Executive summary:
1. Beware, women use false domestic violence and sexual assault charges as an instrument of revenge and control. Learn to prevent these charges and protect yourself.
2. Prosecutions for sexual assault and domestic violence are becoming more aggressive. The trend in the laws is to make convictions easier by broadening the definition of crime and narrowing the scope of defenses.
3. Defending yourself against false charges requires thorough investigation, rigorous use of the evidence rules, and understanding and use of all the legal, social and psychological aspects of a case.
This comment by Cattle Rustler got me to thinking:
I've tried several domestic violence / rape / sexual assault cases as a defense lawyer before juries and judges in a US jurisdiction. I've litigated scores more to dismissal or plea agreement. I’ve sat in courtrooms watching other cases play out. The reality of these cases has little resemblance to the media picture of them. Rape by strangers is one of the rarest crimes, even in big dense cities.
A high school classmate of mine was a detective on the sexual assault unit. I was talking to him one day and we were comparing notes from opposing sides. He told me he wanted out of the SAU. When I asked why, thinking that he was tired of sordid child molestation charges, brutal rapes and the like, he told me “I am tired of all these made up false charges we have to support.” And proceed to tell me stories of women who had made charges of rape obviously motivated by revenge or money, which were still brought forward by the DA for political reasons. So we ended up agreeing and swapping stories. This is the environment we live in.
This forum draws an international audience, so laws will vary. Even within the USA, laws are different in each of the 50 states. Mandatory disclaimer: consult your local lawyer.
There are common trends - most places in the West have enacted domestic violence laws providing for restraining orders, mandatory arrests, and generally diminished the scope of a defense for domestic violence and sexual assaults, e.g. you can't use a rape complainant's previous slutty sexual history against her.
One new frontier in that regard is trying to place the burden of proof on a defendant claiming consent by the complainant - it's in the international criminal codes used for places like the former Yugoslavia. Canada also has a variation on this burden-shifting theme, plus an expansion of the definition of sexual assault to include abuse of authority (something which is a civil, not a criminal case in the USA called quid pro quo sexual harassment). The U.S. Congress enacted a burden-shifting rule on consent defenses for the US military a few years ago, but it got shot down by a military judge on US Constitutional grounds. For the time being, it is still the law in the USA that the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the complainant did not consent, and the defense of consent is allowed to be raised before the jury without any gatekeeping by the judge.
Another trend is the expansion of the definition of rape because of incapacity by intoxication. Incapacity used to mean the woman was unconscious or nearly so, unable to stand up or speak. Now, prosecutors are trying to impose a vague and shifting definition that includes ambulatory intoxication.
I told the story of one prosecution like that here.
There are also the recent examples of the Ohio university “rape” lampooned here on the forum, and the ongoing prosecution of two U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen after a drunken female midshipman pulled a train at a party.
In preventing and defending against false charges, the social and psychological aspects are at least as important as the legal aspects. It’s a kind of “game.” You and your lawyer are gaming the complainant, gaming the prosecutor, gaming the judge, gaming the jury.
The first thing to remember is: you can be charged and convicted on the say-so of one woman. It's enough for probable cause, and enough for conviction if she is convincing to the jury. So, screen your partners for psycho attributes. Hard to tell all of the time, but there are some obvious tells like her taking offense when none was meant, always being “disrespected,” obvious greed, weird mystical beliefs, extreme jealousy (especially Borderline Personality Disorder), sympathy-seeking hypochondria, etc.
Second, don’t do anything that will enrage her while your DNA is in her. In the story above, the guy fucked her in an alley, then left her standing on the street. If he had taken an hour more to bring her back to her friends in the bar and given her a few smiles and kisses, he would have saved a year of hell while he was charged with rape.
Criminal charges can come out of any male-female encounter in a number of ways.
Much more common than sexual assault charges in the courts are the nightmares of concocted domestic violence charges and restraining orders. I call this “Restraining Order Hell,” because it can go on for a long time and result in multiple court appearances and jailings. There are lots more domestic violence and restraining order cases than rape cases, and for sure there are a lot of guys who lose it and start beating their women, especially after drinking. There were so many times when I was talking to a new client charged with domestic violence in the court lockup in the morning, and he reeked of booze. It goes without saying you should avoid that situation, getting drunk and arguing with a woman. I always told these clients: your relationship with this woman should be over now. It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s because of her, or because of you: it’s obviously not working out when you find yourself in a lockup.
