and I am glad the subject was not “Are they guilty” but instead stuck to DNA testing in the abstract.

However, I think it’s important to point out, applying the DNA results to all the other known facts is important.

For this reason, I am doubtful the right people have been arrested, specifically because, the DA said DNA would prove his case, and the victim identified two attackers.

I can not see an experienced DA saying the DNA would prove his case unless the victim said no condoms were used, and yet, I can’t see her being able to identify them, and yet not know they were using condoms.

If she was drugged so heavily she doesn’t know what happened, then her ID of them is flawed.

One more thing I would like you thoughful folks to know. The largest most prominent prosecutor’s ogranizations, the NDAA, National Distrcit Attorneys Association, has a position paper on DNA testing.

As you can imagine, they are all in favor of using DNA as much as possible to catch more people.

And, according to their position paper, they are in favor of post-conviction DNA testing, if it will “Prove Actual Innocence”.

But then they say any such post-conviction testing must take into account “the need for finality in criminal proceedings” — translation, to me — we don’t care if some innocent man is rotting away, we want our old convictions to be upheld.

And even as far as “proving actual innocence” some DAs have been very insincered, when men who had been charged as sole rapists were exonerated, some DAs claimed, “he might not be the only rapist”

Also, the NDAA position is that each individual prosecutor should make up his own program, if any, on post conviction DNA.

I think a lot of men, and a few women, are innocent, and can prove it, but are sitting in prison right now.

Imagine if we applied this standard to other crimes. Someone’s shot? Don’t help them by putting pressure on the wound, because you might disturb the blood spatters. There’s a burglary in your house? Don’t shut the window if it’s raining , else you’ll go to jail. Been hit by a car? Don’t get up and get out of the road. Don’t help anyone get out of the road, either.

Come on.

Considering that it is alleged that the strippers were threatened with penetration by a broomstick, and that the players defense was adamant right from the start that no DNA evidence of rape would be found (rather than the more common argument in such cases of consensual gangbanging), it could well indicate that a rape occurred with no penises involved at all.

And moving away from DNA, as for the “time-stamped photos”, I recently discovered when resetting the time on my camera for the change from daylight-savings time, that the last time I did it six months ago I somehow changed the year to 2004 rather than 2005, so that all the photos I took for the last six months have been dated incorrectly. So time-stamps on cameras are not slam-dunk evidence either.

Hey, if you’re for putting the burden on innocent people as a preventative measure, you’d love to change the law so the “she consented” argument could no longer be used.

Great idea.

I am just blown away that anyone would seriously suggest that rape victims be subject to prosecution for failing to preserve evidence. (Maybe we should tell hit-and-run victims they weren’t really run over if they didn’t get a license number?) This is undoubtedly the most creative way to blame the victim I have ever seen.

As for “forming a statistical view of reality,” I’m unfamiliar with the incident referred to, but my point was precisely that whatever your preconceptions may be — whether “male college athletes are macho jerks” or “strippers have low morals” — may or may not be statistically true for the majority of the class of people stereotyped, but they are never valid substitutes for the actual facts of a given case. I think it’s extremely important to be aware of your preconceptions and how they affect your view of reality, and also extremely important to recognize when facts are in short supply.

(From what I’ve seen of Amp, I’d be quite surprised if he were to ban me for expressing these opinions, although it is of course his prerogative to do so.)

I hesitate to suggest, but in the interest of convicting rapists, maybe it should be a minor crime, on a par with destroying evidence or interfering with an investigation to wash after a rape. It would put a legal burden on victims, which definately sucks, but maybe when women knew about the law, rape victims would be more likely to do things that lead to convictions.

Apparently this doesn’t suck in your opinion, otherwise you wouldn’t suggest it. Hey, if you’re for putting the burden on innocent people as a preventative measure, you’d love to change the law so the “she consented” argument could no longer be used. Think how many rapes THAT would stop.

Better education? Who doesn’t know? Plus, it really is destroying evidence. An expectation that crime victims shouldn’t destroy evidence doesn’t seem so dumb to me.

This so blatantly anti-victim and pro-rapist that it takes my breath away. As a rape survivor and volunteer victim’s advocate, I know this isn’t common knowledge. The majority of the public — men, women, boys and girls — have no clue about how DNA is collected or what effects the chances of finding DNA samples.

You seem to be accusing victims of willingly destroying evidence. I suppose you want to charge victims with evidence tampering? Yeah, forget the difficult task of prosecuting rapists, lets get those horrid victims if they don’t do everything we expect a good rape victim to do.

I would say rapists and exploiters are much more likely to be educated on evidence collection and destruction than those who can’t imagine they are at risk of being raped.
I say this since — despite what defense attorneys’ claims — rape is a choice, not something that overcomes them when a girl or woman walks into the room.

Ok, apparently you didn’t mean well, because you can’t even be bothered to think through the scenario or put yourself in the victims place.

Who doesn’t know?

(Isn’t that kinda like asking “who doesn’t know that you get pregnant/get STD’s -insert scenario here-?” I mean the answer should be nobody, but everyone knows that in reality it’s a whole lot of somebodies.)

We could, of course, start with the twelve year-old victim who isn’t certain what rape is, even after having experienced it - but I must admit that isn’t really what I had in mind.

People know that when you get drunk, you get drunk. But that doesn’t stop college campuses from explaining to their adult students exactly what happens when you get drunk - and for very good reasons.

