I'm pretty sure that the real source of her "credibility problems" was some kind of outside pressure. Friends of DSK found someone who could lean on the prosecutors hard enough to get results.
Didn't she lie about the gang rape story being on her asylum application? In other words, she made up the gang rape story (which she told theatrically and emotionally), then admitted it was false, then said it was part of her asylum application and she wanted to be consistent with it... but it wasn't on her application.
At least that's what I thought I read in the NYT yesterday. If I read correctly I don't see how the prosecution had any chance at all at conviction.
That leak was bad, even by the standards of leakers.
To me, it now looks like somebody in the prosecutor's office was leaking to kill the case, to set up the motion for dismissal. This way it looks inevitable, rather than looking like there's one law for the rich and powerful, and one law for everyone else.
but it wasn't on her application.
I think she says she told people about it orally during the application, although it wasn't on her written application. But certainly, she seems to have said all sorts of untrue things in her life, if you put together the asylum application, taxes, and so on. And beyond a reasonable doubt is a very high standard -- I can't really judge the prosecution for dropping the case.
But everything that affected her story about the incident itself seems very very minor now. And DSK's version of the incident is laughable -- the chambermaid had consensual sex with him for free in the nine minutes before he went to lunch? Given that the physical evidence establishes sexual contact between them, if he didn't rape her she's either an incompetent hooker or Mata Hari, and both seem implausible.
Having read descriptions of the evidence in cases that I have witnessed, I certainly wouldnt give a plaintiff's verdict in a civil case without watching the witnesses actually testify.
Otherwise, we could just have each side submit written statements and see which written statement we believe.
I'm not sure that the prosecution did the wrong thing in dropping the case -- the witness's general credibility problems (the asylum application, tax and housing issues) might have made it implausible to get a conviction. ...
Getting a conviction is not of course the standard for a prosecutor. They have for example an obligation not to knowingly present perjured testimony to a jury and this makes a case dependent on a witness who they believe is likely to lie on the stand hard to ethically bring.
No it doesn't. You're right that there's an obligation not to present evidence that you know to be false, but there's no obligation at all not to rely on a witness whose general credibility you believe to be questionable.
5
... And DSK's version of the incident is laughable -- the chambermaid had consensual sex with him for free in the nine minutes before he went to lunch? ...
His version, as leaked by his lawyers, was that she expected to be paid and he stiffed her. Perhaps that would make her an incompetent whore but how many rich guys would stiff a whore in that situation? It seems like begging for disaster.
8
No it doesn't. You're right that there's an obligation not to present evidence that you know to be false, but there's no obligation at all not to rely on a witness whose general credibility you believe to be questionable.
So if you put them on the stand and they lie you have no obligation to correct the record?
I may have missed that -- did he (leaked by his lawyers) actually make the claim that she was hooking and he stiffed her? It's his most plausible possible story (although it requires her to be an incompetent for not getting the money first, and him to be not only an asshole but, as you say, insanely reckless), but I hadn't seen it sourced to him rather than third-party speculation about how 'consensual' could possibly make sense.
10: That's covered by "not knowingly presenting evidence you know to be false", rather than "generally questionable credibility". I think (and this hasn't come up for me personally) you're supposed to make a noisy withdrawal rather than actually correcting the record if one of your witnesses surprises you by testifying in a way you know is false on the stand. (Noisy withdrawal means "I can't continue to represent X" without an excuse or an explanation.)
Well, the prosecutor's job is to do justice, not to convict. That typically doesnt stop them from presenting cases that they know are weak. But, if they have a reasonable doubt as to whether he is guilty, they shouldnt bring the case to trial.
Unlike a civil lawyer, prosecutor should not be throwing the case up and seeing what happens.
12
That's covered by "not knowingly presenting evidence you know to be false", rather than "generally questionable credibility". I think (and this hasn't come up for me personally) you're supposed to make a noisy withdrawal rather than actually correcting the record if one of your witnesses surprises you by testifying in a way you know is false on the stand. (Noisy withdrawal means "I can't continue to represent X" without an excuse or an explanation.)
Well in 7 I didn't say the issue was her general credibility but rather whether she was likely to lie while testifying. And how does the prosecutor make a noisy withdrawal?
If they knowingly present false testimony and you know it, you have to first try to get them to correct it (ie call for a recess), then get out.
Everyone knows what "Judge, I have a conflict and I need to withdraw" means.
Huh. That doesn't work for prosecutors, does it -- they don't represent the complainant. I'm not dead sure what they're supposed to do if a witness unexpectedly lies, materially, to their certain knowledge, on the stand. Move to dismiss in the middle of the trial, maybe? But I don't know for sure.
14: Sure, if they thought she was going to lie on the stand about the incident, it'd be unethical to put her on. But their reasons for thinking that, if it is what they thought, seem weak to me.
13: I've never heard the reasonable doubt standard applied to the decision to prosecute. I would think that decision would rest somewhere between reasonable doubt and sufficient evidence, if believed by the jury, to sustain a conviction. I personally would have no qualms prosecuting this case, assuming evidence consistent with what's been reported in the press. (I also would not, if on a civil jury, put utterly dispositive weight on the demeanor of the witnesses. Bad people tend to be good liars, and how the objective evidence does or doesn't match up with the testimony seems much more probative than who looked nervous on the stand.)
16: Can't they just impeach the witness using whatever it is that causes them to know s/he is now lying? The ethical issue of not ratting your own client out isn't really present where the prosecutor has no atty/client relationship with the witness.
17
Sure, if they thought she was going to lie on the stand about the incident, it'd be unethical to put her on. But their reasons for thinking that, if it is what they thought, seem weak to me.
Their belief seems to be that she lies about everything. And I think they still have a problem if she lies while being cross examined.
16
Huh. That doesn't work for prosecutors, does it -- they don't represent the complainant. I'm not dead sure what they're supposed to do if a witness unexpectedly lies, materially, to their certain knowledge, on the stand. Move to dismiss in the middle of the trial, maybe? But I don't know for sure.
