[Seriously, possible trigger here.]
Excuse me? No charges will be filed. On this.
…But yeah, feminism is quaint and unnecessary. There’s no such thing as a “rape culture,” why do those hairy feminazis keep making up such stupid terms?
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14 Responses to "De Anza College [whatever kind of players they were] - may I use them as target practice?"
I think the men who did it were baseball players. The women who broke it up were soccer players.
Yeah, I was wondering about that. I was a little confused by the article in that regard. Baseball and soccer players were both mentioned but I didn’t understand who was whom. Maybe that’s because I read it after being up waaaay too long.
Just how exactly is it possible not to file charges in this situation? What on earth is the rationale?
This is fucking insane. Can’t believe it. And the lack of even a cursory, bullshit/token explanation is equally puzzling.
More than likely there isn’t enough physical evidence to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the players had raped the girl. By physical evidence, I mean photos of the injuries and tissue samples of the men and victim. Without a subpeona for the samples from the men, having the semen and fluids from the victim is not going to move along the case. If they didn’t have probable cause to get the subpeona, they probably didn’t have probable cause to make an arrest, meaning they definitely would not have been able to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
As well, the girl, who may have been underage for alcohol, would be (read: will be) grilled severely by a defense attorney as an unreliable witness. Note also that the second link says the soccer players who broke up the rape couldn’t definitively identify who was in the room (”Grolle and Chief Elk say they couldn’t identify most of the people in the room, thoughBryeans, who was friends with the team, knew several of them.”). That would also make proving the case beyond a reasonable doubt difficult.
Prosecutors, being confined to a budget, have to choose which cases to pursue and which ones to drop, more often choosing the ones resulting from good investigations to keep up a good history of prosecuting crime. It’s not about justice, it’s about law.
Good points, Charles. I hadn’t really considered that.
But surely there must be enough evidence to at least assemble a compelling indictment and to press charges? I mean, I didn’t say anything about finding them guilty.
Three women who sound like credible witnesses saw a gang rape occur with their own eyes. That is enough to prosecute even without decent DNA samples, even without definitive identifications of all the perpetrators, and even with an impaired victim who may not recall much about the attack.
At a minimum the 3 witnesses should have been brought before a grand jury to talk about what they saw and who they could identify at the party and in the room. That they weren’t means that this DA gave up on this case before even making a credible attempt to prosecute it.
Exactly.
Sara, the first link from the trinityva livejournal has the following:
This suggests to me that the witnesses did appear before the grand jury.
Again, if the witnesses to the crime cannot positively identify who committed the crime, that is simply not enough to prosecute, particularly in the absence of matching DNA. When the witnesses make public statements to the effect of being unable to say, for sure, who all the people in the room are, that puts reasonable doubt into the jury pool a DA will have an extremely difficult time to overcome. I know we want the rapists to be punished for what they did. But, having been around on what happens on the investigative end of rape, the case just cannot rest on eyewitness testimony alone. It is a crime unlike others in that respect. For all that conservative bastards talk about how “women have all the power” in being able to cry out rape, the exact opposite is still true: it is extremely difficult to prove in court a rape occurred in the absence of convincing physical evidence and in the presence of men who can say the activity was “rough but consensual.”
Also, look at the kinds of statements the assholes are making, about how they hope the victim has “learned a lot” in the months, putting them, the baseball players and their families, “through so much.” The second article suggests the soccer players were put through a lot of social abuse. If the baseball players and their social defenders are so willing to openly display their brazenness, the kinds of things that must be happening to the victim underneath public scrutiny frighten me. I don’t know what kind of a community Santa Clara is, but my impression from the way these people talked in the articles is that it is one where wealth and old privilege dominate and intimidate. As a high school student, more subject to social pressures and intimidation than college students, the DA may have in mind trying to find other ways of helping the victim than putting her further into the open for victimization.
My suggestion, if this is all disheartening to you, is to volunteer at a family resource center or safehouse that provides crisis services. Athens, where I live, has SACNEGA, the Sexual Assault Center of Northeast Georgia. If there isn’t one where you live, find likeminded people and start one. We might not put a complete end to rape, but collectively together, we can reverse the social intimidation back to where it should be, those who would commit rape.
Charles, FWIW, Sara is a lawyer.
I continue to be amazed at the fact that that’s such a radical, offensive thought to, apparently, so many people.
ZOMG teh hairy feministz will get u!
I think it’s entirely possible that the victim decided, either on her own or through coercion from prosecutors, not to pursue the case. And that’s just sad. We have to stop giving women who are victims of rape such disincentives to stand up for themselves and seek prosecution of their rapists to prevent them from doing it again to someone else.
And just because the case isn’t a slam dunk doesn’t mean the prosecutors can’t decide to seek an indictment. The standard isn’t guilt beyond a reasonable doubt at the grand jury level, it’s much lower. Something went on there apart from them not being able to get a grand jury to indict. It sounds like the Duke case has made prosecutors very gun shy, even in a case with eyewitnesses who will paint a much more compelling and consistent picture than the accuser in the Duke case did.
Honestly, the DA is right that they have an ethical obligation not to seek prosecution if they do not believe they can prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But frankly, it sounds like they do not believe a rape occurred, and considering the compelling eyewitness testimony I find that very surprising. I think they simply buckled to the pressure and the victim couldn’t bear the thought of having her character ripped to shreds for the next 6 months in the media. And who could honestly blame her?
Also, the article says 3 members of the baseball team were called before the grand jury. It says nothing about the members of the soccer team who witnessed the rape being called to testify.
This line, to me, suggests that the soccer player witnesses did appear. There may be other articles or pieces on the internet that say otherwise; I haven’t really looked. I do admit that ‘witnesses’ in that line can include the baseball players but exclude the soccer players, but it seems likely enough the soccer players did testify.
I don’t have any significant disagreements with what you’re saying, Sara.
From reading the DA’s explanation of why she decided not to pursue prosecution, it sounds like she was concerned primarily that the victim could not remember the attack and therefore could not rebut claims that it was consensual. And she for whatever reason did not think she could prove the victim was so intoxicated that she was incapable of consenting, which I do find very surprising given the circumstances she found herself in. Sure, someone might consent to a group watching her have sex or even a gangbang. But to being thrown up on by someone else? (The vomit on the girl was not her own, apparently.) Someone who sits there and lets herself get puked on is not aware of what’s going on around her, clearly.
Other little tidbits from a Google News search for DeAnza:
* The girl was only 17, and yet no statutory rape charges were pursued even though the age of consent in the state is 18. This is important because statutory rape does not require proof of lack of consent, only proof that the perpetrators knew or should have known that the girl was underage.
* two baseball players who were not involved in the rape but witnessed it (and presumably could have identified those involved) were given immunity to testify before the grand jury
* the Sherriff who investigated the case remains firmly convinced that a rape occurred
* and most importantly…another girl claimed to have been raped at a party at the same house back in December, but no charges will be filed in that case either. That’s the saddest part of all, that these assholes are going to keep doing this until they are successfully prosecuted.
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