You can control your own behavior. What is more difficult is controlling what she does, and the use of domestic violence restraining orders as a revenge/control instrument after a breakup and in divorce is widespread.
One time I was waiting on a subway platform and overheard one girl (18-25 yo) say to another: “If you want your man back, put a restraining order on him.” It didn’t surprise me; I had seen it in court many times. A restraining order can be granted without a hearing to begin with, and it delivers a message to the man: “She’s in control now, she’s got you by the balls.” Typically these orders require a person to stay some specified distance away from the complainant and specific sites like the complainant’s home and workplace. I had several cases in which the woman invited the man back while the no-contact order was still in force. They might have stayed together for weeks, but when the man “stepped out of line,” by arguing with her, staying out late, real or imagined cheating on her, “disrespecting” her, a call to 911 was made and the guy found himself arrested. Sometimes it was a surprise to him when the police showed up. I always had to explain to these chumps: it’s not a legal defense that you were invited back by her, even if a judge or a jury might have some sympathy in those circumstances.
One rule: once you have a no-contact restraining order served on you, move away or have a rock-solid alibi 24/7. Otherwise, you’re always at risk of her scoping you out and calling the police to charge a violation of the restraining order (“He was outside my house, staring at my window”). It happens.
From her point of view, once she makes charges against you, she is going to be embraced by the state’s punitive and therapeutic institutions. She will have a “victim advocate” assigned to commiserate with her. She will meet with friendly prosecutors and police officers willing to believe her, even bending over backwards to do so. Her friends will sympathize with her.
You, on the other hand, are a cockroach which the power of the state is poised to bring the hammer down on. The only thing standing between the hammer and you is a good defense lawyer and yourself. The good defense lawyer takes many forms – public defenders are some of the best because of their experience, don’t believe the bad rap on them. If you are hiring a lawyer, make sure you hire a criminal defense lawyer. The criminal defense bar in any town is a relatively small group. Even in a city of one million, you only have about 50 good, dedicated criminal defense lawyers. If you don’t know anyone, walk into court and chat up the bailiffs. They are sitting in the courts all day, and see who’s good and who sucks.
The good defense lawyer has four things: (1) likes to Fight the Power; (2) knowledge of the law, especially the rules of evidence; (3) ability to thoroughly investigate the facts; (4) common sense about human behavior.
If one of a lawyer’s first questions is “Did you do it?” you should avoid them. This is because you are not in a position to judge whether you “did it” or not, and asking you indicates the lawyer is lazy and taking shortcuts. Even the guilty person is probably charged with some crimes not supported by the facts – e.g. you sucker-punched someone and are charged with assault with intent to murder. The lawyer should just ask you “what happened?” or “why are you here?” for your account of the facts.
There are no other qualities you should be looking for other than those four qualities – I know great defense lawyers who are women, including lesbians, gay guys, black, white, Hispanic, etc.
The lawyer must investigate everything about the case, the complainant, witnesses, understand the physical layout of the scene, any lab reports, police reports. Actually, the lawyer should hire an investigator to do a lot of this, because the investigator can talk to the “victim” and get her story on the record, along with any other witnesses. You can “lock in” testimony in your favor, because the investigator can testify at trial. Even though rape shield laws have limited exploration of some aspects of the complainant’s history, other aspects can be explored: past false charges, her psychiatric history, financial issues which could on motive to lie.
If you are in a social circle with the complainant, you may find some mutual friends willing to talk to you about “what she said,” dish dirt on her, or even talk her out of the charges. The latter is a delicate matter because of witness intimidation laws and if there is a no-contact order, as it could be “indirect contact,” so consult your lawyer and be careful. Still, if you could get a friend of the complainant’s to testify to her inconsistent statements or about any motive to get revenge on you, it’s golden.
Arraignments, bail hearings and related restraining order hearings are incredibly important. Aside from determining whether you’ll be locked up before trial, this is because the lawyer may get the chance to question the complainant.
One time, I was appointed as a public defender on a rape case at the arraignment. The dumbass DA and victim advocate let the complainant go forward with a restraining order hearing. After the complainant testified, I jumped up and handed in my appearance slip in behalf of the defendant. The DA objected, saying I wasn’t appointed on the civil restraining order case, only on the criminal. I told the judge I was doing it pro bono and the defendant had the right to counsel, and the DA had no standing to object. The judge wasn’t happy, but there wasn’t anything she could do to prevent me from cross-examining the complainant.