The problem here is whether "unexpectedly" is accurate. Obviously this is a situation prosecutors would rather not get into.
18
I've never heard the reasonable doubt standard applied to the decision to prosecute. ...
I certainly don't think a prosecutor should proceed if he has reasonable doubt about guilt.
20: If she lies while being cross-examined, they correct it on redirect. The real issue wrt specific testimony is the line between "I don't believe her" and "I know she is lying." The former is for a jury (or judge in a bench trial) to sort out, the latter a genuine ethical issue. If the prosecution genuinely believes she is lying about the rape having occurred, then yes, continuing to prosecute might be inappropriate. But, as LB said, the proferred reasons for believing this are weak.
22: That strikes me as the prosecution usurping the role of the jury.
I've never heard the reasonable doubt standard applied to the decision to prosecute
Definitely happens in my jurisdiction.
Do yourself a favor and don't read the comments to that TPM post. (I know, I know. Stupid of me.)
Their belief seems to be that she lies about everything.
Hard to say what they believe, but Saletan catches the prosecutors in some pretty obvious lying:
the complainant had a recorded conversation with her incarcerated fiancé, in which the potential for financial recovery in relation to the May 14, 2011 incident was mentioned.
As Saletan points out, the passive voice here is very revealing. Had it been the alleged victim who "mentioned" this, you can be sure they would have said so, especially after having been publicly contradicted on exactly this point.
25: And there's the rub. I don't think I am being unreasonably cynical to suspect that certain demographics benefit more than others under such an approach.
The link in 25 is a slightly different issue, whether the prosecutor feels they can obtain a conviction (which requires convincing a jury of guilt beyond a reasonable) as opposed to whether the prosecutor personally has reasonable doubt. Although for political reasons a prosecutor who personally has reasonable doubt might prefer to explain a decision not to prosecute in terms of the difficulty of obtaining a conviction.
I don't think I am being unreasonably cynical to suspect that certain demographics benefit more than others under such an approach.
That's true, but I think it's the DA who's going to benefit on this one by not having his position taken apart in open court.
24
That strikes me as the prosecution usurping the role of the jury.
So if the prosecutor in an arson murder case suspects the "expert" testimony that the fire was deliberately set is a bunch of voodoo science and there is a reasonable chance the fire was accidental, he can ethically present the case to a jury anyway and if as a result an innocent man is executed it isn't at all on the prosecutor? I am not convinced.
Why would the prosecution select an expert witness it believes to be full of crap?
Speaking of Saletan, I thought his recent piece on twin reduction
was also interesting and non-stupid. I remember deciding to read it with an eye toward savoring its awfulness, and being disappointed.
His discussion of baby/fetus terminology, and how it plays into this particular situation, was (to me at least) a genuine insight.
33
Why would the prosecution select an expert witness it believes to be full of crap?
Because they were the one who does arson investigations in that jurisdiction.
I personally would have no qualms prosecuting this case, assuming evidence consistent with what's been reported in the press. (I also would not, if on a civil jury, put utterly dispositive weight on the demeanor of the witnesses. Bad people tend to be good liars, and how the objective evidence does or doesn't match up with the testimony seems much more probative than who looked nervous on the stand.)
I mostly agree with you regarding not relying on the demeanor of witnesses. But, that happens with the factfinder all the time.
Judges and juries believe that they can tell who is lying. Unfortunately, perhaps they are mostly bringing in their own prejudices about who is telling the truth. (ie anchoring bias)
That strikes me as the prosecution usurping the role of the jury.
I disagree. I think that is exactly the prosecutions role. If they do not believe in their case beyond a reasonable doubt, given their knowledge of inadmissible evidence, then they shouldnt put the case on.
11
... but, as you say, insanely reckless), ...
Insanely reckless seems to be true regardless so doesn't weigh against this version.
33: It might be the only expert they had, or the only expert the local jurisdiction had, and politics/budgets precluded obtaining replacement/substitute experts. The prosecution has, notionally, all the mighty resources of the state, but sometimes those resources are crappy and stupid.
Regarding the OP, the context (sexual assault, rich man, poor black woman, etc.) complicates contemplating the issues, but I want to put in a good word for leaks: I am in favor of government leaks, even from prosecutors; apart from the value of information disclosed, however selectively, and strategy indicated, positively or negatively, the public often seems to need to be reminded that prosecutors aren't cassocked and cloistered celebrants of justice, entitled to silent respect.
OT: I understand that Slate is laying off Jack Shafer, its media critic, who, not to put too fine a point on it, is worth several times the combined weight in gold of the Culture Gabfest imbeciles and the little twits who write their blogs.
I agree with Di and with Flippanter that certain populations do not get the benefit of the doubt like DSK did.
38: I think it's pretty clear that for someone trying to protect a public reputation, stiffing a prostitute is more reckless than patronizing a prostitute and paying her. Both are more reckless, but they're not the same.
Argh. Both are reckless, not both are more reckless.
42 43
The alternative I am comparing to is raping a maid.
On the prosecutorial ethics issue. Using 'ethics' in the 'technical ethical rules' sense, I'm fairly sure there's no 'ethical' obligation even for a prosecutor to believe in the defendant's guilt. This shocked me in law school, I admit -- the situation that made it clear was the same prosecutor, prosecuting two participants in the same armed robbery/murder in two separate trials, and at each trial proceeding on the theory that that defendant was the sole shooter. I had a "But they can't do that" reaction all over the class, and my ethics professor said the prosecutor's not obliged to believe anything other than that the evidence they're presenting to the jury is true.
Turning to what the right thing to do is -- I think it's wrong for a prosecutor to go forward with a case if they don't believe at least more likely than not that the defendant is guilty. Holding them to a "believe beyond a reasonable doubt" standard, I don't know -- I don't know if that standard has much psychological meaning for someone with a professional relationship to a case.
