Stacey Dooley: Rape on trial

[HappyStep1]

Just finished watching this, seems to me the issue isn't police believing women and the CPS agreeing to prosecute but jurys not wanting to find these men guilty.

What is going on in our society that women are either not believed by jurys or is it juries don't believe the crime is serious?

Just having more prosecutions doesn't seem to be changing either behaviour or attitudes.

The "problem" is that a guilty verdict in a criminal trial requires proof "beyond reasonable doubt" and in rape cases there is rarely such proof. It's not enough to be 80% sure the defendent is guilty, if you're only 80% sure you have to go with not guilty.

Where a rape case is a Hanratty-style rape, i.e. the alleged-attacker claimed never to have met the victim and it was a case of mistaken identity, proof can be found (as in the Hanratty case, after several decades of people claiming he was wrongly hanged advances in forensics found his semen on the victim's clothing, which kind of sunk the argument he wasn't there).

The rape cases where both parties agree they had sex but the man claims it was consensual and the woman claims it wasn't are much harder to prove beyond reasonable doubt. "I didn't consent" isn't proof the victim didn't consent. People lie. Someone is definitely lying and it can be hard for a jury to know for certain who.

I think the divide between men siding with not guilty and women siding with guilty is that a woman thinks "I could be the victim" and a man thinks "I could be falsely accused". Either way these feelings should be irrelevant, but if you take the emotion out of it, you'd probably have to side with the defendent.

That Channel 4 programme was utter shite if you've ever sat on a jury. A jury can only discuss the case when every juror is present. There's no deliberating until all the evidence has been heard. If anyone is not abiding by the rules you would let the judge know. I watched part of an episode and found it such a distortion of what goes on that I couldn't watch it all.

I think all cases are very hard to decide when they're largely down to circumstantial evidence or simply who to believe, particularly if each party believes what they're saying, but obviously then there are nuances depending on the law relating to the offences being tried. I don't have a solution, but I do think that the treatment of women as a whole by society has to change and then this will filter through.

On the case I was on the jury for I honestly cannot tell you what some of the jurors actually believed because they never vocalised it in the jury room and we did a series of anonymous votes. We were allowed majority decisions at the direction of the judge. I very firmly believe the correct decisions were reached.

This is not 100 accurate.

It is not solely about evidence as frequently the fact sexual interaction occurred is not disputed. What is most often disputed is whether it was consensual. And on that regard belief is a key aspect.

It’s why “stranger rapes” have a higher conviction rate as the jury are more likely to believe a victim’s account that no, she did consent to have sex with the strange guy she just met as she was running through the park.

It just seems like where the two parties know each other juries are more likely to have reasonable doubt (and of course other factors come into play too.)

And of course there is the reality that sometimes in these situations both the accused and defendant vehemently believe their version of events.

It’s not just about people lying. I believe in rape cases it’s not merely whether the accuser consented but whether the defendant had a reasonable belief that the accuser consented. Which makes things harder for the jury.

Also men worrying about being “falsely accused” is always baffling to me given men are more likely to be sexually assaulted than they are falsely accused.

With non-stranger rape where the defence is consent, the standard of beyond reasonable doubt (or ‘can you be sure’ is what judges suggest now) is hard to satisfy.

The issue is that people have become very used to having ‘solid’ evidence of a crime in the form of CCTV (very unlikely in rape), DNA (irrelevant if consent is the issue) and some form of financial trail (again not relevant).

In rape, the main evidence is oral and circumstantial.

I was on a jury for a historical rape many years ago. We ended up convicting on an 11-1 majority. I was a second standout for a while, although I always thought he did it; my issue was I thought he was 80% likely to be guilty, as opposed to being sure. The standout was a computer programmer, probably on the spectrum. He was never going to be ‘sure’ as he thought very much in binary.

I don’t think there is an easy solution. Maybe guidance should include the idea that oral evidence, even in the technological era, can still be decisive. But no one wants innocent people going to jail and I suspect that, even those who write fervently on here that women should be believed, would think differently when they actually had to take the decision based purely on oral testimony.

I found what the defence lawyer said very interesting. If you are not certain they are guilty then you should say not guilty because it’s better for 9 guilty people to go free than 1 innocent person to go to prison.

But in a ‘he said, she said’ case which rape often is - you can never be certain of who is telling the truth? And to me that’s why so many get found not guilty or the case falls apart.