Do not rush to judgement

The Strauss-Kahn case seems very strange because for rooms to be checked out, hotels normally make up the rooms after the guests have checked out.

It seems the 'accuser remains anonymous while the accused can be named in the press' law is worldwide. A disgusting law which can ruin the lives of innocent parties.

[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]tcc wrote: [/QUOTENAME] The Strauss-Kahn case seems very strange because for rooms to be checked out, hotels normally make up the rooms after the guests have checked out. [/QUOTE]
Not really. When I was staying at the Westin Airport Hotel in Atlanta last month for the Breakthru convention, every day their maids came in, tidied the room, made the beds and restocked the coffee/tea supply. Didn't appreciate them placing my guitar on the desk however! (Truth be told, I actually do not like people handling my possessions especially when I'm not around!)

We knew she was lying when it came out a month ago that about $30,000 miraculously appeared in her bank account overnight.

She was paid off, full stop.  And now the jig is up.  Can Strauss-Kahn have his life back now?

What I mean is that when the rooms are due to be checked out, the housekeeping staff normally do not clean the rooms until the guests have left the rooms permanently.  This is to ensure the rooms are in good condition for the next occupant. In your example, they clean the rooms daily but on the day that you are leaving, they will clean the room only after you have vacated the room.  In SK's case, he was supposed to check out that day, so the maid should not be around cleaning the room when SK was still in the room

Every sexual assault case is a friggin Greek tragedy waiting to happen.  Women are uniquely at risk of being sexually assaulted,  men are uniquely at risk of being falsely accused, and any investigation or examination in court is necessarily probing and personal and often humiliating and terrifically unfair. Pervasive ignorance or somebody's agenda or some unjust advantage in power or gender or some other element is in the wings waiting to hopelessly prejudice either party at any point.  I can't think of another personal or violent crime where there are more challenges to knowing what justice is, or in securing it.

This in the end was the word of a powerful man with a bad reputation against that of an illiterate immigrant woman with a bad reputation.  Do any of you really think from the full passel of sordid facts all around that very much at all about about this case is particularly clear? About the only thing that is clear to me is that if prosecutors don't feel 100% certain about the guilt of an accused they have an ethical obligation to drop the charges.  They've done that, and DSK deserves presumption of innocence and a little sober public reflection on the fact that a career was wrecked or at least detoured over a case that wouldn't ultimately be made.  Here's a thought:  Do you think the alleged victim might deserve a little presumption of innocence of her own?  We rightly presume his innocence because the allegations and the victim were judged unsuitable to be tested in court. But we get to hang the maid on those very same untested allegations, and a few more the New York Post threw out for kicks. Beyond a reasonable doubt is a very high bar, as it should be.  If and until something new emerges nothing is so clear that we should behave as if the bar is ten feet lower for her.  People are watching  this.  Future or current rape victims are watching this. Watching this women getting dragged through the mud, accused of being a prostitute, too ugly to rape and God knows what else on the internet and in living rooms and on bar stools around the globe.  Tell me, how is that one bit less tragic than an irreversible perp walk?

I totally agree with you except for the words about the complainant. As a woman my sympathies are with the presumed victim quite naturally and in the DSK case I really was convinced that he did what he was accused of - because the DA claimed before the judge that they had independent evidence and the victim was very credible. However, I did object to the perp walk from the start. Nobody should be humiliated like this in a country that believes in the rule of law where only a court can convict somebody and not the press or the public.

When I now read the motion to dismiss the case I cannot but believe that the complainant is a notorious liar and cheater who does not have any scruples doing anything to get what she wants. Probably she needed such character traits to get asylum when in fact she was perhaps never politically persecuted but just an economic fugitive like so many whom I would never blame for that. However, this specific person did not only lie and cheat for her own advantage, she also did not hesitate to play a big fat drama in front of the whole world with ACB interview, press conference and whatnot to destroy the defendannt in her search of more money. Just despicable. I even felt sorry for the DA when I read the motion because they probably never met such a determined liar before and all fell for her scheme.

http://www.nycourts.gov/whatsnew/pdf/dsk_motion_to_dismiss.pdf

read pages 14ff and you might stop presuming innocence in this specific case...

I think it's important to remember that Diallo is the only person in this whole sordid mess that has had her words and actions over days and months put under a microscope.