45: One could argue that testing one's own positions to a "reasonable doubt" standard is worlds away from being held to such a standard by a panel of twelve or whatnot random citizens, and that, accordingly, a prosecutor attempting the former is obscuring his or her ethical obligations. I wonder what a survey of prosecutors would indicate about their go-to-trial thresholds.
45
... the situation that made it clear was the same prosecutor, prosecuting two participants in the same armed robbery/murder in two separate trials, and at each trial proceeding on the theory that that defendant was the sole shooter. ...
Were these prosecutions simultaneous? I would find that objectionable.
44: My point is that hiring and paying a prostitute, if that were an available version of the facts which it doesn't appear to be, would be more plausible than raping someone, partially because it is so much less reckless. Once his story (if this is the story) that he caused her to believe she'd get paid and then he didn't pay her, he loses that increased plausibility because it would be just about as reckless, reputationally, as raping her.
47: One after the other, IIRC, but I don't see that that changes it. And I agree that it's wrong, just not apparently barred by the applicable ethical rules.
45:
So you think there is no ethical issue for a prosecutor to believe in the innocence of the defendant, yet go forward because they believe that the evidence would convict beyond a reasonable doubt?
50: To quote 45: "I think it's wrong for a prosecutor to go forward with a case if they don't believe at least more likely than not that the defendant is guilty."
50: There is a rather large difference between affirmatively believing in the innocence of the accused and not believing in his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
51:
On what basis is the standard more likely?
Or were you asking about my beliefs about the literal 'ethical' rules binding prosecutors, which are as you describe them? I could be wrong about that -- I don't do criminal law professionally, so I haven't had occasion to look at them since law school, and if someone who knows wants to correct me, I stand corrected. But that's what I was taught in law school: prosecutors have to believe their own evidence, but there's no standard for believing their theory of the case or the defendant's guilt.
53: Seems appropriate to me. What's your basis for any other standard?
Prosecutors, at least occasionally, convict innocent people. On the rare occasions they get called on it, they tend to present themselves as officers of the court, and assign responsibility to the court/jury.
What is the standard?
I think LB was suggesting that the standard was whether truthful evidence was sufficient to convict.
But, a prosecutor's job is to do justice.
But, a prosecutor's job is to do justice.
A prosecutor's job is to follow a set of well-defined rules. There's nothing in those rules that is inconsistent with securing the conviction of an innocent person.
49
One after the other, IIRC, but I don't see that that changes it ...
It could, if in the process of the first prosection Perry Mason for the defense gets the real murderer to confess in open court I don't see a problem with a second prosecution.
My guess would be this was a cop-killing case where the prosection desperately wanted a death sentence and when they didn't get it for the first defendent went after it for the second. Which is a bit dubious. On the other hand I have never though the identity of the actual shooter when both were present (in a joint criminal enterprise) is all that important.
57: Which 'the standard' are you talking about? There are at least two under discussion -- what constitutes wrongdoing under the 'ethical' rules, or what you or I or any of us personally believes would be morally wrong of a prosecutor to do.
Perry Mason for the defense gets the real murderer to confess in open court
Fair enough -- if the prosecutor's opinion of the evidence had changed drastically between the two prosecutions, that'd be different. IIRC, that wasn't the case in the case I'm thinking of, and I'm certain that I was taught that it would have been 'ethically' fine even if simultaneous.
61: Can't say I have much trouble with simultaneous either -- either defendant then gets to use the other's prosecution to establish reasonable doubt...
55
Seems appropriate to me. What's your basis for any other standard?
That the standard for the prosecution should be the same as for the jury.
A prosecutor's job is to follow a set of well-defined rules. There's nothing in those rules that is inconsistent with securing the conviction of an innocent person.
That is not accurate. But, I think I have to concede that Di and LB are correct.
A prosecutor needs to
1. insure procedural justice
2. guilt determined by sufficient evidence
3. take measures to prevent the conviction of innocent persons.
I think that means probable cause belief aka more likely than not.
See Brady v. Maryland. ABA Formal opinions
So, in a he said/she said case such as this one, if they dont believe that she is telling the truth, they need to walk away.
I do agree with others above that many, many cases have been prosecuted with less evidence of guilt.
I am fine with the prosecutor dropping this case bc I think more prosecutors should drop cases. I would rather err on the side of not prosecuting than prosecuting.
63: Mostly, I don't think prosecutors need to apply a "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard to their own opinion of a case, because I don't think it's possible for them to do so in a way that's similar at all to what a juror would do -- the immersion in professional experience with crime seems as if it would wildly distort a prosecutor's sense of doubt (I think, depending on the person, plausibly in either direction. You could get someone slipping toward "Anyone who's been arrested is guilty, lock 'em all up" or "I've seen a whole lot, and been wrong a lot. I don't believe anything at all beyond a reasonable doubt these days.") More likely than not is a standard anyone can apply.
66: So, in a he said/she said case such as this one, if they dont believe that she is telling the truth, they need to walk away.
Sure. I just think their stated reasons for not believing her story are seriously weak.
The more likely standard is really "do you think they did it?"
I am ok with that. Pretty simple rule. If you think they didnt do it, you shouldnt go forward.
68:
I suspect that their reasons are "We have interviewed her and spent time around her, and we dont believe a single thing she says. She is dramatic and crazy."
70:
I am an idiot for not getting to that sooner.
71: I think that's probably the thinking, and I think it's stupid. (Might be a good enough reason not to prosecute, if they're convinced a jury wouldn't believe her. But I think it's a stupid reason not to believe this story.)
First, her story is simply facially much more plausible than his. Unpaid consensual sex, under the circumstances, seems laughable. If there's any evidence that she was working as a prostitute, that'd make the "he stiffed her" story plausible, but the only thing I've seen about that is the Post story sourced to the defense -- in the absence of that, the "he stiffed her" story is only slightly less unlikely.
