This is Not Justice

First I direct you to this article:


A Nebraska judge bans the word rape from his courtroom.

By Dahlia Lithwick

Posted Wednesday, June 20, 2007, at 7:27 PM ET

here: http://slate.com/id/2168758/


An accuser can be prohibited from using the word rape on the witness stand
Usually we leave it up to the linguists and philosophers to muse on the crazy relationship between words and their meanings. In the law, words—the important ones, at least—are defined narrowly, and judges, lawyers, and jurors are trusted to understand their meanings. It's precisely because language is so powerful in a courtroom that we treat it so reverently.

Yet a Nebraska district judge, Jeffre Cheuvront, suddenly finds himself in a war of words with attorneys on both sides of a sexual assault trial. More worrisome, he appears to be at war with language itself, and his paradoxical answer is to ban it: Last fall, Cheuvront granted a motion by defense attorneys barring the use of the words rape, sexual assault, victim, assailant, and sexual assault kit from the trial of Pamir Safi—accused of raping Tory Bowen in October 2004.

Safi's first trial resulted in a hung jury last November when jurors deadlocked 7-5. Responding to Cheuvront's initial language ban—which will be in force again when Safi is retried in July—prosecutors upped the ante last month by seeking to have words like sex and intercourse barred from the courtroom as well. The judge denied that motion, evidently on the theory that there would be no words left to describe the sex act at all. The result is that the defense and the prosecution are both left to use the same word—sex—to describe either forcible sexual assault, or benign consensual intercourse. As for the jurors, they'll just have to read the witnesses' eyebrows to sort out the difference.


and then this article

Judge declares mistrial in Safi case
By the Lincoln Journal Star
Thursday, Jul 12, 2007 - 01:05:18 pm CDT


Concerned by extensive news media coverage and public demonstrations in the sexual assault trial of a Lincoln man, Lancaster County District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront declared a mistrial this morning, the fourth day of jury selection.

Cheuvront said the “glut of publicity” as well as public demonstrations outside the courthouse and Capitol Building this week caused him to doubt the court could seat an impartial jury.

“It would be asking too much to ask a jury not to be influenced by some of this activity,” he said in courtroom filled with about 30 prospective jurors.

About 75 people were called to the jury pool. Some 45 of them were later excused, often because of what they had seen or heard about the case from the news media.

The mistrial is the second in the case, state of Nebraska v. Pamir Safi. The first trial ended in a hung jury in November.

It was unclear early Thursday what will happen next in the case. Cheuvront said the case, if tried again, might have to be moved to another jurisdiction in the state.

Safi, 33, is accused of sexually assaulting then 21-year-old University of Nebraska Lincoln student Tory Bowen in October 2004.

Clarence Mock, one of Safi’s attorneys, said Thursday the mistrial was the result of a concerted publicity campaign by Bowen and her supporters to influence the jury.

“This is one of the most reprehensible attacks on the judicial system that I’ve seen,” he said. “This is totally the result of Ms. Bowen and her outside agitators to influence the jury.”

Angela Rose, whose Chicago based organization held rallies this week outside the Capitol and County City Building, strongly disputed Mock’s remarks.

“It’s not just me coming to Nebraska,” she said. “People in Nebraska are outraged. They just want justice in the courtroom.”

Rose’s organization, Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment, or PAVE, held the rallies to protest pre-trial orders by Cheuvront that barred witnesses from using works like “rape,” “sexual assault kit,” and “victim” during testimony.


http://journalstar.com/news/local/doc469652152182a872732942.txt




Let's see that sort of logic applied to a murder trial, will you be allowed to refer to the 'victim' as deceased, or will that be too inflamatory?

The detective cannot be refered to as a Homicide investigator, either, and what about the weapon? I'm sure they'll need to come up with a new term for that as well.

Yes, there is a percentage of women who are either evil enough or screwed up enough to misuse the system and file rape charges; that percentage, however is very small. It's a perfect example of how the US legal system is set up to protect the criminal.

It seems women can never relax and think things are truly equal, because I know every time I start to think that I hear a story like this.
Exhausting, indeed.

I applaud the people who stood up and protested this, and thank them for being vocal advocates of a woman's rights.