminal and possibly
misleading impressions.

(1) The Death List by Paul Johnston, paperback by MIRA publishers -
truly, a nail-biter!

First posted 21.1.08

 

Comments

[dearieme]

"they had to be absolutely sure of the defendant's guilt": certainly not!

They have to be sure "beyond reasonable doubt" - there is no need to be sure beyond unreasonable doubt.

[David Duff]

SILENCE IN COURT!!! Now look here, DM, I'm playing the judge and I'll tell you exactly how sure you have to be. But you're right of course, I phrased it badly.

[Able]

Since some claim >80% of communication is non-verbal I think I'd have to disagree with your proposal. Surely judging the authenticity of a statement requires seeing the person making that statement?

One thing you didn't mention was the make-up of the juries in question, to whit their gender. Was there some correlation? My own, apocryphal, experience is that women (almost tribally) are inclined to believe women, whilst men (protectively?) give women more emphasis. The 'facts' are often irrelevant in comparison.

I'm sure I've mentioned Dr. Helen Smiths book 'Men on Strike' before, in it she points to the fact that in the States it has gone so far that in college campuses, extralegal 'committees' are set up to 'judge' accusations against male students. They operate, instructed by both the college administration and government, on the 'principle' that the male is guilty 'if there is a greater than 50% chance he COULD have committed the crime'! What chance 'justice' in such a scenario? There are men who, found not guilty in court, even charges dismissed as patently false, who then face removal from college as 'rapists', something which is put on their permanent record, with no recourse, lives blighted. Fair?

(and to complete my 'trip to Coventry' - "the victim either reporting the rape
immediately or waiting 3 days". What about those who wait 30-40 years, until the man is either rich and/or dead?)

Until this gender bias is removed justice is a pipe dream. Whilst I tend to be 'mildly extreme' in feeling scrotal excision for rapists is acceptable (with a blunt, rusty spoon) I believe severe punishment for false rape accusations should also be the norm.

[David Duff]

I think, Able, that we are dangerously close to that dread subject - psychobabble! I just think that only hearing a voice and not seeing the speaker *might* avoid spurious conclusion-jumping. As to the late-comers to the damages-seeking ball, there are so many of them that I guess they cover the gamut from gold-diggers to women who were and still are genuinely 'damaged goods'. How you sort them out is beyond me and, I suspect, beyond anyone.

[Andra]

Fascinating subject and well written, Duff. Carry on.

[David Duff]

Thank you, Ma'am.