To be worried about the Ched Evans threads on here

[corkysgran]

Sorry but this does seem like a witchunt to me. Many of the posters (who have signed the petition) obviously have little knowledge of the case. At one point a poster said Sports Direct would withdraw sponsorship if Evans was NOT signed and immediately others were vowing to boycott. Laughable and shows the level of thought before clicking. Online justice and the court of public opinion, not for me. As for expecting football, an industry corrupt from the very top (Sepp Blatter) and inherently sexist, to show any moral stance, get real.

That article is utterly disgusting in its assumptions, ilovesooty .

It also implies that he has a 70% chance of having his conviction overturned, which is not the case. Around 3% of cases get put forward for appeal (assuming they can show there is significant new evidence, and CE has already applied twice and been told no) and of that 3%, around 70% might be successful.

I'm not happy to pay for him to sit around watching Jeremy Kyle all day.

amicissimma, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be eligible for benefits. He was, after all, earning £20k per week at one point.

He has also got a guaranteed job with his future FIL's business, plus he learned a trade in prison. I'm not worried he'll languish on the dole.

Points taken re the article. I suppose I was thinking from a viewpoint of being fully aware that the people quoted have no credibility and an awareness of how unlikely it is that any review - even if it happens- would be unlikely to result in any conviction being overturned.
I can now see how it might have looked to someone following the case less closely but my initial reaction was relief that no club is going to see signing him as a viable proposition.

ithoughtofitfirst the giving of consent and remembering the act are separate cognitive/neurological episodes. (And there is expert testimony to that effect in the application for leave to appeal in CE's case.) The fact is, a person can give consent very very drunk. I know I have. That may well be a consent she would not give sober. Still consent. Equally a person might be drunk - not falling down so - and unable to give consent. Alcohol affects us all differently, each of us differently on different occasions, and drunkenness is not linear or predictable.

So there's no way a jury can know what cognitive state the complainant was in, though they will hear expert's opinions on it. They make an educated guess based on what else they know of what was going on, heavily informed by their own prejudice.

Don't forget too, that rape is a two part crime. You need to stay focused on reasonable belief in consent, rather than consent alone. If the complainant is not in fact consenting but the defendant reasonably believes that he or she is, then it is not rape.

Who the fuck is Julia Hartley- Brewer? she sounds vile. I can't watch QT, I've decided, if I'm going to make it to 40 without having a stroke.

Have googled. She's certainly fond of spouting this particular view. No doubt her years at the Express really cemented her pro women, lefty politics

www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/radio-presenter-julia-hartley-brewer-wades-4437737

I just meant that some people, that I've spoken to in RL, are focusing on her walking around and being seemingly copus mentis in the time leading up to entering the hotel are of the opinion that she wasn't that drunk therefore can remember and is therefore lying.

Which I think is logic I don't agree with. I should add.

Well none of us can know, I guess is my point. (And I wasn't disagreeing with you, just trying to draw out the argument.) Drunkenness sometimes results in memory loss, sometimes doesn't, and memory loss doesn't imply a lack of consent. You can be shit faced, walk into a takeaway, scoff a kebab, go home, and have no recollection when you find the box. On some level, sex is the same way (stripping away the direct and indirect pressure that women are subject to, which the criminal law cannot speak to, consent can be very casually given). I don't subscribe to the idea that the complainant in the Ched Evans case will even be sure herself (about the consent) - why would a concept we find so difficult to disentangle, not also be problematic for ourselves? Did she, in drunken confusion, say the word 'yes', or similar? she likely doesn't know.

But I also don't think that that matters as much as people think it does (not not at all, just not as much), because it maintains the focus on the complainant's state of body and mind, to the exclusion of all else. An all too brief route back to victim blaming. I think instead that we should emphasise a culture in which people initiating sex are responsible for their choice of partner. I think these are the two halves of the compact that the current definition of rape is trying to speak to, however inadequately, and I'm glad that the jury found against Ched Evans, because he was utterly, utterly reckless to the possibility that he was committing rape and that is in fact the basis on which the crime is committed. Something that most people in this country don't seem to understand.

No I absolutely agree with you. I don't think I made my point very well.

And in any case she didn't even go to the hotel with Evans but with his co defendant which made it even less credible that she consented to sex with him.

Don't forget drunk enough to squat in a doorway to urinate and collapse on the floor of the kebab shop.

However drunk she was though the jury seemingly felt they had to acquit CM as she did go to the hotel with him. Evans had no such defence.

If she was drunk enough to be described as 'sick' by CM, she was not in a fit state to be having or consenting to sex, imo.

But remind yourself that it is possible for the jury to find that she possibly wasn't in a state to consent BUT that the defendant had a reasonable belief in consent. And none of the evidential presumptions against reasonable belief (which include being asleep or unconscious but don't include voluntary intoxication) were present.

Since CM was acquitted and CE convicted the jury may well have reached that conclusion. It is less likely that they reached the conclusion that she was able to consent to CM and unable to consent to CE when the intercourse was sequential, she was conscious (because she performed oral sex on CE), and so they would be speculating about a change in her cognitive impairment over a very short period.

I mean, it's all speculation, but I would put money on CM being assumed to have reasonable belief. (The other option for acquittal being the jury was certain that she gave her consent.)

Since she has no memory after 3am according to the court transcript, she presumably did not testify that she consented or didn't.

Oh my mistake, CE performed oral sex on complainant, not the other way round. So she may well have been unconscious at that point. Only his word to say she wasn't.

Let's hope that Mr Burrough, the idiot night porter, is no longer in a job that involves handing out keys to hotel rooms.

From the Court of Appeal refusal of leave to appeal:

19. In grounds of appeal the first issue is the suggestion that the verdicts reached by the jury were inconsistent. Mr Fish QC, on the applicant's behalf, submitted that if the jury acquitted McDonald, there could be no sensible basis on which they could convict the applicant. We noted in argument that it was not alleged that McDonald was a party to the rape of the complainant by the applicant. The verdict was not related to that count; he was acquitted of raping her himself. We also note that in his sentencing remarks the judge was satisfied that the complainant lacked the capacity to consent to sexual activity. That was simply his view; he would not know how the jury had reached its own decision, but we must respect his analysis. But however it is examined, and assuming that he was wrong about the basis on which the jury reached its conclusion, we find nothing illogical or inconsistent about the verdicts. The jury was directed in unequivocal, clear terms as follows: "When you come back .... you will be asked to return separate verdicts in respect of each of the two defendants. Accordingly, when you retire you must consider the case, that is to say the evidence for and against each of the two defendants separately. Whilst there is a considerable overlap in that evidence, the evidence is not identical, and whilst your verdicts may very well be the same in the case, they might be different. The important thing for you to remember is your approach to the case for and against the defendants must be considered separately."

20. Given that direction, it was open to the jury to convict both defendants, to acquit both defendants, or to convict one and not the other defendant. That was the point of a joint trial in which separate verdicts were to be returned. It was open to the jury to consider, as it seems to us, that even if the complainant did not, in fact, consent to sexual intercourse with either of the two men, that in the light of his part in what happened the meeting in the street and so on McDonald may reasonably have believed that the complainant had consented to sexual activity with him, and at the same time concluded that the applicant knew perfectly well that she had not consented to sexual activity with him (the applicant). The circumstances in which each of the two men came to be involved in the sexual activity was quite different; so indeed were the circumstances in which they left her. These seem to us to be matters entirely open to the jury. There is no inconsistency.

I mean, the analysis is impeccable, it's difficult to see what grounds for appeal would be