I asked a bunch of open-ended questions – When, where, what, who, why. Just to get her story on the record, on the tape recorders running in the courtroom. The complainant said she went back to the defendant’s house after the alleged rape. I asked her why she went to see him.
She said, “I wanted him to fix my car, and he said no.” With that answer, I knew I had won. The case pretty much fell apart and it was dismissed a few week later.
The good defense counsel has to know the rules of evidence. You can get and use things like the complainant’s psychiatric history in at least some places, but it’s really difficult and you have to know the law and be able to make the argument for relevancy. Hearsay and the exceptions to the hearsay rule are very important, as witnesses will testify to what “She said,” or “he said.”
If a case goes to trial, anything can happen. Jury selection rules differ, and I won’t get into picking a jury, it’s a complicated subject. Juries are great, but also unpredictable.
Juries want a show. They’ve watched a lot of trials on TV, and they want drama and “production values.” Drama is in the opening and closing statements, the questioning, the witnesses’ demeanor and the rather-solemn setting of the courtroom. I liked to jazz-up “production values” by going to Kinko’s for blown-up graphics, pictures, using a cool laser pointer.
I strongly believe juries want an answer to the question: why is she lying? There has to be a tight, factually-based theory answering that question. Revenge, jealousy, money, all are possible answers based on the facts. I also think juries want to hear from the defendant, to have him deny the charges.
How to treat the complainant on the stand is a defense lawyer’s call. I used to use a kind of sad sympathetic regret for the sick. One time I took this sympathetic tack and got the complainant to go beyond the violation of restraining order complaint to tell the jury about all kinds of fantastic things that my client did – cutting her phone and electric lines, “stalking” her at all hours, looking in her window at 3am. Everything up to beaming messages into her head, and all unreported to the police and ultimately unbelievable, so the jury could not believe her on anything.
Summary: False rape and domestic violence charges are a danger to any man in relationships with women. Be careful out there, and be aware of the laws in your jurisdiction. In the end, only a good defense lawyer might stand between you and twenty years in a maximum security prison on a false charge.
1. Beware, women use false domestic violence and sexual assault charges as an instrument of revenge and control. Learn to prevent these charges and protect yourself.
2. Prosecutions for sexual assault and domestic violence are becoming more aggressive. The trend in the laws is to make convictions easier by broadening the definition of crime and narrowing the scope of defenses.
3. Defending yourself against false charges requires thorough investigation, rigorous use of the evidence rules, and understanding and use of all the legal, social and psychological aspects of a case.
This comment by Cattle Rustler got me to thinking:
Quote: (10-03-2013 05:56 PM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:
We need a "Red-Pill and Saul Goodman type lawyer" thread.
That way we can get one on the go in case SHTF. Trying to find one is quite difficult these days.
I've tried several domestic violence / rape / sexual assault cases as a defense lawyer before juries and judges in a US jurisdiction. I've litigated scores more to dismissal or plea agreement. I’ve sat in courtrooms watching other cases play out. The reality of these cases has little resemblance to the media picture of them. Rape by strangers is one of the rarest crimes, even in big dense cities.
A high school classmate of mine was a detective on the sexual assault unit. I was talking to him one day and we were comparing notes from opposing sides. He told me he wanted out of the SAU. When I asked why, thinking that he was tired of sordid child molestation charges, brutal rapes and the like, he told me “I am tired of all these made up false charges we have to support.” And proceed to tell me stories of women who had made charges of rape obviously motivated by revenge or money, which were still brought forward by the DA for political reasons. So we ended up agreeing and swapping stories. This is the environment we live in.
This forum draws an international audience, so laws will vary. Even within the USA, laws are different in each of the 50 states. Mandatory disclaimer: consult your local lawyer.
There are common trends - most places in the West have enacted domestic violence laws providing for restraining orders, mandatory arrests, and generally diminished the scope of a defense for domestic violence and sexual assaults, e.g. you can't use a rape complainant's previous slutty sexual history against her.
One new frontier in that regard is trying to place the burden of proof on a defendant claiming consent by the complainant - it's in the international criminal codes used for places like the former Yugoslavia. Canada also has a variation on this burden-shifting theme, plus an expansion of the definition of sexual assault to include abuse of authority (something which is a civil, not a criminal case in the USA called quid pro quo sexual harassment). The U.S. Congress enacted a burden-shifting rule on consent defenses for the US military a few years ago, but it got shot down by a military judge on US Constitutional grounds. For the time being, it is still the law in the USA that the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the complainant did not consent, and the defense of consent is allowed to be raised before the jury without any gatekeeping by the judge.
