I just had to post this: http://www.fathersmanifesto.net/falling.htm It is one man's personal account of how he was falsely accused of rape by a woman and convicted. How could this possibly happen? Don't we have a justice system to make sure innocent people are not found guilty? Most people are not aware how unfair that justice system actually is. This could potentially happen to any man. Men get falsely accused of rape more often than you would think, and for all sorts of different reasons.
So? life is not fair. what should we do--let rapists go free so nobody risks being wrongfully convicted/
Unfortunately that's true, but that does not mean we should not strive to try to make our society as fair as possible. Especially in the justice system. If the justice system is allowed to become too unfair, people may loose their respect for it. And if that happens, law enforcement could start facing more resistance when they try to arrest people. No, of course not. But the point in this story was that there was completely inadequate evidence. It was simply the word of the alleged victim against the one being accused—a victim who did not even have a good reputation. And the prosecutor and judge allowed the case to go forward anyway, and the jury still convicted.
Since he was writing from behind bars and blaming his lawyer, I withhold any conclusions on what is or is not fair in this case. Often victim testimony is the only evidence of substance in a case, but if I recall correctly, he chose not to testify at his trial. Reputation evidence is generally near impossible to get into a trial, and the reason he stated he did not testify was because of an effort to keep his own reputation from getting before the court.
That is a common response. "He's in jail so he must be guilty." "Who are we going to believe? The government prosecutor or the accused who was found guilty" Many people just don't believe that this type of thing can actually happen, or if it does, think it must be extremely rare. They can't understand why a prosecutor would go after someone when the evidence shows a high likelihood they could be innocent.
That wasn't my response, the "I withhold any conclusions on what is or is not fair in this case" is operative and you chose to truncate my post to omit it because it does not serve your spin. It is the same behavior that makes me distrust his version of the facts. For one, substance abuse programs highly encourage people to avoid relationships for their first year of sobriety and here he was jumping into the sack with a fellow patient on the last night and painting it like it was all her doing. It was undoubtedly against the rules. The bulk of his post is about how everybody else was at fault and even when he was at fault it wasn't his fault because he was being tricked by somebody else. This is not a pattern of behavior that makes me trust his version of things, especially when some of the things he indicated his lawyer knew about the civil case, someone in his lawyer's position would not know because he was not a participant in that case let alone know what did or did not occur behind the scenes on the other side. You clearly think he was an innocent victim of the criminal justice system. I don't know if he was or not simply because he is so unrealistically self-serving with everything he wrote in my opinion.
The real issue here is not merely just that the man was falsely accused, but that he should not have been convicted. I know the story in that link is very long, but it's really a must-read. It touches on multiple issues, this man suffered multiple different injustices during his trial.
If the only evidence in a case is one person's word against another, especially in this day and age, then no, there should never be a conviction. I think juries regularly fail to grasp the meaning of "beyond a reasonable doubt" and err on the side of making sure somebody pays. They worry more about somebody getting away with something than convicting an innocent person, which is exactly the opposite of how it should be and the intention of our criminal justice system. I'd also give pretty much zero credence to "eyewitness testimony," unless there were independent accounts that agree. Lay juries are a very poor way of determining guilt or innocence. Except in really obvious cases, it becomes a matter of which lawyer is better at manipulating people, which means you better have money if you're ever accused of anything.
The man alleges he suffered multiple injustices. That he alleges injustices from beginning to end makes me discredit his story. Perhaps there was an injustice somewhere along the way, and perhaps he was innocent and wrongfully convicted, but perhaps not. His story is too self-serving every step of the way for me to give credibility to any specific aspect of it. You apparently believe him. I do not.
