Dollars to donuts he's afraid to prosecute after what happened at Duke.

this totally ruined my happy friday morning mood.

i think blucas is probably right. which is really depressing if the Duke fiasco means college athletes are suddenly exempt from rape charges.

I wrote a very, very angry rant about this yesterday. It pretty much ruined my day, too.

Blucas, the DA is a woman. Which kind of makes it even worse.

I commented about this on Cara's blog, but I can't believe this happened nearly two months ago, in my freaking hometown and I haven't found out about this until yesterday (I'm away at college).

I'm now ashamed to live in Santa Clara County, not to mention that nearly everyone in my area takes classes at De Anza, and the players got suspended for what, like a week?

Gah, I feel like breaking something.

Supposedly the problem is that neither the alleged victim nor the cooperating witnesses could identify the attackers. Given the AV’s state and the witness’s vantage point, this makes sense, although one would think that DNA evidence could solve that problem. Also, I believe the defense claimed the sex was consensual. I can’t imagine how that claim could be made without revealing who participated in said sex.

This is a very strange case indeed. Does anyone have anymore information on this? There has been a lot of discussion about this at LieStoppers (ex. supposedly two players testified at the grand jury proceedings for immunity), but precious few confirmed facts.

Good on the soccer team members who stopped it though, and who are not afraid to come out and say, "Hey, it was wrong and we tried to stop it."

I just read this: One of the eight suspended baseball players, pitcher Chris Knopf, told the San Jose Mercury News on Monday: "From the beginning, I kind of felt like it was a witch hunt and the De Anza players were victims, and not really this girl."

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

You remember when the botched OJ Simpson case caused everyone to stop prosecuting murders nationwide? Oh shit, neither do I.

I assume the DA is elected. Hint hint.

Okay Shyva, I totally want to beat that kid's head in with a baseball bat.

violenceiswrongviolenceiswrongviolenceiswrong

But violent fantasies aren't. So carry on.

the press on this case doesn't make sense. Can anyone link to other articles? I don't undertand what was wrong with the evidence.

I assume the DA is elected. Hint hint.
That's what gets me. She was elected, but our area is quite liberal and progressive. I mean, it's the South San Francisco Bay Area for chrissakes. I'm just flabbergasted.

And Cara, I want to beat that kid's head in with a baseball bat too.

Well duh, it's athletes. We should know by now that if you are a player on a college team with a "great beautiful future" ahead of you, you can get by with rape. Happened at Murray State.

frog queen, I've looked, and I can't find ANYTHING that gives an answer as to what the "lack of evidence" was. Unless things have changed in the last 16 hours or so, the DA won't talk.

I don't undertand what was wrong with the evidence.
No one understands. The DA won't elaborate on what is wrong with it, the office hasn't given anyone any explanation other than that there's not enough evidence to prosecute.

That's why a lot of people are pissed off.

You can read a lot of coverage at http://www.mercurynews.com/ (it's the San Jose Mercury News website -> awesome newspaper by the way), but you may have to register to read their articles.

It looks like DNA was collected from some pary attendees, but I see nothing in either article to indicate that there was a match to evidence collected from the AV. If there are no DNA matches and no witness IDs, then I can see how the case would be dropped.

I should add that the consent defense is particularly strange here since the AV is under-age.

I don't have anything new to add, but it does seem from my vantage point that someone is getting away with some really bad stuff. There may be something I don't know (maybe they can't figure out which players to charge?) but the whole thing just plain stinks.

Yeah, that's right she did it to herself. She got a boner and wanted to rape someone who was unconscious and covered in vomit. Yeah, she did *that* to herself.

This is even more depressing than the UK barrister case.

And hello, if the players were suspended, is that not an admission that they did something wrong?

"Blucas, the DA is a woman. Which kind of makes it even worse."

ah, sorry, I saw the quote from "David Tomkins" and got mixed-up.

"Well duh, it's athletes. We should know by now that if you are a player on a college team with a "great beautiful future" ahead of you, you can get by with rape. Happened at Murray State."

Also remember, the players have be white. A similar thing happened my senior year of college involving some black football players (on a top 25 team) and a white girl, and believe you me, Fox News didn't jump to their defense.

my heart hurts. maybe i am going to go to law school after all...

i think that high-profile college athletes have been getting away with shit since way before the duke case, though that's clearly affected the way the public thinks about this kind of thing. last year at my school (McGill, in Montreal) a rookie football player brought a complaint against the team because, as part of their initiation rituals, they went to sodomize him with a broomstick. he freaked out, it didn't happen, he was scared shitless - 30 football players crowded around you, unbelievable. all that happened was the players got suspended for a single game and a bunch of people wrote letters to the campus paper saying "it's a guy thing, chillax."

bullshit

I'm not surprised at all.
But then, I went to CU-Boulder where athletes do this kind of thing and get away with this on practically a weekly basis.

