DA Blasts Overturned Rape Verdict, Says Panel Used 'Stone Age Standard of Proof of Resistance'
A district attorney in Pennsylvania is blasting a court that overturned a jury’s rape conviction for concluding that “a sexual-assault victim is not to be believed unless her injuries are severe enough to meet some Stone Age standard of proof of resistance.”
Calling the decision last month by a state superior court panel “ridiculous” and “the worst legal reasoning I have ever seen in an appellate court opinion,” Chester County DA Joseph Carroll said he will seek an en banc review of the unusual ruling that the evidence in the case did not support the conviction, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The case involved an 18-year-old West Chester University student who said three men she had invited into her dorm room held her down and sexually assaulted her at around 4:30 a.m. one morning in February 2009. Calling it “manifestly unreasonable” to conclude from the evidence that the woman did not consent, a three-judge panel said she didn’t cry out for help or try to escape during the alleged hour-long attack and called her physical injuries “minor.”
The trial judge had denied a defense motion for a new trial following the verdict, the newspaper says, but the superior court panel said his decision not to do so was erroneous.
Hat tip: The Crime Report.