Then, she told the story to the police immediately, seems to have been consistent (by my reading of what's come out) from that point on, including in the conversation with her fiancé. Her tactics are awful if this was a shakedown (honestly? If he didn't rape her, I'd almost find it easier to believe she was paid by his political enemies than that she was a freelance scam-artist.)
Generally dramatic and unreliable, fine, but people like that get raped too.
74:
Dont you think that they have a ton of experience dealing with crazy victims? It takes a lot when your average victim is fairly off.
Sure, there's always the second-guessing problem; the prosecutors know more about the case than I do. All I can do is form my opinions based on what I've seen.
75: I think my resistance to that theme here is that writing women off as "crazy" is a long-standing tradition, particularly women who complain about rape. The idea that she had a 9-minute consensual romp which she decided to call "rape" because she's "crazy" just doesn't sit well at all.
I forget what magazine it was that she gave an interview too, when she revealed her identity, but in that interview she said the person on the phone suggested the possibility of getting a payoff, but that she vehemently rejected the idea. What the prosecutors are saying now sounds very consistent with that story - the worst possible spin that could be put on such a conversation.
77:
I understand that concerned.
But, based on my experience in the last 20 years, I have found that prosecutors bend over backwards to believe rape victims. We even have very well-funded "Victim Witness Offices."
There could still be prejudice against women alleging rape, but my experience is that prosecutors' offices have the mindset to believe the alleged victims. I dont know these prosecutors so I cant comment on them, but I suspect that the prosecutors and investigators involved have a long history of helping victims, including batshit insane ones.
The system wants Caroline, the system wants there to be a way for "intelligent" and "hard working" and "church going" resourceful people to game the system. All of those words mean "taxpayers." It wants the kind of person who sticks with this tedious bureaucratic process even if it is all a lie; it doesn't want the person who doesn't bother to try to get legal. And, most importantly, when you establish the grift as based on the best "rape narrative", it therefore isn't about the most money. That's what you want to avoid, because Caroline has none of it, and MS13 has lots of it.
The Last Psychiatrist on a New Yorker story about immigration. Relevant to the question of why her rape story might skew from the actual story of her rape.
Personally, maybe I'm crazy, but I don't find the notion that "consensual" sex happened in that hotel room wildly implausible. I have no idea what happened, but a plausible, defense-friendly scenario to my mind would be: he comes out of the shower, naked, she's in the room, he makes a sleazy and lecherous move, like, approaching her and asking for sex but without using force, she goes along with it, perhaps expecting compensation or some kind of favor but without making that explicit, the act ends, there's a weird shuffling off, and she realizes that something weird and sleazy happens and reports it as a rape. And, she's apparently a habitual liar who has a history of fabricating rape stories.
I'm not at all saying that's what happened. I have no idea. It's also plausible that he raped her, and the evidence we've seen certainly doesn't "exonerate" DSK. But on the basis of facts I've seen to date (which isn't everything that's been made public, and which might be very, very different from what's presented at trial) plus serious credibility issues I probably wouldn't vote as a juror in her favor on a preponderance of the evidence standard, much less convict on a beyond a reasonable doubt standard.
Seriously? You find that scenario plausible?
Also, "habitual liar who has a history of fabricating rape stories"? You should read the linked Saletan piece, if you haven't.
she goes along with it, perhaps expecting compensation or some kind of favor but without making that explicit, the act ends, there's a weird shuffling off, and she realizes that something weird and sleazy happens and reports it as a rape.
Man. I just can't get to 'plausible' there. Straight up "This sounds like fun!" consensual for an nine-minute encounter with an old man she's never met before in the middle of her workday? Really implausible. Anything's possible, but implausible.
If there were evidence that she were working as a prostitute, that'd get me to doubtful, sure. But the 'Maybe she was kind of thinking she'd get paid -- she wasn't really a professional prostitute so as to know how to go about it, but went along with his advances in the belief she'd get something, and was mad enough when he didn't spontaneously pay her that she went to the cops' idea? I suppose there's no way to argue about what's rings plausible or not to you, but I don't see it.
Yes, that actually seems fairly plausible to me. I mean, I know folks who claim to have had consensual sex in somewhat similar situations that, while obviously sleazy, would be short of rape. And, as to her credibility, I'm just presenting the case as the defendant would -- I don't think it's a stretch to say that she has serious credibility issues, even if those are not determinative of whether or not a rape happened.
It's not so much "nine minutes of fun" but, "hey, this guy is here, he seems like he really wants this, he might be rich, why not." My guess would be that guys approach hotel maids in similar ways all the time, and that, while unusual, it's not that uncommon for hotel maids to go along.* I know that my ex had similar stories from working in Sun Valley as a chambermaid years ago, (not of consenting but of the constant approaches, and apparently sometimes the staff would go along). Whether or not this is really "consensual" sex is a tough question, but it's not really forcible rape.
*In some ways, this is even more depressing.
Short of some reason to believe this made has been in the habit of "going along" with such things, I still can't get to "plausible." My guess is that you might be right about sleazy rich guys behaving like pigs being not out-of-the-ordinary, but wrong that it's not uncommon for maids to "go along." (Also, "unusual, but not uncommon"? Cannot parse....)
while unusual, it's not that uncommon for hotel maids to go along.*... Whether or not this is really "consensual" sex is a tough question, but it's not really forcible rape.
Well, if they're going along under implicit threat of violence, that is really rape, whether or not the threat is realized.
If they're going along for money -- I don't know, I'm not in the situation and don't know anyone who works in a hotel. But while it seems like a perfectly plausible job for someone moonlighting as a prostitute in the sense of actually charging for it, interrupting your workday in the hopes that the guy might possibly come across with something good, who knows, sounds unlikely to me (and also not particularly consistent with going to the cops afterward. He ejaculated on her, and something about the encounter made her unhappy enough to go to the cops. She was raped makes sense. If there were evidence that she was a prostitute, and he didn't pay her, that would make sense. She was a vaguely dippy person who just couldn't get it together to say no when he approached her? What's the trigger that gets her to lie to the cops about him?)
