Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction
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@george-k said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
People can become so blindingly drunk that they have no recollection of anything happening, even though they appear to be functioning pretty normally.
I call that Friday Night at TNCR
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@george-k said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
Malcolm Gladwell has an interesting chapter on the "drunk rape" phenomenon.
People can become so blindingly drunk that they have no recollection of anything happening, even though they appear to be functioning pretty normally.
https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/alcohol-malcolm-gladwell?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1
n his new book, Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell uses the infamous Brock Turner incident as a case study in alcoholism and behavior. A brief recap: Turner, drunk, meets the anonymously-named Emily Doe, also drunk (and also, since the publication of Gladwell's book, no longer anonymous). They dance, they walk, they stumble, he sexually assaults the unconscious undergrad, then later blames the alcohol.
During the hearings, in fact, alcohol seemed to be the culprit of everything that went wrong, from Chanel Miller's blackout (it was the culprit) to Turner's masculine aggression (it wasn't). Alcohol is often invoked as the true villain in such circumstances, the insidious agent causing mayhem inside the mind of the attacker. Remove alcohol from the situation and a saint appears — or so the argument goes.
Is that really the case? It's true that alcohol changes you — literally. Your conception of "self" is transformed. After saying hello to your frontal lobes, the brain region that governs, among other things, motivation and attention, alcohol moseys over to the amygdala, the switchboard operator of your fight-flight-freeze mechanism. Turning it down a notch, you become disinhibited; the very conception of "I" must be reconsidered.>
Eventually, inevitably, alcohol — too much of it, anyway — seeps into your cerebellum. Balance and coordination are coopted. Finally, if you keep drinking, alcohol makes a final visit to your hippocampus, the brain region responsible for memories. Once you hit .08, your hippocampi (they're a pair) struggle to keep up. A bit more and your brain will never imprint the experience. "You," no longer in any sense the you you recognize, are no longer checked in.
In the case of the original article, it was established that the female had five shots of vodka before the accused approached her. He later took her home and she left willingly with him.
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It's not the woman committing the crime.
She's drunk. That's not a crime, and it's something most of us have done.
The man is the one committing the sexual assault. Saying it isn't rape solely because she's drunk is ridiculous.
If he throws her in the river and she drowns, is anybody going to seriously claim that he's innocent of murder?
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@doctor-phibes said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
It's not the woman committing the crime.
She's drunk. That's not a crime, and it's something most of us have done.
The man is the one committing the sexual assault. Saying it isn't rape solely because she's drunk is ridiculous.
So, you'd put the guy away for 25 years?
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@jolly said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
@doctor-phibes said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
It's not the woman committing the crime.
She's drunk. That's not a crime, and it's something most of us have done.
The man is the one committing the sexual assault. Saying it isn't rape solely because she's drunk is ridiculous.
So, you'd put the guy away for 25 years?
I didn't say that. No, I don't think I would.
I'd put him away for 25 years if he threw her in the river.
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@doctor-phibes said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
I'd put him away for 25 years if he threw her in the river.
Yeah but what if she was on fire?
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Take another hypothetical - if he found a stranger drunk in a shop doorway and raped her, then yes, that's 25 years.
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@doctor-phibes said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
@jolly said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
@doctor-phibes said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
It's not the woman committing the crime.
She's drunk. That's not a crime, and it's something most of us have done.
The man is the one committing the sexual assault. Saying it isn't rape solely because she's drunk is ridiculous.
So, you'd put the guy away for 25 years?
I didn't say that. No, I don't think I would.
I'd put him away for 25 years if he threw her in the river.
See, that's the problem...She's so blitzed, often we have only his or her word that the sex was consensual, if there isn't some physical evidence of assault.
And minor bruising and minor vaginal tears can occur in normal rough or vigorous sex.
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If you can't prove the rape, then you can't prove it. That's not the same as saying it's not rape if she's drunk.
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@jolly said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
She's so blitzed, often we have only his or her word that the sex was consensual, if there isn't some physical evidence of assault.
Then the suit gets dismissed, and everybody goes home, sadder but wiser.
