Monday, May 28, 2018

Why no prosecutions?


I've been angered to read two recent news reports.

Woman who falsely accused 49ers player of domestic violence likely to avoid charges
“We don’t charge domestic violence victims who falsely recant. We empathize with them, we support them, and we advocate for them,” the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement to the news outlet.

Woman's bogus rape claim against Texas trooper wasn't a crime, DA says
Prosecutors have decided not to file criminal charges against a Grapevine woman who falsely claimed that she was sexually assaulted by a state trooper last weekend.

. . .

The office concluded that Dixon-Cole's claims "do not constitute a false report to a peace officer" because they were made to either detention officers or to a private citizen over a recorded jailhouse phone line.

It also said the claims "did not create a situation, either real or false, in which there was imminent danger of serious bodily injury or imminent danger of damage or destruction to property."

I'm sorry, but I simply don't buy the explanations.  Isn't making false accusations against anyone, whether or not they're police officers, an actionable offense?  Perhaps lawyers reading this will offer their opinions, but that's always been my understanding.  At the very least, I hope that the officer concerned will bring a civil case for slander, libel, defamation, and any other feasible charge against his accuser.  If he doesn't, what's to stop others making similar accusations in future?  If there's no deterrent, why shouldn't they?

I don't see any way to stop such false accusations other than by making those doing so pay a heavy price for their lies.  As one who's been subject to false accusations myself in the past, I know from personal experience how difficult they can make your life.  Somehow, this must be stopped.  If that means treating offenders harshly, to make an example of them in order to deter others, well . . . they asked for it.  Only in the case of mental illness - clinically diagnosed, confirmed, and beyond doubt - would I make an exception.




Peter

12 comments:

Chris Nelson said...

In the case of women, this is referred to derogatorily as the "P****y Pass" offered to them by the legal system and the culture of these times.

It's why we have millions of men that have edited any platonic interaction with women out of their life. After seeing families and lives destroyed by the legal system, they opt out of most harmless interaction with the opposite sex. Add that any single sex club or organization has been crippled by the left, it makes for an unhealthy environment and the potential for a huge backlash one day...

Aesop said...

In the case of mental illness, they're still "a danger to others", so lock 'em up in a psych hospital for that, and brand them as unreliable witnesses in perpetuity.

They can get all the help they need someplace with soft music, soft food, and soft walls.

The others should be prosecuted for making false official statements, and the punishment should be the harshest sentence available for the crime they falsely accused others of committing.

Rub their noses in it, and that'll take the fun right out of that little scam, once and for all.

Nota bene every one of he ten thousand times a year one of these doxies plays that scam, The Sisterhood is nowhere to be found, seen, nor heard from, but the next false claim, they'll be right there, beating the drum for the lynch mob and yakking up court charges, as if most such accusations weren't patently false to begin with.

As if.

I'm fine with stringing up rapists.

People that make the claim falsely deserve the same noose.

chipmunk said...

I agree with Aesop. These vicious women should be made an example of. You don't go around destroying people's lives with false accusations and innuendo. That is downright evil and wrong. Not to mention that it makes it that much harder for women who actually ARE raped to be taken seriously.

Will said...

"...domestic violence victims who falsely recant."

The DA is indicating that they think he did the crime. Victims refusing to press charges, or refusing to testify, is common.

What's interesting is that this (Santa Clara) county doesn't require the victim to do anything. The county will charge an attacker themselves. Seems to be contradictory signals from the DA's office.

Starting in the late 90's, San Jose cops were told that when they arrived at a domestic violence incident, they were required to arrest at least one of the players, or to turn in their badge when they returned to the cop shop. I'm not clear if the surrounding cities handle it with similar zeal.

A complicating issue is that medical personnel are required to report to the police if an injury "might" have been caused from personal violence. Your wife trips in the yard and breaks her wrist? Better hope you were at work, if a nurse files a report about it.

Beans said...

State Attorneys and District Attorneys will be under the full force of the radical feminist movement if they attempt to prosecute these creatures. Add the lefty takeover of civil government to the mix and these females can get away with murder.


You see the same thing under other victim classes, such as 'poor black child' (who has a rap sheet 10 miles long...) or, or, or...


Professional Victim Classes. They are everywhere.

Bibliotheca Servare said...