What's the trigger that gets her to lie to the cops about him?
Shame? Confusion about whether or not what really happened was a rape? A history of abuse? A realization that, since she wasn't paid and didn't get anything from the incident, that she could shake the guy down? I mean, who knows, but sexual acts that aren't obtained by force or the threat of force (in which case, I agree with you,of course it's rape) can often produce odd behavior. Again, I'm not saying that's what happened, but who knows.
In any event, the DA's report dismissing the case (which is really worth reading in full, as opposed to Saletan's summary, and to my mind makes clear that the DA's office, which is of course used to dealing with liars, was convinced on the basis of some pretty good evidence that this person was a really excessive liar) says that she didn't immediately go to the cops; she first asked a supervisor a hypothetical question about whether it was OK for male guests to force themselves on employees, and then reported the incident only when her supervisor pressed her.
And, she's apparently a habitual liar who has a history of fabricating rape stories.
Doesn't "habitual" imply it's a personality problem verging on a psychological problem? Seems to me a false rape claim for asylum is pretty effing highly motivated.
91 was me, of course. And the prosecution's report is informative on the gang rape in Guinea issue, as well. Apparently, she didn't lie about the gang rape in her asylum application -- the gang rape wasn't mentioned in there at all, and she wasn't using it as a basis for seeking asylum.
Instead, she told prosecutors investigating the DSK case about the rape in Guinea voluntarily,and gave a detailed account including referring to her two year old daughter being present, etc., and actually (apparently) physically rolled around on the floor crying while describing the incident. Then, she admitted that she had fabricated the entire incident. Her excuse was that she had memorized a tape about a rape to use in the asylum application, but had decided not to use the story. At a minimum, that really is pretty bad credibility evidence.
92 -- right, but she didn't make the false rape claim as part of an asylum application. And apparently there were all sorts of other lies.
94: But were they in a context other than trying to keep her story straight? And the others are:
* Hiding income for low-income housing assistance purposes. Financial and probably very common - not pathological.
* The bank deposits. Saletan deals with that pretty well.
Any others?
Shame?
But not the kind that involves wanting to keep the incident a secret.
Confusion about whether or not what really happened was a rape?
Like, she thought he'd threatened her but she was mistaken? Seriously, I don't get this. I can see that kind of confusion in an acquaintance situation with drinking, but how do you get that confused in nine minutes?
A realization that, since she wasn't paid and didn't get anything from the incident, that she could shake the guy down?
Causing her to go to the cops rather than to, e.g., contact him and threaten to go to the cops unless paid off. Her route to a shakedown here is seriously unclear. It's not impossible that that's what she was thinking, but her actions don't suggest it, nor does her conversation with her fiancé.
I mean, who knows, but sexual acts that aren't obtained by force or the threat of force (in which case, I agree with you,of course it's rape) can often produce odd behavior.
You mean, non-rape sex generally can often produce odd behavior? I suppose, but I don't think it gets me to any specific beliefs about her.
I've been looking at the 8/22 Recommendation for Dismissal, which isn't exactly as you describe the report -- it says that she reported to supervisors first, but not that she had to be pressed to make the report, and doesn't mention (AFAICT) a hypothetical question. What are you looking at?
Seriously, just read the DA's report, instead of Saletan's conclusions from it. Link here. It's not just "keeping her story straight."
The Guinea rape story is really damning to her overall credibility. And the versions of the timing incident are completely incompatible. It's clearly not just a translation issue -- how, in one story, does she say she never went into a room, then, when confronted with some evidence, change a story and say that she spent minutes vacuuming a room, then change her story again? It's really a stretch to say that this is just someone with a problem speaking English, plus her English is apparently good. None of that demonstrates that she wasn't raped, but Saletan's summary is extremely tendentious and there really were some deep credibility problems.
97 to 95.
What are you looking at?
Page 12, 3/4 of the way down the page: "Rather than immediately telling her supervisor about the encounter with the defendant, the complainant asked the supervisor a hypothetical question about whether guests were allowed to force themselves on staff members, and reported the incident only when her supervisor pressed her." That apparently was her story in the June 28 statement, although she had a different story from May 14-June 28.
It's really a stretch to say that this is just someone with a problem speaking English, plus her English is apparently good.
I've read the document (on the hypothetical question bit, I was looking at their description of the event on page 6, which doesn't mention it. Missed it on page 12).
Obviously her English is imperfect, or she wouldn't be speaking through a translator. If you talk with people with limited English, nouns and verbs are easy, tenses and grammar are hard -- getting a sequence mangled seems perfectly plausible to me. Especially because if it were a lie, she'd be lying to someone she'd previously told an inconsistent story to, in a way that makes her look bad: that's not so much a lie, as lunacy.
Being so unstable that she's unable to tell a story straight even when it's in her own interest is possible, there are people like that, but it seems less likely to me than a translation fuckup.
On the "only when her supervisor pressed her" bit:
That apparently was her story in the June 28 statement, although she had a different story from May 14-June 28.
Are you really suggesting that that's a credibility-damaging inconsistency -- that on one occasion she said that she went to her supervisor and then to the cops, and on another she said that she went to her supervisor and then he talked her into going to the cops? Even calling that inconsistent seems bizarre to me.
Look, in the original version of the story, she says she immediately ran into the far end of the hallway, spat on the carpet, and remained there until she encountered her supervisor. She told this story from the day of the incident on to June 28, including to the Grand Jury.
Then, on June 28, she changed her story completely. Notably, this was after the defense had requested key card records. She then said she went into another room, Room 2820. She gave specific details about what she did in the room, including cleaning the room, including vacuuming the floor and cleaning the mirror. She then said she went back into DSK's room to finish cleaning it, and met her supervisor after going to get cleaning supplies. Prosecutors questioned her extensively about her story, and she provided the details.