Prosecutors are still prosecutors whether they're in a trial situation or filing a motion to dismiss. They're still advocates - for themselves as much as for the state in this case - and it is in their strong interest to have the public perceive precisely what you expressed: that they were duped by a professional liar.  The driest of facts when strung together are still somebody's narrative. Subtle choices of language, what's left in, what's left out and how information is organized can all have a huge impact on the way something is absorbed.  At trial the the prosecution's case almost always looks devastating before the defense gets up.  But we have no corresponding 25 page document issued under an authority with the gravitas of the District Attorney's office whose purpose is to advocate for Diallo and present competing expert opinion and explain the same facts from her side.  They proved that they could not responsibly or successfully bring this case to trial, absolutely, but they didn't prove Diallo was not a victim of a sexual assault.  That wasn't the purpose of the document, though an unfortunate side effect of it is that what would have been DSK's defense in a nutshell effectively gets to stand unchallenged.  I'm not alleging anything nefarious by the the DAs office, just noting that human nature and political expediency cannot be removed from this equation.

We don't have DSK's account or accounts to pore over and find inconsistencies.  The law rightly allows him to say nothing, and even in essentially saying nothing we were left with the impression that perhaps an alibi defense quickly gave way to a consent defense as physical evidence emerged.  We don't have access to the transcripts of the meetings that are certain to have taken place in the DAs office about how to mitigate political repercussions for the ham handed early days of the prosecution.   Nobody's accounts, motivations or actions have gotten a fraction of the scrutiny that Diallo's have, and only the prosecution has the power and reach and defacto unlimited budget of the state.  When she tried to tell her side in the face of a gathering storm from the DA's office she was roundly derided for going on TV at all.  If we're trying to use justification for a motion to dismiss as proof that a sexual assault did not take place given the challenges of proving rape, that is not a fair fight.  As badly advised as the press conference and such were, maybe in her eyes and those of her team they were just about trying to make it a fair fight.

Or, maybe she's a lying opportunist.  Maybe an opportunist looking to cash in on a voluntarily sexual encounter that humiliated her and made her mad.  The point is we simply don't know.  We really don't.  Which is what makes the torches and pitchforks such a potential injustice to rape victims as a group.   If the DA wants to make a case for public mischief or whatever they charge you with for false allegations, or if DSK wants to sue her civilly to make a point, I'll listen to that evidence then, when she gets the presumption of innocence and a process just like everybody else.  And then if she's found guilty in a fair trial, throw the book at her.  False allegations of sexual assault are a terrible and underpunished crime, but they need to be proven first.

You are absoutely right - we will never know the truth. I have seen many rape victims in my time as a woman's shelter volunteer and really they did not have a lawyer and they did not give TV interviews. They all wanted to be OUT of the spotlight because shame and humiliation is often worse than the violence of the rape. The complainant in the DSK case had more protection from the law than I ever saw in any cases I know: All evidence was secured immediately, she was interviewed by psychologically trained specialists and she was protected effectively against the intrusion of the public and the media. If her story is correct and everything happened as she told the DA - why in the world would she lie to the DA and the Grand Jury ? Everybody was on her side - there were riots of women in the streets of NYC in favour of convicting the defendant and even now many people believe her side of the story.

Yes, we will never see the truth  - but how can a prosecutor rely upon a witness who lies consistently and has a history of lying about virtually every aspect of her life. Of course she could still be the victim of a rape and it would not make the rape any less horrible. However - the crime must be proven and in the absence of any other evidence a notorious liar is simply not a reliable witness in court.  Personally, I stopped believing her when she cried in the TV interview that "they" would kill her because the defendant was such a powerful man. This was simply too much  soapbox conspiracy theater for me...

I agree totally that if indeed she was lying about the character of the encounter and motivated by money there's a great chance it would look precisely like it does. It is certainly a very good possibility. But I am not yet convinced it's the only possibility, or even the best one to any great degree.  When I say "we don't know" I mean it in a sense beyond "we weren't there".  I mean that there are specific reasons to believe that we do not have enough information to fairly gauge this specific case at this time.  If we hypothesize that she was indeed a victim and that her immediate interest was to be believed and have her case prosecuted, then unless it came out her lawyer's mouth every single last word that has been printed about this case since late June has come of the office of somebody whose interests were diametrically opposed to hers.  That is extremely significant.  The defense *and* the prosecution were leaking like a sieve, and manged to get damning information in the public mind space that set the tone for how everything that followed was received without ever having to take anything like real responsibility for it, or it's accuracy.  The prosecution is of course the most damning because it has the aura of impartiality, but as early as June they were no longer impartial and were in fact in the early stages of developing a new case, this time against her.