Not everything is fixable.
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@doctor-phibes said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
If you can't prove the rape, then you can't prove it. That's not the same as saying it's not rape if she's drunk.
Agreed. He sounds guilty as hell though, yet that isn’t enough. A pig is a pig, I suspect his friends and family know the truth.
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Let's not forget that rape is first and foremost a violent physical assault against a person, always of a sexual nature and most often perpetrated by a male against a female. I would argue that sobriety or intoxication of the victim is not only peripheral and quite irrelevant to the violence of rape but peripheral to any form of wanton assault.
It would seem then from some of the logic - or illogic- expressed here, that it is not unlawful to beat the living daylights out of a any drunkard male or female by virtue of the fact that his or her state of intoxication provides others with an easy opportunity to assault them in a most violent manner.
I cannot see why on earth some folks are always looking for a rationale to mitigate the inexcusable criminal violence of rape.
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"She shouldn't have dressed like that"
"She shouldn't be out on her own late at night"
"She shouldn't have got drunk"
It's not the women committing a crime. We need to stop blaming them.
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@renauda said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
Let's not forget that rape is first and foremost a violent physical assault against a person, always of a sexual nature and most often perpetrated by a male against a female. I would argue that sobriety or intoxication of the victim is not peripheral to the violence of rape but peripheral to any form of wanton assault.
It would seem then from some of the logic - or illogic- expressed here, that it is not unlawful to beat the living daylights out of a any drunkard male or female by virtue of the fact that his or her state of intoxication provides others with an easy opportunity to assault them in a most violent manner.
I cannot see why on earth some folks are always looking for an rationale to mitigate the inexcusable criminal violence of rape.
First, you have to prove it is rape. When there are conflicting stories, how would you handle it?
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@doctor-phibes said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
"She shouldn't have dressed like that"
"She shouldn't be out on her own late at night"
"She shouldn't have got drunk"
It's not the women committing a crime. We need to stop blaming them.
I'm a practical man. If your teenage daughter wants to dress like a hooker, get drunk on her ass and sashay down the worst street in town at 3AM, I do think she takes some responsibility for what happens.
That's not to let the perpetrator of the crime go free, but let's not be an idiot about things....
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@renauda said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
Let's not forget that rape is first and foremost a violent physical assault against a person, always of a sexual nature and most often perpetrated by a male against a female. I would argue that sobriety or intoxication of the victim is not only peripheral and quite irrelevant to the violence of rape but peripheral to any form of wanton assault.
It would seem then from some of the logic - or illogic- expressed here, that it is not unlawful to beat the living daylights out of a any drunkard male or female by virtue of the fact that his or her state of intoxication provides others with an easy opportunity to assault them in a most violent manner.
I cannot see why on earth some folks are always looking for an rationale to mitigate the inexcusable criminal violence of rape.
So I don’t disagree what you wrote except you can’t just accuse someone of something, there has to be proof. My take is that really there was not enough proof. #cancelculture does not apply here. You can’t just “know”.
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How I would handle it is irrelevant. That is the mandate of elected officials and the criminal justice system to handle. In this regard I can only express my opinion. Suffice to say however, my personal bias will tend toward the victim of any attack.
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@loki said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
#cancelculture does not apply here. You can’t just “know”.
I am not a participant in the world of cancel culture. It is too reactionary for my liking. I am much further to the left.
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@jolly said in Minnesota Supreme Court Overturned Rape Conviction:
First, you have to prove it is rape. When there are conflicting stories, how would you handle it?
In that Minnesota case, the “rape” was already proven in the lower court. The lower court already resolved the issues surrounding facts, intent, and guilt. The Minnesota Supreme Court was making a point of law that says the statute as currently written somehow excludes cases where the victim got intoxicated without the aid of the perpetrator. Now, this is not a case of “conflicting stores” (the lower court resolved those already), but a matter of legal definitions.
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Can an intoxicated woman actually give consent? I'm not talking unconscious. I'm not talking so drunk she can barely stand up. I'm talking about the level where she shouldn't drive home, but can still carry on a conversation....