When a girl is drunk the defense will tell a story about how the guys couldn't have possibly known that she didn't want it (and that she probably did want it), and the girl will be unable to testify in her defense because her memory is patchy and "unreliable."

The impunity infuriates me.

Blucas, were they guilty? Or is somehow more fair to let some rapists get away with it when others do? Because if you're calling that victim a liar, that's a feminist issue.

I'm not calling her a liar. They were probably guilty, but the charges were dropped for the usual bullshit reasons (inconsistencies in her story, she didn't run to the hospital right away, no other eyewitnesses).

It just hit me during the whole Duke thing that here was a rape case that mirrored it in a lot ways, at a sports program MORE prominent than Duke's lacrosse team, but it didn't even make the national news.

Well, frankly, it would have helped if you had said so, because it would appear that there were other issues at play than their race. That their case didn't even get national attentions says to me that athletes get protected by whatever reasons for whatever reasons. I don't think the news media should defend anybody accused of rape because that usually means they're attacking the victim.

Fair enough. My memory on it's spotty, since unlike the Duke case I don't think most of the details got released to the public. I should probably re-check such things before running my mouth about them.

Yeah, because you said, "the athletes have to be white" and then went on to mention a case where the athletes were black and got off. I want all rapists put away, and Faux News doesn't share that concern at all; they think white guys are the most unjustly-maligned group in the world.

Yeah, my only real point was that it just goes to show that it's about "our boys" for the likes of them, not about "justice."

But I should shut my mouth about such things, since I just re-checked and apparently it *did* end up going to trial, much later, after I had already graduated and left. Strangely, I can't find anything on the outcome.

Re-reading the "bitch deserved it" letters-to-editor in my alma mater's school paper was pretty vom-inducing, though.

Yeah, the part where she is SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD boggles the mind!

And thank god for smart soccer players--the only silver lining in this story. Not to put the onus on anyone other than the rapist himself, but it is so important for us women to look out for one another, and be bold in speaking out when we see something fucked up going down.

This is just my thought, and I have no idea if I'm right. But I've seen things like this before. Because I do criminal defense work, I've seen a lot of rape cases up close, from the defense side. One thing I often find is that prosecutors treat the alleged victims like shit.

In Alameda County just this month, a city-councilman's son pled guilty to being a serial rapist of prostitutes. One of the victims was only 15 and mistaken for a prostitute (based on her dress and the area she was walking). The DA's office was great with these women. They protected them. They believed them. Despite the fact that they were drug addicts who sold themselves to support their habits. They didn't judge them and they supported them.

Now, let's say you have DNA evidence, eyewitnesses, an underaged victim so intoxicated she was taken to the hospital, plus a grand jury with subpoena power. Why wouldn't you prosecute? One reason is to avoid the messy political implications of doing so, and in the wake of the Duke case such caution is understandable. Of course this was discussed.

And I'm sure you imagine the impact this had on the victim, who needs to work closely with prosecutors.

The sad truth is that prosecutors revictimize these women, particularly when they are untrained to deal with the aftermath of rape. My guess is that this is not going forward because the victim will not cooperate with the prosecutors. This case is dead without the victim's testimony, and if she doesn't like how the prosecution's treating her, she won't put herself through that.

Funny how those letters come from all different kinds of people. It's not just rapists we have to worry about; it's the sympathizers.

I wish I believed in hell.

Rape cases are notoriously underprosecuted -- first because of sexist notions and misogyny. But second, because of how prosecutors are rewarded and praised. Prosecutors receive advancement and are re-elected based on conviction rates and rape cases (again because of sexism and misogyny) have low conviction rates -- thus prosecutors who may not harbor bad feelings (I have no idea of this one does or does not) are fearful of taking on a case because they do not want to affect their conviction rate.

I belive that rape cases should be separated out and not included in conviction rates.

What happened at the grand jury? The grand jury decided not to indict?

I also think we need to be very careful about thinking this is about white privilege. Of course that's an undercurrent, but more important is how our criminal justice system treats the victims of sexual assaults. Our society has done a decent (not great) job of protecting victims from the media and inappropriate defenses. But what we've overlooked is how they're treated by the government---meaning the police officers and other first reponders and, later, by prosecutors.

The tone of a prosecutor's interview with a victim is vitally important in securing the victim's cooperation. Going through a rape prosecution is a very very difficult experience that can be as emotionally devastating to a victim as the initial assault (seriously). If the prosecutor is unprepared for this harsh reality, the prosecutor may lose the victim's cooperation and, by extension, the case.