Society seems to be extremely willing to tell me what I shouldn’t do to get raped all the time, but no one ever told me what to do when/if do get raped. Since one is often in shock - no, what to do is not self-explanatory at the time. (And I would think that the whole “being in shock” thing ought to be even more obvious than the “don’t destroy evidence” thing.) A little bit of education of the “stop, drop, and roll” variety will go a lot further than ill-conceived legal penalties. Add in the fact that most rapes are often a violation of trust, and all the ways in which rape victims are told they are responsible for their own rape, and it’s easy to see why so many victims need some time to gather up the courage before they admit their “shame” to strangers - and why creating specific criterea for such reports, and penalties for reportees that don’t meet them, has to be one of the dumbest ideas since Prohibition.

Even aside from the issue of shock of trust, CSI may be a popular show, but I don’t think we should be relying on commerical television to get the word out. When you still have kids who think you can’t get pregnant on your first time, you are going to have plenty of potential victims who aren’t quite sure what the police really need or what they may be able to find. (”But there wouldn’t be any DNA evidence - he used a condom.”)

But even beyond that - since when is punishing victims for a perfectly reasonable response ever a good idea? Yes, we should encourage victims to not shower before going to the police even though that really, really, sucks because it’s generally most victims first response, and it often makes the ordeal (combined with the collecting of evidence) seem like it’s still going on even after it’s stopped. But to punish them? WTF?

I can tell you one thing, such penalties will certainly lead to fewer reports of rape. I mean, seriously, among the victims that are in such a state of shock after their rape that their first response isn’t to call the police right away, how many do you think will be able to gather enough courage to go to the police later - even though they risk being prosecuted themselves simply because they were afraid after being violently attacked? (It’s like you’re under the impression that women who shower before going to the police simply wanted to look their best.)

However, I’d also bet on a higher conviction rate - simply because the weaker cases will likely be a lot of those not being reported. So, it will all look good on paper.

There are likely other, unknown scenarios of which we are not thinking, in which the absence of DNA evidence does not disprove rape.

Better education? Who doesn’t know? Plus, it really is destroying evidence. An expectation that crime victims shouldn’t destroy evidence doesn’t seem so dumb to me.

Rob, please try to think of a rape victim as someone who has been assaulted, hurt, and is frightened. Someone who might feel violated and dirty.

Then, develop a sense of empathy.

Yeah, it would a lousy situation if a woman destroys evidence that could have helped put a rapist in jail. You know what’s even worse? Being raped in the first place.

I reckon it’d be even worse to find out that you might face criminal charges for wanting to wash a rapist’s spunk off of yourself.

You know what I bet your problem is? I bet you’re one of the guys - and there are too damn many of them - who can’t help but think of rape as “a crime committed by a rapist”, and completely ignore that it’s a crime suffered by a rape victim.

Poverty didn’t cause this crime, maybe poverty doesn’t cause most crimes.

poverty causes crimes when the rich are protected from prosecution - because then only the poor can possibly be criminals

Is there any evidence or confluence of evidence that could convince anyone here that she was not raped?

No, of course not, we are all lemmings following the beat of the almighty strawfeminist.

Or - she is innocent until proven guilty as well. I am, after all not “convinced” that the alleged rapists are rapists. I do strongly suspect that all of them, especially the guy that wrote that perverted e-mail, are quite capable of rape. But that doesn’t mean I’m convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that they commited this specific crime. Neither is that contradictory to my belief that the prosecutors and police wouldn’t be doing their job if they simply let the matter drop at this point in time.

I hesitate to suggest, but in the interest of convicting rapists, maybe it should be a minor crime, on a par with destroying evidence or interfering with an investigation to wash after a rape. It would put a legal burden on victims, which definately sucks, but maybe when women knew about the law, rape victims would be more likely to do things that lead to convictions.

Yes, because we need something else that we are “supposed” to do when people hurt us or want to hurt us. The list isn’t long enough, after all.

And the perfect solution is to make it a legal requirement to make rape victims sit in shit their assailants have covered them with - until the doctors and police are done picking them over anyway. It’s not as if such laws would never be used against victims or that simple education and less victim-blaming wouldn’t create better results.

You may mean well, Rob, but seriously, did you stop and think before you wrote that?

Rob, I don’t think that this case rips holes in all social science theories. This case supports the idea that messed-up power structures between human beings (on levels of class and race, in this case) cause crime.

Anyone else noticed that the Duke Rape Case rips a hole in standard social science theories of crime? Poverty didn’t cause this crime, maybe poverty doesn’t cause most crimes.

I believe I said that, Captain.

Is there any evidence or confluence of evidence that could convince anyone here that she was not raped, or is it a position of faith?

I hesitate to suggest, but in the interest of convicting rapists, maybe it should be a minor crime, on a par with destroying evidence or interfering with an investigation to wash after a rape. It would put a legal burden on victims, which definately sucks, but maybe when women knew about the law, rape victims would be more likely to do things that lead to convictions.

In Barry Scheck’s book Actual Innocence — which I found very good despite my reservations about Scheck — he cites the statistic that in roughly 25 percent of the cases where DNA is probative, DNA tests eliminate the prime suspect right off the bat. Because DNA can’t give any information about the vast majority of cases, this suggests that an appallingly high number of prisoners are serving time for crimes they didn’t commit.

I think the Duke case is attracting such attention in part because 1) it has all the inflammatory elements of race, sex, and class 2) there really aren’t that many solid facts available, at least publicly, so it’s a perfect receptacle for people to pour their preconceptions into. Based on what I’ve read and heard about student-athletes and athletes in general, I’m inclined to think that Mary Doe was the victim of rape or some other form of assault and battery. I have to keep reminding myself that I really know nothing about it.