Originally published at: Cop acquitted of rape despite threatening drunk detainee with charges if she didn't give him sex | Boing Boing
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Can we please enact laws that provide that it is rape if a police officer has sex with anyone in their custody? Power without accountability = corruption.
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According to a quote in the article the state legislature made a move to remove a loophole in that scenario, but unfortunately the law wasn’t in place early enough to apply to this case.
Obviously they guy still should have been convicted for rape and it’s unconscionable that the jury somehow saw otherwise. The police chief in this case was clearly pissed at the former officer and gave statements at the sentencing hearing about just how bad this behavior was, which may have contributed to the judge’s sentence that’s longer than the normal guidelines for a “bribery” conviction.
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I wish these kinds of absurd (and obscene) verdicts would come with a link to the jury instructions – the jury has to follow those. The lawyers and the Judge may have passed on (and in the defense case, sought) jury instructions that made this result more likely or even inevitable.
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In the extremely unlike event that I’m ever actually accepted as a juror on a case, what are the provisions for a juror reading said instructions and declaring “I cannot adhere to these instructions?” I mean, honestly I’m trans and actively biased against cops (for some odd reason) so I’d never make it onto the jury anyway, but I’m still curious.
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The system works
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Hi there, here’s something as a US citizen you should know about in terms of your rights. It’s called Jury Nullification. You can vote however you like while you are a juror, and if you think someone is guilty, or innocent, or that the law shouldn’t be enforced, or (unfortunately sometimes) that a non-law should be the law of the land, so be it. As a force for good, it can be used to say “they may have committed a crime, but that shouldn’t be illegal,” and as a force for evil it has been used to convict many when they were clearly innocent. Judges, prosecutors, and many other in the legal profession would rather have you not know this, but it is how the system works, and is part of the reason why we have juries in the first place: to humanize the law, and limit the power of those who are privileged within its structure.
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There certainly is jury nullification – but may I suggest another course?
It’s honestly not your place to argue with the jury instructions – the lawyers are there for that and the judge and, honestly, they mostly are pretty good. But even if you get handed some shit instructions refusing to adhere to them just means that someone will replace you who will adhere to those instructions. So, yah, you can be righteous. But I think justice (or the attempt, through law, to approximate justice) would be weaker for your refusing. The world would be a better and more just place if you, with your unique and no doubt hard-won perspective, were trying to do your part within even flawed jury instructions.
And there are 11 other people in that room who might just listen. Don’t refuse to speak.
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I thought that was the law, I’m really confused how this could be decided any other way.
So Saul Goodman was right!
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In the film The French Connection, Gene Hackman’s character, Popeye Doyle (based on real-life NYPD racist detective Eddie Egan), follows a young lady riding a bicycle. Next thing you know, there’s a scene in Doyle’s apartment and it’s intimated that he and the young lady had consensual sex. Cut to real-life: Per a long-ago article (I’ll try to find the link), Eddie Egan would threaten woman with arrest – even for small infarctions – if they didn’t have sex with him. Obviously, the film sanitized the facts. Academy Award-winning copaganda.
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I’m having a hard time imagining instructions that are beyond the basic, “don’t talk with anyone but the clerk, bailiff or the judge” and “don’t look up outside information related to the case” that would both bias the jury that the jury couldn’t freely ignore. Clarification of the law related to the charges is subject to jury nullification, and anything that dictates the outcome to the jury is straight up malfeasance on the part of the judge. Any hints or influence about the verdict can be happily ignored.
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Beyond charging the jury with this stuff – all correct – there can be fairly complicated jury instructions about what the meaning of certain terms are (e.g., “intent”) – there’s a whole universe of law around jury instructions – and a lot of appeals turn on whether or not the jury instructions were correct.
Just a random example: Model Jury Instructions
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Sure, but those meanings are as open to interpretation (a.k.a. nullification) by the jury as they are open to explanation by the judge.
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I never saw that movie as “copaganda.” The main protagonist endangers countless bystanders and shoots one of his own agents in his mad pursuit of the drug smugglers. I wouldn’t say the cops ended up looking good in that film at all and I always thought that was intentional.
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Yup, pretty much that.
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