Although the line where the guy explains how his blog has become a common search hit for the Google “Genarlow Wilson Sex Tape” was pretty horrifying.

Indeed. And that line serves to illustrate exactly what he is talking about (hypocrisy, morbid fascination, etc.)

Although the line where the guy explains how his blog has become a common search hit for the Google “Genarlow Wilson Sex Tape” was pretty horrifying.

Um, maybe you should pay attention. It already was a crime; that is having sex with a minor. All the 1995 law did was raise the age of “child” from 14 to 16 (as well as making harsher punishments for offenders). That means that the 15 yo was now below the cut-off age and the 17 yo was above it. Clearly it was meant to protect 15 and 16 yo’s from predatory adults. Whether or not the omission of an age-gap clause was to deliberately put kids in prison for having sex, I don’t think any of us can say for sure. I don’t know what the debates surrounding the law were. But the original law did not have an age-gap clause either.

Frankly, that comment is silly. So now the standard is we send men and women to jail because to not believe that victim of a crime is to be on “the side” of the criminals? That’s absurd. The victim’s statements can be the impetus for prosecution, or they can be the primary evidence. But they are not conclusive evidence, as you should well know, and that’s the whole point of jury trials.

I never said any such thing, and to think I did is “silly.” But, the fact that you can conclude, without question, that an accuser must be wrong because a jury didn’t believe them is to place yourself unequivocally on one side, and it’s not the side of women or feminists.

Wilson is out of jail. That’s the right result, but I don’t view Wilson as “innocent” in a broad sense.

He shouldn’t be in jail for what he didn’t do, and he shouldn’t be in jail for something that shouldn’t be a crime. I’ve been quite clear on that, and you have failed to read what I wrote.

I am, however, heaping scorn on him. He was properly released, but he’s a bad guy. As for my tone, rape makes me angry, including at bystanders. If you don’t like that I’m strident in my indignation against a man who partied while his friends gang-raped a woman, too bad. I’m not willing to moderate it.

I hate to be pedantic, but..

But you’re so good at it! :-)

Good catch. Thanks for pointing it out.

Ampersand, quoting Feminist Law Professors:

Mr. Wilson’s successful Petition for Writ of Certiorari is here. A copy of the Court’s decision is here.

This is incorrect, as the second of the two cited documents shows. Wilson’s petition for Writ of Certiorari was denied. He then successfully applied for a Writ of Habeas Corpus on the grounds that the punishment was cruel and inhuman.

The end result is the same: his conviction and sentence are quashed.

1) You really don’t think there are any right-wingers who ever use “some amount of reason”?

2) I thought you were an anti-feminist not because you think Wilson might be innocent of rape, but because of your rude tone.

3) I said in my post that I didn’t think that Wilson might be a rapist makes convicting him of a bogus crime okay. I said it again to you in this thread. Now you accuse me a second time of not regarding Wilson’s imprisonment as a travesty.

At the point where I’ve told you flat-out what I think, and you persist in claiming I think something else, I don’t think there’s anything more to say.

Regarding the tone, apology accepted. It was an enjoyable surprise to visit your blog earlier today and not discover the right-wing anti-feminist blog I had been expecting to see. :-)

I would think the fact that I actually use some amount of reason in my comment would make it clear I’m no right-winger. I am disappointed to see that it is presumed I am anti-feminist because I am willing to argue that Wilson is not a rapist.

I’m not saying that no one should speculate on a juries’ conclusion. That would be absurd, given such noteworthy travesties as the OJ Simpson trial. What I am saying is that when the evidence is at best somewhat muddled, it is poor form to conclude that someone is a rapist. And when you raise that point in a post about Wilson going to jail for a consensual sex act, it’s quite clear that you don’t regard his imprisonment is that great of a travesty.

He’s a woman-abusing piece of shit that at best sat idly by while his friends repeatedly penetrated a passed-out teenager. Blowjob or no blowjob, I call him a piece of shit for that. I expect better from men.

And none of that makes him a rapist. Are you now saying that you’re comfortable with the fact that someone who doesn’t rape someone should go to jail on some other unjust charge because he’s around guys who are committing rape? You say “at best” but again you engage in speculation that is at best your own opinion based on what you read in the ABC article. Prejudices? I’d say you’ve brought some of your own to this discussion. As to what I expect from men…nothing I’ve said here implies in anyway that I condone rape or being friends with rapists, and frankly that comment is well below the level of discourse I’d expect from a commentator on this blog.

And you are willing to do so over the the statements of the victim — without question. That says a lot about whose “side of the aisle” you are on.