Another trend is the expansion of the definition of rape because of incapacity by intoxication. Incapacity used to mean the woman was unconscious or nearly so, unable to stand up or speak. Now, prosecutors are trying to impose a vague and shifting definition that includes ambulatory intoxication.
I told the story of one prosecution like that here.
There are also the recent examples of the Ohio university “rape” lampooned here on the forum, and the ongoing prosecution of two U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen after a drunken female midshipman pulled a train at a party.
In preventing and defending against false charges, the social and psychological aspects are at least as important as the legal aspects. It’s a kind of “game.” You and your lawyer are gaming the complainant, gaming the prosecutor, gaming the judge, gaming the jury.
The first thing to remember is: you can be charged and convicted on the say-so of one woman. It's enough for probable cause, and enough for conviction if she is convincing to the jury. So, screen your partners for psycho attributes. Hard to tell all of the time, but there are some obvious tells like her taking offense when none was meant, always being “disrespected,” obvious greed, weird mystical beliefs, extreme jealousy (especially Borderline Personality Disorder), sympathy-seeking hypochondria, etc.
Second, don’t do anything that will enrage her while your DNA is in her. In the story above, the guy fucked her in an alley, then left her standing on the street. If he had taken an hour more to bring her back to her friends in the bar and given her a few smiles and kisses, he would have saved a year of hell while he was charged with rape.
Criminal charges can come out of any male-female encounter in a number of ways.
Much more common than sexual assault charges in the courts are the nightmares of concocted domestic violence charges and restraining orders. I call this “Restraining Order Hell,” because it can go on for a long time and result in multiple court appearances and jailings. There are lots more domestic violence and restraining order cases than rape cases, and for sure there are a lot of guys who lose it and start beating their women, especially after drinking. There were so many times when I was talking to a new client charged with domestic violence in the court lockup in the morning, and he reeked of booze. It goes without saying you should avoid that situation, getting drunk and arguing with a woman. I always told these clients: your relationship with this woman should be over now. It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s because of her, or because of you: it’s obviously not working out when you find yourself in a lockup.
You can control your own behavior. What is more difficult is controlling what she does, and the use of domestic violence restraining orders as a revenge/control instrument after a breakup and in divorce is widespread.
One time I was waiting on a subway platform and overheard one girl (18-25 yo) say to another: “If you want your man back, put a restraining order on him.” It didn’t surprise me; I had seen it in court many times. A restraining order can be granted without a hearing to begin with, and it delivers a message to the man: “She’s in control now, she’s got you by the balls.” Typically these orders require a person to stay some specified distance away from the complainant and specific sites like the complainant’s home and workplace. I had several cases in which the woman invited the man back while the no-contact order was still in force. They might have stayed together for weeks, but when the man “stepped out of line,” by arguing with her, staying out late, real or imagined cheating on her, “disrespecting” her, a call to 911 was made and the guy found himself arrested. Sometimes it was a surprise to him when the police showed up. I always had to explain to these chumps: it’s not a legal defense that you were invited back by her, even if a judge or a jury might have some sympathy in those circumstances.
One rule: once you have a no-contact restraining order served on you, move away or have a rock-solid alibi 24/7. Otherwise, you’re always at risk of her scoping you out and calling the police to charge a violation of the restraining order (“He was outside my house, staring at my window”). It happens.
From her point of view, once she makes charges against you, she is going to be embraced by the state’s punitive and therapeutic institutions. She will have a “victim advocate” assigned to commiserate with her. She will meet with friendly prosecutors and police officers willing to believe her, even bending over backwards to do so. Her friends will sympathize with her.
You, on the other hand, are a cockroach which the power of the state is poised to bring the hammer down on. The only thing standing between the hammer and you is a good defense lawyer and yourself. The good defense lawyer takes many forms – public defenders are some of the best because of their experience, don’t believe the bad rap on them. If you are hiring a lawyer, make sure you hire a criminal defense lawyer. The criminal defense bar in any town is a relatively small group. Even in a city of one million, you only have about 50 good, dedicated criminal defense lawyers. If you don’t know anyone, walk into court and chat up the bailiffs. They are sitting in the courts all day, and see who’s good and who sucks.