In the first story, the DA is essentially accusing the woman of perjury for stating, under oath, that the attack never happened. In other words, rather than believing she's spoke "the whole truth..." etc, when she said the attack never happened, they're insisting that the attack happened, and the woman perjured herself when she stated that she had lied.

*That* is what the DA is saying in stating they "...don't charge domestic violence victims who falsely recant..." Not that they don't charge false accusers, but that *there are no false accusers ever* and *every false accuser* is actually risking *perjury charges* by admitting that the accusation was false!

To summarize their twisted view: no matter what, every accusation is true (in the DA's official opinion) and every woman who (remember, *falsely* per the DA's official stance on the subject) attempts to exonerate the man she lied about...should be *grateful* that the DA doesn't prosecute her for *perjury* in acknowledging the lie!

Black is white, up is down, peace is war. There aren't enough lamposts or near enough rope in the whole world...

Jerry said...

We had a woman first wanted to file a rape charge against an ex-baby daddy. When we said we would take her to a hospital to process a rape kit, she admitted that there was no rape but could we just beat him up a bit since he left her for another woman.

Divemedic said...

I know this is a bit late, but I want to relate to you how it feels to be a victim of a scorned woman and the courts. David Letterman was once a victim.

https://www.overlawyered.com/2005/12/restraining-david-letterman/


My ex girlfriend had been fired for stealing, not because I stalked her. You see, she had left some belongings at my house, which I had attempted to return to her through a mutual friend. She didn't pick them up, and after a month, I opened the box to find a large cache of pharmaceuticals, surgical equipment, medical records with patient information and social security numbers on them, along with other medical supplies. They were marked "Property of XXX hospital," so I contacted the hospital to see what they wanted done with their property. The supervisor asked me to bring them in. They did an investigation, connected them to her, and they fired her a month later for stealing. At the time of her firing, her employer told her how they caught her, and told her that her ex boyfriend had found the stolen articles and returned them to the hospital.

So less than an hour after her firing, she filled out a claim that I had committed domestic violence against her and that she was afraid of me coming to hurt her. The court issued a DV injunction, and I became a prohibited person for the duration of the order. My concealed weapons permit was revoked. It took me three weeks to get a hearing.

To protect myself from allegations of violating the order, I left the country and went into exile in St Martin, St Thomas, and the Bahamas.

I also had records from my toll transponder, showing that I was nowhere near her on the dates and times that she claimed I was stalking her. (not even in the same county- I was 100 miles away) on the dates in question.

None of it was needed. She presented her case, and before we called our first witness, my attorney pointed out that there was no evidence of violence presented by her. The judge agreed and dismissed all charges.

After this, she said that her boyfriend is a cop, and that "this isn't over" because the cop is initiating a criminal investigation into how I got his phone number, among other things, and that he is going to have me arrested.

My lawyer said that if he does that, we will sue for wrongful prosecution and his career will be over.

What happened to her? Exactly nothing.

McChuck said...

The penalty for false accusation should be double that of the original charge. The prosecution should be automatic - once a formal accusation has been made, somebody is going to trial.

Aesop said...

A complicating issue is that medical personnel are required to report to the police if an injury "might" have been caused from personal violence. Your wife trips in the yard and breaks her wrist? Better hope you were at work, if a nurse files a report about it.

Decorum and respect for the host's blog prevents me from ascribing the suitable appellation to that little pantload, which best resembles what Bess Truman tried unsuccessfully for a lifetime to get Harry S to refer to as "manure".

Nurses and other health care professionals, as well as teachers, and pretty much anyone with a state-issued license to practice anything, are required to report injuries that are suspicious for domestic/elder/child abuse, not anything that "might" have been caused by that. I spend, on average between 36-72 hours a week in an ER, and I'd be on the phone 24/7/365 forever, because nearly everything might have been caused from personal violence. Except for reality, because people get injured all by themselves without any assistance whatsoever.

I have to have articulable cause for such suspicion, not the mere fact of an injury, nor mere wild suppositions. If you broke your wrist because you fell down, all that means to me is it sucks to be you. If, however, you also have circumfretial finger-shaped bruises and nail cuts in your forearm from where somebody probably jerked your wrist and broke it, stand the **** by, the authorities will be in momentarily to talk to you about it.

The difference between injury and abuse is yuuuuuge.
I get to use critical thinking and reasonable suspicion, if it appears warranted. The demeanor of the victim, the story of how it happened, the clinical facts versus the explanation, and the time of day are just some of dozens of facts I'll take into account, and must.
(Toddlers, for instance, don't break their femurs at 3AM because they were doing night parachute jumps off the house. Never happens.)

