The problem with juries...

[lederhosen]

...is that sometimes they're MORONS.

OC Register story (fairly work-safe) and OC Weekly (NSFW): Orange County policeman stalks a female stripper, pulls her over on a secluded strip of highway out of his jurisdiction, blackmails her into sexual acts, and gets acquitted after his defence counsel plays the "she was a slut who seduced him" card.

Never mind the fact that the guy had previously been warned by a sergeant to stay away from the strippers, had used his DMV access to run the plates of nine other female employees of the same strip club shortly before the incident, and that the GPS tracking the location of his patrol car had been mysteriously disconnected just before he set out to tail her outside his jurisdiction and pull her over.

(via tcpip)

Comments

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

Would this have been in the same court where they acquitted the cops who beat up Rodney King?

[fluffy-cloud.livejournal.com]

Irvine. Why am I not suprised that it was an Irvine cop?

[akedhi.livejournal.com]

I'm disgusted, unsurprised, and somewhat frightened all at once.

Disgusted because an officer of the law who uses his position to take unfair advantage of anyone - stripper, librarian, or particularly attractive circus clown - should at the very /least/ be fired from his job, and better yet, sent to prison for the maximum sentence and made to appear on the public websites like any other sexual predator. Not acquitted of all charges and let off without repercussion.

I am unsurprised because there is a stigma attached to any woman who displays her body, especially in a professional capacity, and even though the word 'No' is universal, it somehow matters that what a victim of rape or sexual assault was wearing at the time of her assault. A 'slut' cannot refuse sex, it's somehow wired into her makeup that she will always, without fail or question, want it, even if she thinks she doesn't. 'Bad girls' can't be raped, they were always leading the poor innocent man on somehow. You'd think that kind of thinking would have gone out with the days when showing one's ankles was inciting a man's lust and 'good girls' didn't do that.

And I'm frightened, because where one man gets caught and acquitted for something so blatantly wrong, it sets a precedent, even if it's not in a high enough court to set a legal precedent. I'm frightened because there are more than one of that officer, even if they aren't all in the police force. And I'm frightened that if something like that happens to me, or someone I know, it will have the same result.

Reactions

[jazzmasterson.livejournal.com]

1 - Fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking stupid bastard fucker mother FUCK.

2 - I have to show up for jury selection on Friday. I fear for my sanity.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

This could be a 'beyond a reasonable doubt' thing, where the jury wasn't *sure* that his version of events was bullshit.

He did lose the civil suit and get fired over it.

[cheshire-bitten.livejournal.com]

Gah, yeah I read about this a couple of days ago.... I really don't know how to respond in cases like this.

[remus-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Don't blame the juries for this. Odds are that the jury didn't see most of the evidence you listed. If the defending attorneys can get evidence withheld for any reason at all, they will.

It's the system that's broken, not the citizens.