Then, after key card records showed the June 28 story couldn't possibly be true, on July 27 she was reexamined by prosecutors. At that time, she said she went into Room 2820 only very briefly to retain cleaning supplies. When prosecutors asked how she could reconcile that with what she said on June 28, she denied ever having told them that she had cleaned room 2820, vacuumed it, cleaned the mirror, etc. But of course that doesn't make sense -- of course the prosecutors would have examined the details from the June 28 story carefully.
How is that a problem with being a non-native English speaker? She was recounting different versions of events through an interpreter. The versions are simply incompatible in whatever language you're using. In order to credit her story that this was some kind of translation problem, you would have to believe that the interpreter was literally just making things up, over a long interview with extensive questioning. Moreover, the prosecutors who obviously spent a lot of time with her thought that her English was excellent.
Again, none of this means that she wasn't raped. But the credibility problems are very real.
Are you really suggesting that that's a credibility-damaging inconsistency -- that on one occasion she said that she went to her supervisor and then to the cops, and on another she said that she went to her supervisor and then he talked her into going to the cops?
By itself, no. In connection with all of the other things listed in the report, sure.
In order to credit her story that this was some kind of translation problem, you would have to believe that the interpreter was literally just making things up, over a long interview with extensive questioning. Moreover, the prosecutors who obviously spent a lot of time with her thought that her English was excellent.
No. You'd have to believe that she told the translator about cleaning room 2820 first, then being raped, and having the translator switch the order of events. You could talk about the details of the cleaning a lot while maintaining confusion about which happened first.
Moreover, the prosecutors who obviously spent a lot of time with her thought that her English was excellent.
Not excellent enough that she didn't need a translator. If her English were really fluent, she'd have been speaking English to them directly.
By itself, no. In connection with all of the other things listed in the report, sure.
This, I just can't follow at all. Slightly different details in different accounts, when you're not even looking at her exact wording, damage her credibility?
I'm struck by the rhetoric in the motion about her "willingness to deny having made those statements to the very same prosecutors who had heard her make them on June 28." So far as I can tell, it's utterly undisputed that any statements made on June 28 were through an interpreter. Those prosecutors did not hear her make statements; they heard an interpreter interpret statements. They then say her claim of a mistranslation is not believable in light of extensive follow-up questioning -- but they do not describe the follow-up or explain why that follow up renders the claim of a mistranslation implausible. There's also no explanation of any motive to fabricate the June 28 account -- it was apparently demonstrably false (given electronic records of the key card swipes) and hurts rather than helps her story.
Are you guys seriously suggesting that her claim that the interpreter just made stuff up is credible?
No. You'd have to believe that she told the translator about cleaning room 2820 first, then being raped, and having the translator switch the order of events. You could talk about the details of the cleaning a lot while maintaining confusion about which happened first.
Huh? Why would this possibly have been a translation error? You don't think that the prosecutors who were trying to trace the facts of what happened right after an incident -- the whole point of the questioning, and the changed story, was to figure out what happened after the rape --wouldn't be concerned about chronology? You're theory is that in all of that questioning the interpreter just got confused about what happened before vs. after the rape? Why would prosecutors get the details about the cleaning incident if it was before the rape? Was the interpreter so bad that he could confuse the sequence of events to that extent? Remember, all of this evidence was only important to establish chronology.
Moreover, she later denied having made the statements about the cleaning of the room at all, even though the prosecutors had been in the same room with her.
You'd need to believe both that the interpreter was at an almost criminal level of incompetence, and that she had no idea whatsoever what was going on in English in the questioning, to believe her story. Not impossible, but extremely, extremely unlikely.
This, I just can't follow at all
You don't believe in cumulative evidence?
Those prosecutors did not hear her make statements; they heard an interpreter interpret statements.
Right. Statements in her own language that were completely inconsistent with the story that she'd told previously. Again, if the interpreter was criminally incompetent, maybe, but this seems quite unlikely. Particularly that she apparently had pretty good English and had corrected his statements in the past.
Heck, I could see that kind of confusion happening even without a translator. (Assume that the true story is that she cleaned 2820, then went into DSK's room where whatever happened happened, and then she went back into 2820 to grab stuff.)
Q: What did you do immediately after the event?
A: Went into 2820 to get my cleaning stuff.
Q: Did you clean 2820?
A: Yes. (meaning that she had cleaned it earlier)
Q: Describe what you did then.
A: (Still on topic from the last question) I vacuumed, and did the mirrors, and so forth and so on.
Q: So wait, let me get this straight -- you went into 2820 right after being raped?
A: Yes.
Q: And when you cleaned 2820 you did all this stuff?
A: Yes.
Q: But when you told us your story before, you didn't say anything about going into 2820?
A: That was wrong. (She thinks she's correcting an error about having ducked into 2820 for a second to get her stuff, they think she's admitting having lied to the grand jury about having spent an extended period of time cleaning 2820.)
Throw in a translator, and a miscommunication along the lines I'm speculating about seems very easy.
The prosecutors may have heard her make statements in her own language. Unless they speak that language, they do not know if those statements in her own language were completely inconsistent. They are relying on the interpreter's original interpretation.
Where are you getting that she later denied cleaning that room at all?
No one is suggesting the interpreter just made things up.
You don't believe in cumulative evidence?
Sure, but something that's not evidence at all doesn't turn into even weak evidence just because there's other evidence on the same topic. Telling the same story twice and including varying minor details isn't inconsistent at all.
It does feel strange licking (approvingly) William Saletan.