I'm sure the prosecutors were frustrated and angry at the position she had put them in, and once they decided to cut their losses and cut her loose there's nothing left for them to do but clean up after her with as much expediency as possible. Diallo's lawyer disputes key prosecution assertions relating to the tone and intent of her conversations about recovering money and about her consistency after first admitting she lied about details immediately after the encounter.  They both relate to issues regarding translation and/or communication.  Since the prosecution admits, indeed even leverages the fact that some of her untruths serve no clear purpose or benefit I would like to see transcripts and expanded analysis of that against what her team is claiming.  I would like to know why the damning "He's got a lot of money. I know what I'm doing." that was unquestionably a key turning point in how she was viewed by the public disappeared in the motion to dismiss, and was watered down to a passively worded footnote about a potential civil case that vaguely acknowledged the two different translations did not completely match.   There was language and content in that motion that was gratuitous and smacked of vilification rather than a dry argument about credibility.  The state has enormous power and I am bothered by that.

There is a difference between being credible as one needs to be credible to have a prosecution proceed in a court of law, and being somebody who should be unequivocally thought to have made up the charges absent those stringent requirements. In a high profile case against a wealthy and powerful defendant the prosecution could not present this person in court, that is clear.  The rest of us have the luxury of considering the possibility of an imperfect sexual assault victim who made some fatal mistakes in a situation fraught with unusual pressures and temptations, with the added complexity of language and cultural issues.  She's only been gone from Guinea for 7 years.  That is a country of violence, corruption, extrajudicial killings and deep social injustice for women.  Some of that mindset is going to run deep and easily could have informed some of her thinking and actions.  There were elements of her story that for me had the sinking thud of truth.  I don't think she was cheated by the prosecution as she essentially tied their hands, but I do think there is ample evidence that she may have been highly predjudiced in the public eye in their strategic effort to extract themsleves.  I think there is evidence that current views about her character and motivations may be being formed on inadequate and imbalanced information.  I would just like to see information that I can judge for myself rather than having it filtered through a single agenda. I'm concerned enough about that that I am declining to characterize her as either a liar or a rape victim with what is known.

As for your comments about your work in the women's shelter, there are few greater causes of injustice than defendants and complaintants failing to lay down and act like they're supposed to in somebody's eyes. Certainly we can draw on our own experiences to form instinctive impressions about situations, but at the same time we must realize the inherent limitations of that . Something like Camus' L'Etranger should be required reading for all of us before we even leave high school.

I did not try to make myself an expert in rape cases. All I meant was to say that I never saw a victim treated so well as Ms Diallo was treated by the authorities in NYC. They reacted swiftly and effectively. All the possible evidence was collected as quickly as possible and they called her a credible witness form the beginning. From all we learned in the first weeks after DSK's arrest there seemed to be a crystal clear case.

Yes, the state has a lot of power. That is why a criminal charge can be so devastating for a citizen. When you can be arrested and indicted on the word of another citizen there must be either corroborating evidence or the complainant must be credible. If both fails the state cannot and must not put a citizen on trial. If you take all the sensationalism of this case away you are left with such basics and yes - it does hurt a witness's credibility when she has drug money on her bank account and claims not to know it or when she recounts a gang rape very "convincingly" although it never happened. Of course she can be a rape victim this time. But how can you convict another person on the word of a notorious liar and cheater when there is no other evidence? You can't and that is all the DA did in this case-he dropped it because he could not proof the case. If she had not chosen to appear on TV in order to put pressure on the DA we would have never seen her face, her anonymity would have been preserved. On the other hand DSK was convicted by the public, his reputation is gone and his carreer is over - without a trial in a court of justice. He was not really a winner in the case, either.

The bottom line is that the double standard on the 'rush to judgement' is surreal and damaging.   There were and are a lineup of people around the globe and on this thread ready to directly and indirectly convict her of lying about being sexually assaulted on not much more than vapor.  There's nothing ambiguous about the damage done to DSK under similar conditions, but people dive in with equal or greater vigor for her in the immediate wake of that supposed 'lesson'.  Like I said, surreal.