Perwinkle, according to Twisty's summary of the case, the three young women who witnessed the incident weren't called to testify before the grand jury.

Just some random facts I've gleaned from various coverage here in the Bay Area, in answer to questions posted here:

The eyewitnesses said in their TV interviews that they saw at least one discarded (presumably used) condom on the floor in the room, so that may complicate the issue of DNA evidence, although logic tells me that pubic hair should still have been present at the scene or on the victim's body.

The eyewitnesses were not called to testify to the grand jury, which may have something to do with the decision not to indict. I have not yet seen an explanation as to why they were not called.

From the eyewitnesses' accounts on TV, I would guess that they would be able to identify the man who answered the door and slammed it in their face, but not who was actually participating in the attack at that moment. They then broke down/shoved their way through the door, but they said when they got into the room, all the men were focused on escaping, which may be what prevented strong identification.

The Santa Clara County Sheriff has even spoken out against the prosecutor's decision, saying that it appears that "somebody got away with sexual assault."

Finally, local media has reported that the victim has since moved out of the county, although I don't know if this is a result of dissatisfaction with the prosecutor, or whether it's had a direct effect on the decision not to prosecute.

The DA's silence on this is mystifying and infuriating. The idea that a drunk-to-the-point-of-unconsciousness 17-year-old is capable of consenting to anything, let alone sex with a half-dozen or more men, is disgusting and wrong.

Yesbut, unfortunately, law school's just as bad as the real world. A certain devil-spawn maggot in my class raped one of my best friends. I'm 95% sure he's a member of the New York bar now.

Supposedly the problem is that neither the alleged victim nor the cooperating witnesses could identify the attackers. Given the AV’s state and the witness’s vantage point, this makes sense, although one would think that DNA evidence could solve that problem.

This is one thing I find really frustrating: my understanding is that in most crimes (burglary, mugging, battery, etc) when the cops/DA can't find the assailant, they look for them. When someone's house is burglarized and the owner isn't there to see exactly who did it, the cops don't usually just give up and say, "Well you didn't see anyone do it and can't identify a burglar, so we don't have any evidence that it even happened."

No, they do what makes the most sense: they 1) assume the victim was actually victimized (i.e. that a crime did actually take place), and 2) at least try to figure out who did it. I've never heard of a crime where so much of the burden of proof is on the victim, or where the victim is required to do so much of the sleuthing themselves!

yesbut: a bunch of people wrote letters to the campus paper saying "it's a guy thing, chillax"

Sadly, this may be closer to the truth than any of us would like to believe. Ever hear stories about what goes on at English boarding schools for boys? Those stories aren't made up (or so my friends say).

Here is something we can all do-write an email to the DA Dolores Carr. I wrote her on Wednesday and plan to make several phone calls as well.

Contact info:
Office of the District Attorney
70 West Hedding Street, West Wing
San Jose, CA 95110
Phone: (408) 299-7400
Email: webmaster@da.co.santa-clara.ca.us

Website http://www.sccgov.org/portal/site/da/

Her numbers are: 408-299-3099 and 408-299-7500.

Please check out iblamethepatriarchy.org for a really great thread about this whole thing.

Also, what can we do for the victim? And to support the eyewitnesses? Anyone have any ideas? I'm just so outraged, I've already emailed about 40 people about it. I think we really need to act, as a feminist community, in this case.

It sounds like the Sheriff really believes that this was a crime. I'm going to try to find contact info for the Sheriff-sounds like he would be a good person to contact, to let him know that we support keeping this case open.

Anyone have other ideas? The DA's silence is very telling. There is no way that this case shouldn't have at least gone to trial. At the very least, the eyewitnesses should have testified to the grand jury.

I know nothing about law, but this is exactly what happened to a girl in my high school. Raped by three boys in our school, but since they were drinking and hanging out, the DA would not press charges. Wouldn't even try the case. I still don't even know who those rapists are.

That is fucked up and my heart goes out to the young woman. And the "she did this to herself" absolutely breaks my heart.

I've never heard of a crime

yeah, I meant I've never heard of a crime other than rape where so much of the burden of proof is on the victim,...

Heartbreaking and infuriating. I can not believe that some of the men in that room didn't come forward to tell the truth about what happened and identify who was in that room.

Yesbut, unfortunately, law school's just as bad as the real world. A certain devil-spawn maggot in my class raped one of my best friends. I'm 95% sure he's a member of the New York bar now.

Did she report it? I would think that a felony charge (even if not prosecuted or convicted) would be enough to flunk C&F.

If it makes you feel better, NY waits