Posts by Heather Gaye
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<3 <3 <3
such a beautiful voice... such a westie accent..
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Y'know, like beyond just ebony and ivory;
*coff* I was playing those chords in my head, and only hit a single black key in the whole bally lot of 'em. :P
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But upon reading the article, it became obvious that the government action was going to be towards taggers, not graffiti artists. I emailed the Herald to let them know the difference.
I know I'm just turning into a sour old cat lady, but I've been EXTREMELY PISSED OFF at the tagging over the awesome pieces around my neighbourhood. I've seen one or two graffiti artists doing interviews defending their art, but I'd really like to hear more of the artistic community distancing themselves from taggers. There might be a code of conduct somewhere, (y'know, that mythical "no tagging other people's work" thing), but in practice some people are just fuckwits.
Granted, it does seem to give the artists an excuse to do another piece every couple of months. Just I have to get my photos pronto, before the work is defaced.
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We used the infamous "... pull the trigger" rhyme. In our defence, none of us (in a reasonably multiculti cohort) knew what it meant. Just a made up word that rhymes with "trigger", one presumed.
My friends and I would choose who was "it" with a round of "eeny meeny miney mo, catch a nicker by the toe".
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In my experience, there's always at least one total moron on any jury, who have no idea what the word "evidence" means, and obfuscate the issue with "what if" questions.
In this case, there was one bold & well-spoken guy who'd made up his mind right from the start. His argument to sway my friend ended up being - the jury is supposed to be a cross-section of society & as (at that point) she was the only one that wanted to find him guilty "what does that tell you?". Actually, in that context, given the prejudices of some jury members, it was likely a veiled accusation that she (with her dyed hair and arm tattoo) was just the same kind of slapper as the complainant. Other opinions aired were "all women are liars" (from an older woman), and "well, I don't have any responsibility toward the girl".
My friend reckoned that many of the jurors didn't seem to understand that the cross-examination was evidence. The girl's testimony was essentially consistent, and the guy kept contradicting himself, and even pulled a stunt that might have resulted in a mistrial. Response by members of the jury regarding testimony? "Well, [defendant] is under a lot of pressure...". Yeah, cos the complainant isn't?
/yeesh
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I fear that would lead to defenses along the lines of "she can't have been raped, she's too stoic."
Yeah, I thought of that the moment I posted. Just, my friend was in a sexual assault trial last week (13-year-old girl) and some of the bullshit ideas the defence put forward about how the girl "would have been expected to behave" were really painful to hear about.
Also, on the subject of juries, talk about war of attrition.. My friend held out on the guilt of the defendant, resulting in an 11-to-1 "undecided" vote. After four days, including 8 hours of deliberation, all jurors admitted they thought he did it "but couldn't be 100% sure". The number of jurors saying "guilty" dwindled basically due to the relentless pressure of a couple of fast-talkers, and the increasing desire to go home & forget the whole thing. Four of them contacted my friend after the trial and thanked her for holding out.
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Actually, it is the onus, it's just easier in murder or burglary. If you can't establish that someone is dead, or that's someone's missing some stuff from their home, you're not going to get a murder or burglary conviction.
You will have rape cases where rape is accepted as having happened by both sides - yes she was raped, but it wasn't this guy. Much like you could have a burglary charge go away if the offender was found illegally in a house but argued they were only there to get some of their own stuff.
OK, onus may be there, but there aren't a whole lot of avenues open to a complainant to be able to do so, is there? I fully accept that having no body is an understandable obstacle to proving a murder case, but I found one article on the lawyers.co.nz site that cited a study that found that 84% of rape complainants were accused of lying, & over half of complainants had their sexual history used against them, with no recourse for the prosecution to rebut. I think this is a big problem in rape trials, and it needs to be addressed - and more actively than just nodding sagely & agreeing that yes, rape trials are a bitch.
/heather's-character-evidence-bugbear
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So if you are going to claim consent, then you should be able to say on what grounds you believed consent was given, and those grounds ought to be able to stand up to a reasonable person test.
I don't know if that'd be particularly effective. I've been thinking about this a bit recently; in particular the issue of character witnesses and the like.
Rather than putting the onus on the (innocent till yadda yadda) defendant, which I admit would be extremely problematic in the long run, how about some kind of prelim to establish that a rape has occurred? Basically, it's never been the onus of a murder victim to prove that they're actually dead, or a burglary victim to prove that their locks got busted; so a rape trial is not the place to have to prove that a woman was actually raped.
So, in the bulk of cases where the woman is in that all-too-common high-risk / low-cred bracket (y'know, sexually active, alcohol/drugs involved, or mental illness, or low socioec, and/or has been hiding in her house for six weeks so there's no evidence left), you have a prelim to assert that the woman is behaving consistently with having been raped - get her a counsellor or a psychologist, talk with her friends; as well as establishing the extent of her trauma, it's a good opportunity to provide & inform a support network.
I assume the police investigation establishes some of this, but the info isn't admissible. So make it a formal process with a controlled portion of that information made available to the jury. Then it stops being about the victim trying to prove she's not a liar, and focusses on who did it & whether they're culpable.
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Well, isn't that sort of what the police investigation is about? They decide that there's a case to answer based on reasonable belief that a crime was committed by that guy. It's not like every single drunken bad experience ends up in court. Nowhere near. It takes a hell of a lot of encouragement to get women to come forward even when it's really obvious that something bad has happened. A stack of women chalk it up to experience and try & forget about it (& don't leave the house for six weeks).
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RE: skanky woman link - what the heck is a "past-time"?