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i think he's gone past that point already by claiming he knew the men were both acting in perfectly good faith.
Accused rapist Ched Evans to be released from prison
- Thread starter Bahnhof Strasse
- Start date
i think he's gone past that point already by claiming he knew the men were both acting in perfectly good faith.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
what?
these were all consenting adults within a few years age of each other.
Have you never had drunken sex with someone then not been entirely sure in the morning how you'd both ended up in bed with each other?
I'm not saying the guy here wasn't a sleazy twat, nor defending what he actually did, but the point of law on which he was convicted is dodgy as fuck IMO.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
where have I said that?
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
I've never had sex with a drunken woman that a friend of mine procured for the evening. One of those adults was not consenting as she was judged too drunk to give consent. Just as a 14 year old girl would be judged too young to give consent.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
nope, my argument is that consent should be consent, and the bar that's been set in this case for how drunk someone must be to be judged as not being capable of giving consent seems to be far too low.I think the lesson we can all take away from this is that men need more protection from rape allegations.
If someone's capable of walking, holding a conversation etc then how the fuck is someone supposed to judge that legally speaking they're not fit to give their consent to have sex with you?
In this case they seem to have decided that 2.5 times the drink driving limit was too drunk, which is what they estimated her alcohol levels at, despite her not actually testing positive for alcohol when she went to the police station later that day. That level of drunkeness is a pretty standard friday / saturday night session for a lot of people, so what are we saying, that none of them should ever consider having sex with anyone they meet while out, as neither of them are in a fit state to legally consent to have sex with each other?
I know if I had genuinely been so twatted that I was incapable of making that sort of decision at 4am, then I'd still have been well over the limit the next afternoon.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
how drunk would someone need to be before you would judge them as being too drunk to consent?
don;t forget that the other guy involved also got charged and prosecuted here, so it's not just about whether Ched was right to be a sleazy fuck and jump in after his mate.
A 14 year old girl is an absolute, defined clearly in law as being illegal, someone being incapacited by alcohol isn't absolute, it's a judgement call, and in this case they seem to have judged it at a level that would make millions of people a year rapists for regularly having sex with each other in similar states of inebriation.
We're talking the equivalent of 5-6 pints of stella here ffs if we're talking 2.5 times the drink drive limit, who hasn't had sex with someone when they or the other person or both has been that pissed?
free spirit
more tea vicar?
so I haven't said that then toggle.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Setting aside your desire to change the law to make rape conviction harder, what information are you basing your assertions on? How do you know, (better than the jury), what state of intoxication the victim was in at the point that the convicted man raped her?
free spirit
more tea vicar?
the reports and court transcripts give an estimate of 2.5 times the drink drive limit.
for someone like me the drink drive limit is around 2 pints of stella, so 2.5 times that is 5 pints for me, which is nowt really in the grand scheme of things.
so yes I'm questioning the concept that someone who's at that relatively mild level of drunkeness should be judged as being unfit to give their consent.
I'll see if I can find the reference for that.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
I think people should only be convicted of rape if they're actually raped someone.
If the other person is consenting, then in my book it isn't rape, at least if they're not completely paralytic.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
does she look paralytic to you in that video?
are you saying that all the people who pull when out on the piss should be deemed as being rapists if the girl was more than 2.5 times the drink drive limit and therefore incapable of legally giving their consent? Or is it just if she can't remember what happened in the morning, not that it should be, as if she was too pissed to give consent then she was too pissed to give consent even if she can remember consenting.
That's a hell of a lot of rapists running around raping women every friday and saturday night in every city and town in the country.
It was always a shit law, and this case seems to have been a particularly shit interpretation of that law if it's setting the bar that low for intoxification leading to someone being judged as being incapable of giving their consent.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
If someone of legal age is consenting then it shouldn't be rape is what I'm saying.
This prosecution wasn't based on her not consenting, it was based on her allegedly being too drunk to consent legally, something that only became law in 2003, and has minimal case law so far to determine what level of drunkeness is too drunk.
If this is the level at which the bar is to be set then it is far too low IMO.
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
What level should it be? 5 times over the drink-drive limit? 10 times?
free spirit
more tea vicar?
how do you think the jury made that judgement?
by watching that cctv video, taking account of what the receptionist said, and assessing how many units she'd drunk... but probably also taking into account the fact that she'd lost her memory of the situation.
but you know, if you want to judge me on this while at the same time not bothering to check the evidence for yourself, i guess that;s your call.
ok don;t watch the video, just think about what 2.5 times the drink drive limit means, it's fuck all relatively speaking, even she was saying that she usually drank more than that
It isn't 'not bothering'. I don't want to watch the build up to an actual rape. If I were on the jury and asked to do such a thing, I'd feel pretty uncomfortable but do it, because that's what's being presented as part of the evidence. For an argument on a message board? Fuck that. And fuck your 'not bothering'.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
I don't know exactly, but not at a level that's well below the level that a large proportion of people who're out drinking on a weekend would consider to be fairly normal.
I'm sure I've drunk with both of you at well over that level and still held relatively rational conversations, and managed to make it back on a train to Leeds afterwards, that's not paralytic levels, and she's not even close to paralytic in the cctv footage.
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
So if you'd been a juror on this case, you'd have found him not guilty? What evidence would you have needed to find him guilty?
free spirit
more tea vicar?
here's the thing. She doesn't know if she was raped or consented as she can't remember it. She didn't say she;d been raped in court, or to the police, she said she couldn't remember.