I found this other story someone posted on another forum that I would like to share here: Note that I have heavily modified this man's original post for clarity, you can see the original here (the post at the very bottom of the page) So basically there was a messy breakup, and this man's wife not only took everything from him, but then made false accusations against him. These sort of accusations are not as uncommon as many people may think, and I am very inclined to believe this man's story. Many years ago my parents rented out a room to a man who told us a very similar story. He left his girlfriend of several years, and she did not want him to leave. So to "get back" at him, she accused him of molesting her young daughter (that she had from a prior relationship). The girl was so young she just told the police what her mom had told her to say. This ruined his life. And in fact we found out he actually committed suicide later. So having actually met the man, this type of story hits very close to home. But back to the first man story. One of the things in this man's story that stands out are the type of tactics used by the prosecutor. Just throw as many serious charges as possible at the defendant to intimidate them into entering a plea bargain. This type of tactic is very common. But what I really want people to notice here is that this man was facing a potential life sentence in prison based simply on a minor domestic dispute with his ex-wife and dubious allegations of molestation. What I am trying to point out here is that there is something very wrong with the justice system. I use this man's story simply to illustrate an example. Some of you might say this man's story seems unbelievable. Well let me ask you something, have you ever bothered to check in to this issue? This sort of thing happens all the time, that's part of what makes it so believable. In practice, the actual law is merely a technicality, together the prosecutor and judge can basically do whatever they want, and there is a tremendous amount of malignant mispractice and apathy towards the lives they destroy. This man's original post on that other forum was barely intelligible, and I think I can understand why. He was struggling to explain what happened to him, and was having difficulty fitting it all together in a coherent manner. He just wanted to get his message across, but there was no way he could really get his point across in a simple message that took 5 minutes to write. This is a horrible problem, and it does not have an easy fix.
Some people will use anything to get back at people...false information, lies. There are some really twisted losers out there. Break ups can create a lot of "crazy insecurity "to surface. I really didn't know how messed up our justice system was until I saw the Deborah Peagler story. She was not only unfairly convicted ( prosecutor brought in a witness to lie for them) every single step of the way she faced injustice. It was infuriating watching it as a movie. I cant imagine going through that. I wonder why there was no DNA evidence? I know its not always possible to obtain. Of course no one takes crime lightly...but destroying an innocent persons life is unacceptable.
I think this incident happened before DNA testing became widespread. 20 years ago DNA testing was very expensive and regarded as a cutting edge technology. In this particular case it would not have made a difference either. The accused man did have sex with the woman, he openly admitted that. She just accused him of rape afterwards to try to get some money (and she succeeded). Which begs the question what standard of evidence is sufficient to convict a man of rape? Is just the testimony of the alleged victim enough? What about if a woman accuses a man of rape after she has had consensual sex with him? The DNA "evidence" would be there. Many people just think these matters should all be left up to the jury to decide, but as this story clearly illustrates, a jury can be manipulated and vote to convict based on inadequate evidence.
True...having consensual sex would change the point of DNA evidence. Makes for a really tough situation, I know they take the reputation of both people involved. The justice system is more inclined to agree with the woman because of so much past inequality. Everything use to be unfairly blamed on the female so to correct that, the pendulum now swings ridiculously far in the opposite direction. "Alleged" evidence, a crooked prosecutor and an easily manipulated jury can ruin a life. That should never be acceptable.
` In my opinion, there is nothing so loathsome as a female who cries rape when there is none. Not too long ago, "Rolling Stone" magazine violated the primary rule of journalism in not verifying and fact checking their story about a gang rape on the University of Virginia. The Greek organization which was allegedly responsible for this and has filed suit against RS. This is a clear cut violation of the students rights as citizens. Unfortunately, after reading the article "The Personal Nightmare of a Man Falsely Accused of Rape" I found it to be a garrulous harangue attempting to invoke invidious sentiments for his situation, which may or may not be justified. Of course, it's the manner in which he wrote it. The man who wrote it, James Donald Anderson, also wrote another earlier article titled; The Jessica's Law Nightmare in California which again, sounds like a self-serving rant against women. Long on vitriol, short on facts. Make no mistake, if Mr Anderson is indeed innocent, he should be exonerated and file suit against those in the judicial system that convicted him. He is correct to a certain point that the system appears to be stacked against a male accused of rape. If justice is to be done, both men and women need to join together to change things.