An incident like 104 (which is, of course, sloppy questioning) isn't what's described at all in the prosecution's report. The report describes what happens during the June 28 interview:
"In an interview conducted on June 28, 2011, in the presence of her lawyer, the complainant provided a materially different account of her actions immediately following the incident in the defendant's suite. At the outset of the interview, she admitted that she had been untruthful about this key point with prosecutors and had lied about it in her testimony before the grand jury. The complainant gave a new version of these events, stating that after leaving the defendant's room she had gone directly into another room (2820) to finish cleaning it. She gave specific details, saying that she had vaccumed the floor and cleaned the mirrors and other furniture in the room."
And it goes on from there. Of course the prosecutors were going to ask her in detail about these events and the chronology, and there's absolutely nothing in the report to suggest that there was any ambiguity that she was describing what happened after the event. Does somehow dealing with an interpreter mean that we can't distinguish something that happened before a rape from what happened afterwards? Did the interpreter not only screw up the chronology, but her statement that she went back into the other room to finish cleaning it, went back to DSK's suite to clean that room, and then went on? It's not completely impossible of course that there was sloppy questioning, but given the importance of the incident that's really weak sauce. It wouldn't just be some kind of language issue; it would be a complete failure to accurately tell the story of what happened. A total failure on the part of the questioning prosecutors, the interpreter, and the witness and her lawyer in correcting the statements.
She then denied having made the statements on June 28, even to the prosecutors who had been there.
The prosecutors may have heard her make statements in her own language. Unless they speak that language, they do not know if those statements in her own language were completely inconsistent. They are relying on the interpreter's original interpretation.
Sure. Do you think interpreters are so poor as to have been completely unable to distinguish what happened before vs. after a rape in a context like this?
I am with Halford.
I do not find it implausible that a maid in a 3000 dollar a night hotel might have sex with him thinking that she is going to get paid without it being explicitly mentioned.
Would it be shocking if a twenty something girl left a hotel bar to go up and have sex with a really rich old go after talking for only 15 mins? Is she expecting only sex or some other benefit??
I've tried not to think too much about the DSK thing, not simply because we'll never know much, but rather because we're all completely powerless to do anything in the world with that knowledge. But the discussions around it have really brought home how much our judicial institutions involve judgements about "credibility", judgements that I have very little faith in.
It reminds me, in a way, of the reactions I've sometimes had to AWB's stories of relationship horror. People really are mysterious, and act in mysterious ways, and it's frightening how much faith the institutions of society place in judgements about "oh, that doesn't make sense; no one would act that way." But of course, we can't not make those judgements, or at least, not without simply giving up on making authoritative decisions about wide areas of behavior.
Bleh.
Okay, but we've moved away from your contention that the only way it could have possibly happened is if the translator was just making lots of stuff up. Saying that it would have had to be sloppy questioning is fine -- you're absolutely right that it would have had to be. So there's a plausibility problem there.
Isn't there also a plausibility problem with the idea that she made up an elaborate false story, inconsistent with her prior, mostly true (in terms of her movements, leaving the rape aside. Her initial story left out the short detour to get her cleaning stuff, but other than that tracks the card-key evidence) and then denied ever having said it to the faces of the same people she'd said it in front of? That's not so much lying as it is a symptom of some sort of mental illness -- which isn't impossible, of course, there are mentally ill people out there. But it's not more obviously likely than sloppy questioning, to me.
(Your reliance on the tone of the prosecution's memo, rather than on its specific claims, seems strange to me -- obviously, the whole thing is written with the intent of calling her a big fat liar. But the fact that prosecution is calling her a big fat liar gets only so much weight; that the entire report is drafted in that tone doesn't make it weightier.)
Would it be shocking if a twenty something girl left a hotel bar to go up and have sex with a really rich old go after talking for only 15 mins?
It'd be surprising, certainly, although not impossible. And if she left the room complaining of having been raped, and saying that she was in the room for some other purpose, the fact that she'd only met the guy 15 minutes ago would tend to make me believe her.
In the absence of seeing her being interviewed, I am more inclined to fall back on my belief that prosecutors typically want to try these kind of cases. ie I dont find many prosecutors who want to dismiss charges unless the witness is really, really bad.
That view is tempered a little bc he is a rich famous guy. But, not much.
Im sticking with my theory that these experienced, zealous prosecutors saw her as a liar.
It'd be surprising, certainly, although not impossible. And if she left the room complaining of having been raped, and saying that she was in the room for some other purpose, the fact that she'd only met the guy 15 minutes ago would tend to make me believe her.
And i would tend to think that she hadnt gotten some other benefit. ie: he was an asshole after sex or he lead her to believe she might benefit from his wealth (trip/dinner/gifts) and then stiffed her. so to speak.
I do not find it implausible that a maid in a 3000 dollar a night hotel might have sex with him thinking that she is going to get paid without it being explicitly mentioned.
I don't know how plausible that is as an explanation of her behavior, but I'm amused at the idea that DSK was hurt and offended when she assumed she would be paid, since he had been sure that she was overcome by his sexual magnetism.
Actually I agree with 111.
People do crazy stuff all the time. Stuff that makes NO sense whatsoever. Spend a year as a prosecutor or a criminal defense lawyer or as a prosecutor. After that, you will have a pile of great stories of insane behavior by otherwise normal looking people.
116: I hope you've just gotten over-invested in this argument, or that I'm misunderstanding you.
115: If I were going to speculate as to what happened, assuming it wasn't behind the scenes rich-powerful-guy armtwisting (honestly, I don't know at all how to assess the likelihood of that) I'd think that the prosecution thought her general credibility (taxes, drug dealer boyfriend, Guinea rape story, all that shit, which is a real problem for the case) was bad enough that they didn't have a hope in front of a jury, but thought that dropping the case on those grounds alone would make them look bad, so they made her look worse than she was.
What really flipped me was the disappearing gold-digging phone call. Going from the leaked claim that she'd told the fiance she was in it for the money (and leaving out the consistent version of the rape in the call) to the passive-voice version that financial gain was discussed in the call looks very much like the prosecution's playing tricks.
To be clear: I am not suggesting that he did not rape her. I dont have the information to make a conclusion.