The police told her she'd been raped because she couldn't remember what had happened and therefore must have been too pissed to give her consent under the 2003 legislation, and the police charged the footballers on that basis.
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
Doesn't that in itself tell you anything about her state of drunkenness at the time?
free spirit
more tea vicar?
if the only evidence against him was her level of drunkeness, and his own police statements where he admitted having consensual sex with her, and I saw that cctv footage, and was told how much she'd drunk in the night, then I doubt I'd have convicted him of rape on the basis of her being too drunk to consent.
Or at least I doubt I would have unless directed that there was previous case law that dictated that this level of drunkeness was too drunk. Juries don't have entirely free will on this, they're directed by judges, and the lawyers as to what they can and can't take into account.
ffs we used to dj and derig club nights while as pissed as that, then go back and carry on drinking for another day or so.
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free spirit
more tea vicar?
it tells me little about how drunk she would actually have seemed at the time.
but your post gives a good indication of how the jury would probably have viewed that, it's one of the points that the defence wanted to bring in an expert opinion on in the appeal they were denied.
people can be entirely lucid, walking around fine, dancing, holding conversations etc but then in the morning they can't remember anything about that period. It doesn't really indicate that anyone should have necessarily automatically thought that she was far too drunk to be capable of consenting at the time.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
I've just checked the legislation itself, and the basis for this prosecution isn't even outlined in the legislation itself, it seems to be based on case law based on judgement of what constitutes 'having the capacity to make that choice'
The original legislation specifies that it would be rape if the person were asleep, unconscious, had been given drugs / alcohol without their consent that incapacitated them etc but nothing at all about the person having voluntarily got themselves drunk and therefore being incapable of giving their consent.
So despite the legislation clearly defining 6 situations in which the person wouldn't be deemed as being capable of giving their consent, the courts seem to have come up with their own additional reason that wasn't in the original legislation based on their judgemet of what constitutes 'having the capacity to make that choice'.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/pdfs/ukpga_20030042_en.pdf
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/pdfs/ukpga_20030042_en.pdf
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/pdfs/ukpga_20030042_en.pdf
which is presumably why lots of people seem to have assumed she must have been passed out, as that would have been the situation within the original legislation in which this would have classed as rape, not being a bit pissed but essentially with it.
As far as I can tell, the judge in this case based his guidance to the jury on the CPS guidance, which itself references the case R v Bree 2007, which went to the court of appeal, where the appeal court judges actually declined to define specifically what should constitute someone being too drunk to consent, instead giving broad guidance similar to that given by the judge in this case, and the CPS. The odd thing being that in that case the person involved was acquitted.
So I think I may well be right that this case here actually is the first case to set the precedent with a conviction based on that appeal court judgement, or one of the first.
So if you lot would actually call off the dogs for a minute you might actually consider that this isn't exactly a standard cut and dried rape case, it's either the first of its kind to be found guilty on this basis, or one of the first, and it's based on appeal court judgements of what the word 'capacity' should mean rather than anything that was actually debated and agreed in parliament on the subject.
Surely if parliament had intended for this to be the situation then they would have added in a 7th paragraph to section 75 (2) which specified that a person who was under the incapacitated through drink or drugs they'd taken themselves voluntarily would also be considered to be incapable of consenting.
Instead parliament left it as being someone who was actually passed out, or had been spiked, but a few appeal court judges determined that this wasn't sufficient and added in an extra classification themselves.
The original legislation specifies that it would be rape if the person were asleep, unconscious, had been given drugs / alcohol without their consent that incapacitated them etc but nothing at all about the person having voluntarily got themselves drunk and therefore being incapable of giving their consent.
So despite the legislation clearly defining 6 situations in which the person wouldn't be deemed as being capable of giving their consent, the courts seem to have come up with their own additional reason that wasn't in the original legislation based on their judgemet of what constitutes 'having the capacity to make that choice'.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/pdfs/ukpga_20030042_en.pdf
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/pdfs/ukpga_20030042_en.pdf
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/pdfs/ukpga_20030042_en.pdf
which is presumably why lots of people seem to have assumed she must have been passed out, as that would have been the situation within the original legislation in which this would have classed as rape, not being a bit pissed but essentially with it.
As far as I can tell, the judge in this case based his guidance to the jury on the CPS guidance, which itself references the case R v Bree 2007, which went to the court of appeal, where the appeal court judges actually declined to define specifically what should constitute someone being too drunk to consent, instead giving broad guidance similar to that given by the judge in this case, and the CPS. The odd thing being that in that case the person involved was acquitted.
So I think I may well be right that this case here actually is the first case to set the precedent with a conviction based on that appeal court judgement, or one of the first.
So if you lot would actually call off the dogs for a minute you might actually consider that this isn't exactly a standard cut and dried rape case, it's either the first of its kind to be found guilty on this basis, or one of the first, and it's based on appeal court judgements of what the word 'capacity' should mean rather than anything that was actually debated and agreed in parliament on the subject.
Surely if parliament had intended for this to be the situation then they would have added in a 7th paragraph to section 75 (2) which specified that a person who was under the incapacitated through drink or drugs they'd taken themselves voluntarily would also be considered to be incapable of consenting.
Instead parliament left it as being someone who was actually passed out, or had been spiked, but a few appeal court judges determined that this wasn't sufficient and added in an extra classification themselves.
SpineyNorman
Inappropriate content removed
Free spirit eh? Well I never
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