You're taking his word for it. People tend to be good at justifying themselves, and not necessarily reporting accurately. I'd like to see the story through the eyes of a neutral third party.
Which is probably why injustice is rampant in the system. Even when those who suffered come forward and tell their story, most people are very dismissive. Just hope it never happens to you.
It won't. I don't stay in a situation alone around a woman who isn't my wife for very long (less than a minute). I don't believe in even having an appearance of potential impropriety. I never believe a story if I just hear one side of it. It's called skepticism and knowledge of human nature. We all spin explanations to suit our agenda.
Your story was too long and I didn't bother past page 1. The moral of the story should be, wait to get married before having sex. If you won't do that, then be extremely careful and particular of who you have sex with. For those who are convicted by hard evidence (multiple credible witnesses, DNA, physical evidence, etc.) of preditory rape or rape of a child under 12---put them to death ASAP.
I see the story in the link is long, so I can provide a shorter summary of the story. It was 1985 and James Donald Anderson was 24 years old. Anderson had checked himself into an alcohol treatment center, in Salem, Oregon, where he became friends with a young woman. On their last night there, they had sex. Anderson did not know it at the time but this would later turn out to be the biggest mistake of his life. It would not be until 3 years later that Anderson found out that he was wanted as a fugitive for first degree rape, after he was arrested on an unrelated weapons charge in Alaska. It was not until 4 months after his arrest that Anderson had any idea why he was wanted for rape in Oregon. It turned out that woman from so long ago had claimed she had been raped so she could file a lawsuit against the treatment center for money. The attorney for the treatment center sent a private detective to the jail in Alaska to take Anderson's statement about what happened to use in court. When Anderson called the detective a month later, he was informed that the civil trial had already taken place since they last met, and that the woman had won her case. After serving eight months in jail in Alaska for the weapons charge, Anderson was extradited to Oregon. Anderson's dad hired an attorney for him and he was released on bail, pending the trial. It turned out the woman who was accusing him had a history of filing false rape accusations. At one point she had even accused her own brother. Unknown to Anderson at the time, the woman had severe emotional issues and was a drug addict. She had been kicked out of the detox center for not being willing to enter long term treatment. The attorney told Anderson he believed she was a desperate, homeless woman, who had wanted to get back at the treatment center by suing them. After the woman won $24,000 in the civil trial, a rape crisis counselor put pressure on her to proceed and get the man who raped her convicted. The "victim's" testimony in the civil trial was very convincing, and there was a flood of tears. The attorney told Anderson that the rape crisis councilor had likely coached her on her testimony and rehearsed with her how to squeeze as much sympathy out of a jury as possible and cry on cue. The trial began on November 27, 1989. Unbelievably, the judge refused to allow Anderson's attorney to bring up the woman's prior history of false rape complaints, citing Oregon's Rape Shield Law (despite the fact that the law should not have prevented this evidence from being introduced). The trial took place in the night. The judge had a crowded calendar and refused to reschedule. Anderson remembers that the jury was tired and looked like they just wanted to go home. Eight of the twelve jurors were women over fifty years old. Anderson noticed two of them appeared to have dozed off at one point in the long trial. On the witness stand, the young woman told jurors that Anderson had ripped off her clothes, dragged her to the floor, and violently raped her. She testified that she tried to fight him off, but he was too strong. She claimed to have locked herself in a bathroom and cried all night. This testimony greatly differed from earlier reports she had made to police, and also contradicted witnesses who were workers at the treatment facility at the time. But the stream of crocodile tears was enough to convince the jury. The judge sentenced Anderson to 10 years in prison. Fortunately, 6 months later at a parole hearing, he was able to convince a Parole Board that he was not guilty. At this hearing he was able to show evidence to them that he had not been permitted to show during the trial. The Parole Board did not have the legal power to release him but was able to reduce his prison time to only 4 years. However, only a month after the hearing, frustrated that he had to serve time in prison for a crime he did not commit, he escaped from prison, was recaptured 18 months later, and was sentenced to additional prison time for the escape.