The good defense lawyer has four things: (1) likes to Fight the Power; (2) knowledge of the law, especially the rules of evidence; (3) ability to thoroughly investigate the facts; (4) common sense about human behavior.
If one of a lawyer’s first questions is “Did you do it?” you should avoid them. This is because you are not in a position to judge whether you “did it” or not, and asking you indicates the lawyer is lazy and taking shortcuts. Even the guilty person is probably charged with some crimes not supported by the facts – e.g. you sucker-punched someone and are charged with assault with intent to murder. The lawyer should just ask you “what happened?” or “why are you here?” for your account of the facts.
There are no other qualities you should be looking for other than those four qualities – I know great defense lawyers who are women, including lesbians, gay guys, black, white, Hispanic, etc.
The lawyer must investigate everything about the case, the complainant, witnesses, understand the physical layout of the scene, any lab reports, police reports. Actually, the lawyer should hire an investigator to do a lot of this, because the investigator can talk to the “victim” and get her story on the record, along with any other witnesses. You can “lock in” testimony in your favor, because the investigator can testify at trial. Even though rape shield laws have limited exploration of some aspects of the complainant’s history, other aspects can be explored: past false charges, her psychiatric history, financial issues which could on motive to lie.
If you are in a social circle with the complainant, you may find some mutual friends willing to talk to you about “what she said,” dish dirt on her, or even talk her out of the charges. The latter is a delicate matter because of witness intimidation laws and if there is a no-contact order, as it could be “indirect contact,” so consult your lawyer and be careful. Still, if you could get a friend of the complainant’s to testify to her inconsistent statements or about any motive to get revenge on you, it’s golden.
Arraignments, bail hearings and related restraining order hearings are incredibly important. Aside from determining whether you’ll be locked up before trial, this is because the lawyer may get the chance to question the complainant.
One time, I was appointed as a public defender on a rape case at the arraignment. The dumbass DA and victim advocate let the complainant go forward with a restraining order hearing. After the complainant testified, I jumped up and handed in my appearance slip in behalf of the defendant. The DA objected, saying I wasn’t appointed on the civil restraining order case, only on the criminal. I told the judge I was doing it pro bono and the defendant had the right to counsel, and the DA had no standing to object. The judge wasn’t happy, but there wasn’t anything she could do to prevent me from cross-examining the complainant.
I asked a bunch of open-ended questions – When, where, what, who, why. Just to get her story on the record, on the tape recorders running in the courtroom. The complainant said she went back to the defendant’s house after the alleged rape. I asked her why she went to see him.
She said, “I wanted him to fix my car, and he said no.” With that answer, I knew I had won. The case pretty much fell apart and it was dismissed a few week later.
The good defense counsel has to know the rules of evidence. You can get and use things like the complainant’s psychiatric history in at least some places, but it’s really difficult and you have to know the law and be able to make the argument for relevancy. Hearsay and the exceptions to the hearsay rule are very important, as witnesses will testify to what “She said,” or “he said.”
If a case goes to trial, anything can happen. Jury selection rules differ, and I won’t get into picking a jury, it’s a complicated subject. Juries are great, but also unpredictable.
Juries want a show. They’ve watched a lot of trials on TV, and they want drama and “production values.” Drama is in the opening and closing statements, the questioning, the witnesses’ demeanor and the rather-solemn setting of the courtroom. I liked to jazz-up “production values” by going to Kinko’s for blown-up graphics, pictures, using a cool laser pointer.
I strongly believe juries want an answer to the question: why is she lying? There has to be a tight, factually-based theory answering that question. Revenge, jealousy, money, all are possible answers based on the facts. I also think juries want to hear from the defendant, to have him deny the charges.
How to treat the complainant on the stand is a defense lawyer’s call. I used to use a kind of sad sympathetic regret for the sick. One time I took this sympathetic tack and got the complainant to go beyond the violation of restraining order complaint to tell the jury about all kinds of fantastic things that my client did – cutting her phone and electric lines, “stalking” her at all hours, looking in her window at 3am. Everything up to beaming messages into her head, and all unreported to the police and ultimately unbelievable, so the jury could not believe her on anything.
Summary: False rape and domestic violence charges are a danger to any man in relationships with women. Be careful out there, and be aware of the laws in your jurisdiction. In the end, only a good defense lawyer might stand between you and twenty years in a maximum security prison on a false charge.