!["A" Defense Perspective on Sex Assault Cases
MAJ Mason S. Weiss (USA Retired)
www.thewritesofweiss.com
This presentation is not endorsed by DoD and does not represent the views of any military branch or agency
"Some people regard rape as so heinous an offense that they would not even consider
innocence as a defense.”
-Professor Alan Dershowitz
Is there ever a “perfect accused”? [What] can falsify the theory of guilt?
Major Mason S. Weiss, Defending the Indefensible? The Increasingly Difficult Job of
Defending Soldiers Accused of Sexual Assault.(29 Feb 2016)
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2740061](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/defenseperspectiveonsexassault-twowsample-190109161103/85/Defense-perspective-on-sex-assault-twow-sample-1-320.jpg)
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Defense perspective on sex assault twow (sample)
- 1. "A" Defense Perspective on Sex Assault Cases MAJ Mason S. Weiss (USA Retired) www.thewritesofweiss.com This presentation is not endorsed by DoD and does not represent the views of any military branch or agency "Some people regard rape as so heinous an offense that they would not even consider innocence as a defense.” -Professor Alan Dershowitz Is there ever a “perfect accused”? [What] can falsify the theory of guilt? Major Mason S. Weiss, Defending the Indefensible? The Increasingly Difficult Job of Defending Soldiers Accused of Sexual Assault.(29 Feb 2016) http://ssrn.com/abstract=2740061
- 2. "A" Defense Perspective on Sex Assault Cases MAJ Mason S. Weiss (USA Retired) www.thewritesofweiss.com This presentation is not endorsed by DoD and does not represent the views of any military branch or agency Continued
Editor's Notes
- •As a General Officer jokingly told us at my first TDS conference, "we have the 'highest class' of criminals in the world." Any service-member accused of any crime deserves the best defense possible and all the protections of the law!! Stop taking away their rights to present a defense!!! •Fuzzy math, junk statistics, group think, etc. = lazy thinking with bad outcomes! -For college students, the number of sexual assaults is 6.1 /1000 not 1/5! And that number is 1.2 times higher than for nonstudents!!! http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsavcaf9513.pdf Articles Critical of Dr. David Lisak’s research and conclusions: http://reason.com/archives/2015/07/28/campus-rape-statistics-lisak-problem http://reason.com/blog/2015/07/28/campus-rape-stats-lisak-study-wrong -False rape reports—only 5%? What about rape allegations made between 1800 – 1970 by white women against black men? Were only 5% of those allegations false? What about ones made in the deep south? Better yet, would you go home with someone if they told you at the bar, "You know, there's a 2-10% chance I will falsely accuse you of rape?" …..”hey, relax, it’s just 2-10% ….there’s a 90-98% chance we’ll just have a great time tonight and I won’t falsely accuse you….so…you ready to go home now?” -DoD's "surveys" on sexual assault are nonsense and have been debunked as entirely non-scientific. See, e.g., Lindsay L. Rodman, Op.-Ed., The Pentagon’s Bad Math on Sexual Assault, WALL ST. J., May 19, 2013, § A, available at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323582904578484941173658754.html (critiquing statistics regarding the prevalence of unwanted sexual contact in the military because DoD statistics are based on a relatively small number of surveys received which are more likely to have been completed by victims of unwanted sexual assault). •Yes, Virginia, some people love being “victims” the attention it gives them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binjamin_Wilkomirski, Binjamin Wilkomirski was a name which Bruno Dössekker (born Bruno Grosjean in 1941) adopted in his constructed identity as a Holocaust survivor and published author. His 1995 fictional memoirs, published in English as Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood, were debunked at the end of the 1990s by a Swiss journalist. Oh, and aren't the sexes equal? Men and women both lie, and lots of people lie about sex also. •Is sexual assault “special” or not?, i.e., stop with the analogy about why we don't suspect someone who says they got mugged on the street might be lying but we do suspect that alleged rape victims might be lying. The answer is simple: people do actually have sex with people they just met—it happens every day of the week—but people don't usually just give their money away to strangers who come up to them at night when they're at the ATM machine!!!!! •”The Invisible War” is about as objective as a Michael Moore or Leni Riefenstahl movie. Nowhere in the movie does it interview an alleged perpetrator, defense counsel, prosecutor from one of the cases, or commander of any of the "victims" it portrays. What if I made a movie featuring 10 service-members (probably all men), who were accused of sexual assault, had their cases go to Article 32 hearings where the IO recommended dismissing the charges, but the cases got referred anyway—and the men got found not guilty at trial? What would that movie prove? Should we show that movie at SHARP training from now on? See the actual verbatim trial testimony of former Marine Lieutenant Ariana Klay, http://www.farajlaw.com/documents/Klay-s-Trial-Testimony.pdf See also: http://www.caaflog.com/2012/07/11/invisible-war-uninformed-dishonest-or-both/ and http://www.caaflog.com/2012/08/16/the-invisible-war-uninformed-dishonest-or-both-part-ii-2/ •”This possibility became reality during a recent sexual assault case I tried. The pressure felt by the special court-martial convening authority was evinced in the push note that accompanied his referral recommendation. He clearly recognized the weakness of the case (late reporting, no forensic evidence, alleged victim with a very poor character for truthfulness, etc.) and the likelihood of acquittal, but he wrote that the Air Force “owed” her a court-martial. His thinking, as should be obvious to anyone familiar with the basic precepts of criminal law, was completely off-base. The military justice system owes society justice and the accused due process; it does not “owe” an accuser a court-martial. This convening authority’s statement is nonsensical from a military justice perspective but understandable from a services or treatment perspective—the problem is that the note was written in a military justice context.” http://www.afjag.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-141126-035.pdf In yet another strange irony, the disgraced writer, Sabrina Rubin-Erdely, had also previously written an article for the same publication about the alleged rape of U.S. Navy Sailor. The Sailor she wrote about allegedly claimed that several Soldiers sexually assaulted her. She alleged this after she herself got arrested for driving while intoxicated. Sabrina Rubin-Erdely, The Rape of Petty Officer Blumer: Inside the military's culture of sex abuse, denial and cover-up, ROLLING STONE (Feb 14. 2013), http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-rape-of-petty-officer-blumer-20130214; See also Leon H. Wolf, Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s OTHER Possibly Fake Rape Story, RED STATE (Apr. 7, 2015, 4:30pm), http://www.redstate.com/2015/04/07/sabrina-rubin-erdelys-possibly-fake-rape-story/ (“The narrative in each case is used to advance the theory that the institution in question (college administrators in the UVA case, military command in the Blumer case) is indifferent to the problem of systemic sexual assault occurring right under their noses. In both cases, the stories read suspiciously as though Ms. Erdely arrived at her conclusion before writing her story, and simply set out to find the first person who would constitute a credible vehicle for the narrative she wanted to create, without regard to the factual accuracy of her story”). Even more curious is that the Sailor, Rebecca Blumer was a named plaintiff in the lawsuit filed by attorney Susan Burke against the Secretary of Defense. Other co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit included several alleged victims portrayed in The Invisible War.