Woman convenes her own grand jury to settle her own rape case

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Originally published at: Woman convenes her own grand jury to settle her own rape case | Boing Boing

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I’m glad Madison Smith found another way to seek justice since the system let her down.

EDIT: removed quote from BB post with incorrect pronouns.

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I would love to communicate my fist into his larynx. I’ll stop when he withdraws consent.

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Okay this was step #1. So many questions…Now where does this citizen grand jury meet at and should they feel this case warrants court action who picks the judge? Is Ms. Smith paying for this out of her own pocket? So many questions…

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The law on such grand juries.

It would seem that such a grand jury has a good deal of independence; perhaps the notion that a grand jury is like putty in the hands of a capable district attorney does not rest on sold ground.

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Or maybe he should just be a decent fucking human being.

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I think that was an error in the paraphrase of the article:

(AP) A court services worker said during the sentencing hearing that Stolzenburg told her he should have communicated better and “does feel sorry for the victim.”

(BB) Jared Stolzenburg, Madison Smith’s attacker, was heard by a court service worker saying he “does feel sorry for the victim,” but that she should have communicated better.

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@beschizza Rob - sorry to @ you twice in quick succession but this is a bit more serious. The author of this BB blog post (Jess Sabine) cannot be @ed directly and it seems from the comment above that this blog post is in urgent and serious need of a corrective edit before everyone gets the wrong end of the stick.

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Everyone with a kink really, really needs to understand this: If a partner does not have any means of withdrawing their consent, you do not have their consent. There is no such thing as setting it all up before hand. It doesn’t matter if it ruins the fantasy. If a partner does not have any means of withdrawing consent, you do not have their consent.

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Fixed, thank you!

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Thanks! I edited my post to remove the quote.

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Kansas is in the newsssss------ oh god damn it. Good for her for finding a way to work the system. 2 years probation for “aggravated battery” instead of rape and battery is one reason why this keeps happening. :confused:

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And if you are going to engage in any sort of rough play, establishing withdrawal of consent is critical (assuming the violence was at all consensual, which it often is!). Blaming the victim for not being able to communicate while being unable to communicate is absurd on its face and is clearly just being used as an out to avoid prosecuting a man and trusting a woman. This misogyny is baked into the attitude of prosecution; essentially, “well if you have that kink, you deserve whatever comes of it!”

To be clear, I am not saying that any violence in this encounter was consensual or the victim’s kink, but it is for a whole lot of people and it is used as an escape by prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys alike.

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This newly-convened grand jury will have to approve charges of a different crime to avoid “double jeopardy,” since the assailant has already been sentenced for aggravated assault. I wonder what options they’ll have.

If someone were convicted of second degree murder, I assume they can’t later be tried for first degree murder for the same killing. They can be prosecuted for other crimes that were collateral, like breaking and entering, etc. When it comes to aggravated assault and sexual assault, I wonder whether someone can be prosecuted for both if they stem from the same act.

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Uh… RAPE.

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Sorry if I wasn’t clear.

My point is that, if Kansas law considers rape to be a subset of sexual assault and sexual assault to be a subset of assault, then the fact that the perpetrator has already pled guilty to assault would seem to rule out charging him with rape for the same incident. In that case, the new grand jury would have to find a distinct crime to prosecute. I merely wondered what those possibilities might be.

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As far as I know they can be charged separately. Aggravated Assault is not JUST sexual assault and you can bring up different charges on such a case.

But we need to stop treating rape as if it’s just some subset of anything. Ever.

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Oh, I don’t know, maybe attempted murder? After all, it seems he purposely choked her multiple times.

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