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walkitouthttp://www.latimes.com/news/local/crime/la-me-accused-20110626,0,6630763,full.story
It's an old story -- someone made false accusations to try to get sole custody. It's a particularly disturbing one, in that if the accused hadn't been so well-documented in the course of his day (buying lunch, going to the bank), he probably would be in jail now. It's also upsetting, because there are hints within the coverage that it should have been possible to _prove_ the story was false (if, indeed, the rope was tied as described). Police just apparently had trouble imagining that someone would make up a story like the one in question.
Weird. But I guess this is one of the reasons men are much more likely to be convicted of a crime than women: people just cannot believe women would do things like this, but they're quick to believe men would do awful things.
It's an old story -- someone made false accusations to try to get sole custody. It's a particularly disturbing one, in that if the accused hadn't been so well-documented in the course of his day (buying lunch, going to the bank), he probably would be in jail now. It's also upsetting, because there are hints within the coverage that it should have been possible to _prove_ the story was false (if, indeed, the rope was tied as described). Police just apparently had trouble imagining that someone would make up a story like the one in question.
Weird. But I guess this is one of the reasons men are much more likely to be convicted of a crime than women: people just cannot believe women would do things like this, but they're quick to believe men would do awful things.
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Date: 2011-06-30 05:56 am (UTC)"What happened to presumption of innocence?"
Date: 2011-06-30 04:53 pm (UTC)There's actually a pretty good answer for "otherwise how would you convict for a sex crime", and the police kept running up against the Total Failure of This Woman's Story to Match the Real World. No hairs. No other DNA evidence. No bag. Time frame for when she said didn't work. No time frame for the whole day would have worked. Usually, when you have a sex crime, there's _something_ that backs up the story. In fact, usually the story is used to collected the real world evidence (DNA under fingernails, hair, etc.), and the real world evidence is what is used to make the case, rather than the testimony of the witness/victim.
Back In the Bad Old Days, when it was He Said/She Said, this kind of stuff devolved to Who People Wanted to Be the Bad Guy, and of course we know that produced crappy results.
The most striking piece of evidence that the woman lied, imo, was the medical exam. She described really quite awful stuff that was done to her and that absolutely would have left marks, marks that were not there. The police never should have pursued this beyond the initial medical exam, but should instead have referred her for psychiatric evaluation and called in whatever social services there are locally for child protection.
The next striking piece of evidence was that note that was found with her sort of telling the story of her death, which is a wildly unusual thing for suicidal people to do (I seem to recall reading an entire book made up of suicide notes, some famous, some not, collected from many countries over many centuries. People who write suicide notes have some common themes and this note wasn't at all like them. ETA: I think this was the book I read. http://www.amazon.com/Not-Be-Collection-Suicide/dp/1573225800).
And then the knot being one that was recognizably one she could have put herself in, and evidence that she had been doing research which would have taught her that knot.
At least the LA Times article provides the guy with the opportunity to repair some of the damage she did to him.