Frankly, that comment is silly. So now the standard is we send men and women to jail because to not believe that victim of a crime is to be on “the side” of the criminals? That’s absurd. The victim’s statements can be the impetus for prosecution, or they can be the primary evidence. But they are not conclusive evidence, as you should well know, and that’s the whole point of jury trials.

Got that? the act of LITERALLY saying “yes” or “no” and whether or not that act happened = factual debate.
The interpretation of whether or not a person effectively communicated consent, i.e. whether or not they consented = legal debate.

Yes, I’m quite familiar with the distinction. I’m also aware of the fact that juries are not ever supposed to arrive at legal conclusions, but simply at factual conclusions that support a legal finding of guilt or not-guilt. Presumably there is no appeal from Wilson’s acquittal on the rape charge (though I haven’t verified that by trying to look up his case) so I’m not sure if there’s a way to see what the actual jury charges were. But unless the lawyers trying the case and the judge were confused or incompetent, I highly doubt the jurors were permitted to arrive at any legal conclusions.

Since Wilson’s conviction, the former Republican state lawmaker who authored the state Child Protection Act in 1995 has repeatedly insisted it was never his intent to lock up teenagers involved in consensual sex acts.

Oh, he didn’t, did he? Well then WHY THE HELL DID HE WRITE THE LAW TO MAKE IT A FUCKING CRIME??? Did he trip one day, fall down and accidentally enact some legislation? I find it far more likely that he actually did intend to throw kids in jail for screwing around. This guy deliberately ruined the lives of innocent teens, and I have absolutely no sympathy for him.

I think it’s pretty reasonable to say in general that the likelihood of bloggers, political movements, and other organizations “getting to the truth” better than the jury is fairly small. There is just so much testimony and so much to go on, that we don’t see. Even written transcripts are often confusing, because they don’t capture pauses, nonverbal communications, facial expressions, or tone.

The problem with rapes of course is that even after getting to the facts, it’s pretty difficult for many juries to actually apply the law correctly. And even if they do get both facts and law correct, they often have a feeling of “reasonable doubt” which is often unjustified and/or based on incorrect assumptions about what certain behavior “means.”

Still, when it comes to the facts, I trust the jury more than the accuser OR the accused. But I think where you may be crossing swords here is this: Facts are not the same thing as legal conclusions. A lot of statements which SOUND like factual statements really are NOT factual statements.

Say the jury says “she consented.” That’s a legal conclusion, not a factual one. Consent is a legal term. A factual conclusion, OTOH, would be “he did not touch the accuser,” or “she said “yes, I want to have sex.”

Got that? the act of LITERALLY saying “yes” or “no” and whether or not that act happened = factual debate.
The interpretation of whether or not a person effectively communicated consent, i.e. whether or not they consented = legal debate.

And unlike FACTUAL conclusions, juries get LEGAL conclusions wrong with higher frequency–particularly when it comes to rape. So if you claim “I trust the jury” (which I do, most of the time) you have to be careful about exactly what you trust them to do.

My point is simply that I am willing to trust the judgment of the jury in this matter, who were privileged to testimony and evidence that you and I were not.

And you are willing to do so over the the statements of the victim — without question. That says a lot about whose “side of the aisle” you are on.

When five guys sexually penetrate a teenager who is too drunk to know what’s going on, I call that rape. I will keep calling it rape regardless of what you or anyone else says. Fucking a woman who can’t understand where she is or what’s happening to her is not consensual, it’s rape, that’s my position.

Juries bring prejudices to their deliberations. The first jury in the Orange County case deadlocked, though I’m at a loss to see how anyone could fail to convict.

A seventeen year old girl who was passed out drunk got raped by five of Wilson’s classmates in the same room where an underaged girl sucked his cock. The law was unfair, the law has been changed, and Wilson is out of jail. That’s the right result, but I don’t view Wilson as “innocent” in a broad sense. He’s a woman-abusing piece of shit that at best sat idly by while his friends repeatedly penetrated a passed-out teenager. Blowjob or no blowjob, I call him a piece of shit for that. I expect better from men.

Obviously you don’t.

“That decision was cut and dry,” says Manigault, adding that she and the other jurors watched the tape as many as 10 times during the trial and deliberations to gauge whether the 17-year-old girl was able to consent to the sex. “The girl may have been on something but she was coherent enough in the video to respond directly and correctly to a question she was asked,” says Manigault.

Now, I realize that a bunch of guys who get a girl drunk off her face to gangbang her are the worst kind of sleaze, but I think the jury makes a pretty clear argument that she consented, or at least was coherent enough to consent.

