more recently:
"Talking to a solicitor and several barristers who defend ? and in one case also prosecutes ? in rape cases, they don?t indict the police for lack of empathy or investigative energy or the CPS for lazily prepared cases: they blame the juries.
Getting a man off a rape charge in a case that rests purely on whether consent was given is a doddle, one barrister told me. ?It?s all about spin. The jury is desperate for a reason to acquit. All you have to do is throw them a bone and they will seize it.? Establish the woman has been drinking, better still has taken drugs. Or while, since 1999, it is no longer admissible to use a woman?s sexual history against her, you can slip in that she had sex with her attacker ? if a former boyfriend ? as recently as a few weeks back. Or maybe she slept with another man the night of the assault. Or perhaps she didn?t report the rape straight away. ?Any delay and the defence council will jump on that like a rat up a drainpipe.?
This barrister has been astounded by the cases she has managed to get thrown out. Even when a client has clearly lied to police and changed his statement, even when a bunch of witnesses see the distressed victim minutes afterwards, even when a male care worker has the DNA of a mentally impaired teenage girl all over him, the jury still let the defendant walk free.
Another barrister, with 13 years at the Bar, explains the jury?s differing expectations of defendant and victim. ?Ideally the woman needs to come into open court looking traumatised.? Pre-recorded video evidence may be kinder to the victim but it distances the jury, makes them feel they are merely watching TV. ?She must not get belligerent or rude, however aggressive the barrister questioning her. Otherwise she will lose.?
And the defendant? ?If he shows up in a suit, sober, a half-decent, half-respectable human being, he will always get the benefit of the doubt.?
full Times article here.