So, false accusations of rape… It’s a delicate issue to cover. One that can easily become distorted into some vague, emotionally charged battle between two opposing, preconceived judgments: the man is a rapist, or the woman is a vicious liar. As a society, which should we be defaulting to? I guess the easiest thing would just be to fall back on that classic mantra of, “Hey, innocent until proven guilty!” That’s American Judicial System101, but still, it does give me reason for pause. While it may sound like a good policy, and is certain preferable to “guilty until proven innocent,” it isn’t difficult to imagine the insidious consequences that comes with it. Certainly you could argue it contributes to the general skepticism and animosity towards women who report being raped; it’s black and white, he either raped her or he didn’t, and if she can’t clearly prove it we should default to considering her a lying, attention-seeking slut. Or possibly crazy.
Obviously we shouldn’t presume guilt. To suggest we ought to convict people of crimes without having proof would be absurd. The problem, however, with me saying that we should assume all accused rapers are innocent until indisputably proven otherwise is that in doing so we’re inadvertently calling the other side—the women—liars. And unfortunately, concrete evidence is often unobtainable, regardless of whether or not someone was raped. This is a large part of what causes so many victims to not come forward: the fear of being put unofficially on-trial themselves, of being attacked and scrutinized and unable to prove their innocence. With the historical track record in mind, and the unequal power dynamics that still underly sexual relations between males and females, is it any wonder that many people will rush so quickly (albeit blindly) to the side of the woman? Inevitably, these people will want to hastily sweep aside cases of false accusation out of fear that they’ll be taken as some sort of norm, an excuse to trivialize rape or reinforce misogynistic views of women. It might be a good move for women’s rights at large, but on the individual level it’s hard to justify the throwing of innocent men under the bus for a greater socio-political cause. Neither option looks great in this dichotomy of guilty v. innocent.
It might be valuable to look to Scotland, briefly. Scottish courts have long been in the practice of handing out three potential verdicts—even back in the time of our good friends Adam Smith and David Hume. Unlike in the US, they distinguish between those who are guilty, those who are innocent, and those who are not proven either. The legal consequences of “innocent” and “not proven” may be the same, given that in both cases the defendant is acquitted, but in principle it’s an important distinction. Defendants aren’t assumed guilty or innocent when they come in, and there’s no need to default to one of these loaded options when reasonable doubt remains. If a court is to conclusively declare “not guilty” they ought to have evidence to support that, particularly in cases where they're simultaneously declaring the guiltiness of the one that brought the charges.
Thus, rather than a presumption of innocence, perhaps a presumption of potential innocence would be better. The important thing is that we give everyone an equal chance to make their case, and listen fairly instead of jumping to knee-jerk conclusions. And also realizing that we don’t have to make a definitive judgment when we really have no way of knowing.
I think as you point out there is not simply a purely legal dimension to criminal law--there is also a need for some sort of emotional satisfaction. The simple alternatives of innocent and guilty may not fully capture these needs. Thus, is it possible that it would bring additional solace to rape victims to have the possibility that their accusers might be found not proven guilty, as opposed to innocent? Perhaps.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the point that Sydney was bringing up is that in high profile cases there is always the possibility of the perception that an accused rapist will be considered not "innocent," but "not proven guilty," even if the accusation is unjust. So perhaps something like this already exists, just not formally.
Perhaps the real issue is just the need to destigmatize discussions of rape and of sex more generally, and I think part of that conversation is the one that Sydney has opened up: there are cases in which rape allegations will prove to be false. What do we do about those?
Well, I'd say "not proven guilty" sounds a great deal more incriminating than simply "not proven [anything]," but in not fully clearing someone's name you're admittedly going to have that lingering implication of moral guilt either way. That's the argument some would make against the Scottish verdict. But if a great deal of rationally-founded doubt remains, it seems irresponsible not to acknowledge that (legally and informally). Regardless of which side you're leaning towards, it's lazy to round up a vague hunch to a concrete answer.
DeleteYou're right to point out that even someone a jury has found convincingly innocent may still face suspicion. I would argue that a third option might actually help with this problem by increasing the weight of being found "not guilty." After all, when you lump together those who are almost certainly innocent with those whose innocence is quite suspect, you're blurring the distinction between the two groups.
And to be clear, this "we really don't know" legal option does get at the issue of social reaction to false rape accusations, in that we need to add a similar choice to our repertoire of personal reactions. If we can approach these cases sympathetically while still maintaining a sense of objective levelheadedness, then we can show greater fairness to all parties involved. This means fighting your basic human instinct to pick a side, and not fiercely clinging to a snap judgement politically or morally convenient to your world view.
We see the remnants of these snap judgements in the strange reactions some had to Faircloth's confessions. They aren't saying Oberst did it—that would be ridiculous, at this point—but it still feels more truthy that he would than that she would lie about it.
Great points all around. Certainly "not proven" is a bit different than "not proven guilty." I think your point about lumping the truly innocent with the doubtfully innocent is a great one.
DeleteOn the other hand, the standard of the common law is usually innocent until proven guilty in criminal matters--Roman law countries like Scotland employ somewhat different standards.
So we think it is highly important to say everyone is presumed innocent until something else proves them definitely guilty.
It would be interesting to study how a verdict of not proven might affect the outcome of a defendant's life. Does it make it more difficult for them? Does it make it easier on those who are actually found truly innocent? I'm quite curious now to see such a study.
The fact that you could get falsely accused of something is quite frightening. Even though you may have done nothing wrong, you could get in trouble. I know that we all would like to feel that the legal system would protect us in this scenario, but it often times cannot. Innocent until proven guilty is a very good goal for us to have, but the fact remains that there is a grey area, especially when dealing with real people with real feelings in the form of a jury. I mean, these untrained individuals are supposed to decided who is guilty and who is innocent, but may only have one witness testimony to decide with. They also have to suffer from the realization if they falsely let a rapist go, he may go rape someone else. That time some jurors may think that they blood would be on their hands. There may be a better way out there, but getting people to try to change it would be very difficult.
ReplyDelete