I do disagree, as I made clear in a comment to your last post on this matter. My point is simply that I am willing to trust the judgment of the jury in this matter, who were privileged to testimony and evidence that you and I were not. You on the other hand, construed statements made in an article about the case and the video in question to say that Wilson was probably a rapist. In my opinion, it shows extremely poor form to accuse the the young man of rape when you are in a considerably worse position than the jurors of the case to make that call.

So are you saying that no one should ever question or disagree with a jury’s decision (apart from a judge or some other person who was in the courtroom for the whole trial), or else they’re acting in “poor form”?

I can’t agree with that. It’s true that juries know more than a lay member of the public can, but your argument implies that members of the public should never question the outcome of a trial.

Such an extreme view would be particularly problematic for rape, in which a jury may reach a verdict of “not guilty” based, not on a greater understanding of the facts than what’s reported in the press, but on a common — but I’d argue, mistaken — conception of what “real rape” is. Especially if they believe the victim is immoral or complicit in what happened to her, or if they believe that it’s not rape if the victim didn’t struggle or yell “no!”

If you want me to admit that I could be mistaken about whether or not Wilson committed rape, then I readily admit that. I don’t know for sure, and you’re right that it’s important that I acknowledge that. But if you want me to say that calling the wisdom of juries into question is somehow out of bounds, then I think you’re dead wrong. Especially as regards rape cases.

Regarding the tone, apology accepted. It was an enjoyable surprise to visit your blog earlier today and not discover the right-wing anti-feminist blog I had been expecting to see. :-)

I do disagree, as I made clear in a comment to your last post on this matter. My point is simply that I am willing to trust the judgment of the jury in this matter, who were privileged to testimony and evidence that you and I were not. You on the other hand, construed statements made in an article about the case and the video in question to say that Wilson was probably a rapist. In my opinion, it shows extremely poor form to accuse the the young man of rape when you are in a considerably worse position than the jurors of the case to make that call.

Second, yes you did state in that post that you are not explicitly claiming in that it’s okay for Wilson to go to prison for ten years on the consensual sex charge because he was actually a rapist. But the mere fact that you wrote a post titled “Genarlow Wilson Wins In Court, But Attorney General Appeals. Also, Wilson May Be A Rapist” and in that post concluded that Wilson “probably” is a rapist naturally implies that you are not all that heart-broken that he was sent to prison for an absurdly long time for something that shouldn’t even be a crime, whether you mean it to imply that or not. The mere fact that you wrote a post like that says more than what you can say in print. You may not have meant it to read that way, but several of your commentators on both that post and this one seem to have adopted that fairly reasonable conclusion from your post (such as Thomas, who is “not concerned about the injustice of it.”)

Please forgive me for my tone; I’m usually not this indignant when dealing with people who are on my side of the aisle. I just think that is extremely unfair to accuse Wilson of being a rapist when he was quickly acquitted of that charge, and to do so by construing his own statements against him, interpreting the facts to suit that conclusion, and questioning the wisdom or the intelligence of the jury. Comments from the likes of Thomas only reminded me of that fact.

Also another good example of what can happen when a prosecutor decides that you need to go to prison.

My view is that when someone is nearly asleep during sex with a half-dozen boys and men, and when she’s so out of it that she has to be pulled off the bed (presumably because she wasn’t able to get up by herself), and then she says that she didn’t consent — that’s rape.

Do you disagree? If so, do so with a reasoned argument, please.

Thomas and Amp, who apparently possess incredible vision into past events they were not present at, construe the rest of the facts in the story that INCLUDES that very quote by a juror to determine that Wilson is in fact a rapist and that his being jailed for consensual oral sex isn’t such a bad thing.

I never said that Wilson “being jailed for consensual oral sex isn’t such a bad thing”; to the contrary, I explicitly said it was wrong. Please retract that statement.

Oh never mind…I see “Thomas” above is more than willing to smear Wilson as a rapist. For what someone who was actually involved in the case had to say, see these comments by a juror in Wilson’s trial regarding the rape charge:

“I mean it wasn’t even an hour,” said jury forewoman Marie Manigault. “We immediately saw the tape for what it was. We went back and saw it again and saw what actually happened and everybody immediately said not guilty.”

Thomas and Amp, who apparently possess incredible vision into past events they were not present at, construe the rest of the facts in the story that INCLUDES that very quote by a juror to determine that Wilson is in fact a rapist and that his being jailed for consensual oral sex isn’t such a bad thing.

So to answer your question Mold, he did not “in fact” rape a girl at the party. Rather there has been rampant and completely unjustified speculation to that effect by bloggers and at least one commentator here who should know better.