But please spare me lurid tales about how medical staff run around throwing the "abuser" penalty flag, like spider monkeys on crack.

Nothing could be further from the truth. But I've only been doing the exact job in question for 20 years, so I could have it wrong.
If somebody doesn't know what they're talking about, they should stay in their lane.

Mad Jack said...

Aesop this isn't about you, and it isn't about people who think like you do. This is about medical personnel who are rabid SJWs and see an opportunity to promote their current cause, while deliberately ruining someone's life in the process. They act as a Divine force of nature, righting perceived wrongs and taking vengeance while it's still hot as the hinges on the gates of hell.

It's also about authority figures who have made a mistake, and have too much pride to correct it. What people, particularly white males, should be doing is giving some thought as to what they'll do when they're falsely accused of a crime. Not all of us have Letterman's financial resources, and can powder off to a tropical paradise for a while.

Case in point, I wrote about Hudson, MI city manager Steve Hartsel in Hold the Onions, Please... and If you don't stop it.... Hartsel was falsely accused and it cost him over $75,000 to clear his name. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't have seventy-five large just laying around waiting for me to be falsely accused of a sex crime.

Aesop said...

Right, because why mess up a great narrative by not conflating what SJWs do with what actual medical professionals do 24/7/365.

Like I said, spare me the lurid suppositions about an entire class of people based on an argument from ignorance.
You've got a case against the whole profession?
Make it.

I've only got most of a quarter century inside the industry that was accused, by exactly the same sort of half-baked and half-witted innuendo you're decrying.

Try not to step in the steaming pile of irony.

You seem to miss the entire point: if I have a reasonable suspicion, based on actual articulable evidence, I have a mandatory duty to report the suspicion. In 20 years, I've done it exactly twice. I've seen it done maybe a baker's dozen times during that period, working with from 6-60 co-workers every night, and working 3-6 12 hour shifts a week, since the 1990s. I've also seen dozens of rape allegations by patients in that time, and all but two of them turned out to be total...manure.

Total number of times I've seen anyone anywhere in healthcare use their professional position to advocate as "medical personnel who are rabid SJWs" and go on an accusatory jihad against patient's family during that time period is exactly zero. It is, in short, about as frequent as lightning striking someone in the ER. I'm sure it must happen somewhere, and I've never worked in San Francisco, just two county union-employee hospitals who see more patients each in a year than actually live in the capitol of Califrutopianism.

Like I said, spare me the vague accusations.

When you look high and low, you might find one or two scattered cases, over decades, nationwide. Which hardly an epidemic makes.

The far bigger problem is HR departments at every company with more than 100 employees, including hospitals, who live and breathe this nonsense every day.
Not from bringing your injured family member to the hospital with a bona fide injury.

I'm in far greater danger of being accused of impropriety by dint of my actual job and duties than anyone from outside is in danger of being accused by anyone working here, for their relative coming into the hospital; ask me how I know.

The suggestion that there's a problem with any healthcare employees making unfounded mandated reports in this regard is patently ludicrous; it's looking for the single fly dropping in a trainload of sugar, and if anything, the metaphor overstates the frequency.

(By contrast, I can make a far easier case for needing tighter screening on medical licensure in general based on prosecuted criminal activity, or on general police misconduct - or as our bloghost could make a case for with regard to predatory clergy - not being able to swing a rhetorical dead cat without hitting a hundred stories of either situation in about 0.2 seconds of internet surfing. Number of cases of people in the medical professions ginning up an abuse case out of whole cloth or rabid rampant SJWism, OTOH, happen less frequently than military double Medal of Honor winners.)

You're free to prove me wrong, but that would require statistical data points, and I'm only leaning on a quarter century of direct experience in about 20 major hospitals amidst about 10% of the country during that time. It could, by bare statistical chance, be totally different in all the other 980 major hospitals and the other 90% of the country, and they've cleverly conspired to cover all that up and keep it completely out of the news. Like Elvis' abduction by space aliens, and Bigfoot walking through downtown Seattle twice a day.

So maybe we can go back to dumping the dirty bathwater without throwing out the baby, or coming up with imaginary examples that unfortunately don't exist in the real world. Just saying.

Your ball.