I am just suggesting that the statement "that is not plausible" is made from one's own naturally limited perspective of ordinary behavior.
Eh. I am not invested in any argument other than the one that judging cases by the facts reported in papers is a bad way to judge a case.
Two people meet in a bar. One young and pretty and the other old and rich. They go to his room. Is she going to his room because he is sooo attractive or because he is rich? Which is more likely?
The answer is you have no freaking idea unless you know the people.
120: Sure, but the fact that people do weird, weird shit sort of cancels out, doesn't it? People includes not only the complainant, but DSK, and the prosecutors.
(That is, generally, sort of the kind of thing I was thinking of when I said that 'beyond a reasonable doubt' might not be a standard that an experienced prosecutor would be able to believe anything by. If you're willing to allow for people being screwy enough, you lose your ability to be sure of anything you didn't see personally.)
I am more inclined to fall back on my belief that prosecutors typically want to try these kind of cases.
Okay, then I will fall back on my belief that women don't lightly press forward with criminal rape charges, particularly where that prosecution subjects their own less-than-pure conduct to the sort of intense scrutiny that might lead to real legal trouble.
LB:
Do you know anything about these prosecutors and investigators? Do they have a history of skirting hard cases or rape cases?
I seem to recall hearing that the same office has prosecuted people for raping prostitutes.
Does that matter to you?
Right. If you're going to speculate that her rape claim, putting herself at legal jeopardy for the taxes and asylum issues, as well as the stress and unpleasantness of the process itself, was false and the implausible defense version of the encounter was true, because people are just strange and you can't predict what sort of thing they're going to do next, you can't rely on how prosecutors normally act either.
The "Right" is to 124. But the rest of it works just as well to 126.
Okay, then I will fall back on my belief that women don't lightly press forward with criminal rape charges, particularly where that prosecution subjects their own less-than-pure conduct to the sort of intense scrutiny that might lead to real legal trouble.
I assumed as much. It is like the anchoring bias that I mentioned before. In the absence of clear information, we tend to fall back on our prior beliefs.
For me, my views about this case are also influenced by my preference to err on the side of not prosecuting on close calls as opposed to prosecuting.
to err on the side of not prosecuting on close calls as opposed to prosecuting.
That may have been a reasonable decision here -- she certainly has severe problems as a witness. It just looks to me like they made that decision on a close call, and then smeared the complainant to make it look like the call wasn't so close.
For me, my views about this case are also influenced by my preference to err on the side of not prosecuting on close calls as opposed to prosecuting.
I think that is a preference that really should depend on the nature of the offense. Stupid petty drug offenses? Sure, I'm with you on that. Rape? Not nearly so much. Not just because I see it as a vastly more serious offense, but because (my impression, at least is that) it's a generally underreported offense because of the difficulty of establishing non-consent ("Aw, c'mon, you went up to his hotel room -- clearly you wanted it!") and because of the virtually guaranteed personal attacks the victim can expect if she is on the stand.
you can't rely on how prosecutors normally act either.
And, this is hardly a normal case.
Okay, then I will fall back on my belief that women don't lightly press forward with criminal rape charges, particularly where that prosecution subjects their own less-than-pure conduct to the sort of intense scrutiny that might lead to real legal trouble.
For most people, their experiences will lead them to presume this. For the tiny number of people who are actually lawyers in this sort of field, they might actually presume the opposite. Will's thoughts probably go as follows: "Everyone I've ever encountered who has been raped has pressed charges. And so have plenty of other people who haven't been raped."
Everyone I've ever encountered who has been raped has pressed charges
Assumes facts not in evidence. You may well have encountered someone who has been raped and didn't press charges and never know it because, for the same reasons she didn't press charges, she's not generally broadcasting to all the world that she was raped.
I will fall back on my belief that women don't lightly press forward with criminal rape charges
If you follow this logic out then there shouldn't be a presumption of innocence for rape charges.
my impression, at least is that) it's a generally underreported offense
this has no necessary connection at all to how often false charges are made -- there can be many unreported cases and simultaneously many reported cases can also be false. Type 1 and type 2 error.
It does seem like the chances are something happened to the woman in this case, probably some form of sexual assault. But the system is supposed to be weighted toward protecting the rights of the defendant even if that means some guilty people go free, that's a first principles thing. It does a lousy job of that, admittedly, but imagine how bad it would get if we threw away the procedural safeguards we did have.
Isn't there also a plausibility problem with the idea that she made up an elaborate false story, inconsistent with her prior, mostly true (in terms of her movements, leaving the rape aside.
Not really, once you realize that she realized that there would be evidence that she'd been in Room 2820, and needed to tell another story about the entry into that room. The original story isn't really that close to the third story, either. In the original story, she said that she fled into the hallway immediately after the incident and sat on the carpet. Then, she went into the DSK suite with her supervisor. In the third story, she says that she went into the Room 2820 to get cleaning supplies briefly, and then went right back into DSK's suite, without her supervisor present.
If I'm taking the defendant's side in this, what I might argue is that it shows that she wanted to hide the fact that she went right back into DSK's room immediately after the incident to finish cleaning the room. She wanted to hide that fact because it shows that she couldn't have been that worried about what happened, since she was willing to go back into the same room without telling anyone. In version 1, she said she fled into the hallway and didn't go back into the room at all until she found her supervisor. In version 2, she realized that she'd have to explain Room 2820, so she invented a period of cleaning room 2820, to show that she wasn't just going right back into DSK's room. Once that version was proven impossible, in version 3, she clearly had to explain why she went right back into the room, and stated a new fact -- she says she did so after watching DSK get into the elevator.
So, if I'm DSK's lawyer presented with this evidence, what I think it shows is something like the following: she let him finish dressing after the incident, while she got the cleaning supplies and came back into the room to finish the cleaning. Ergo, not worried about the incident.
Again, I am really not saying that this is what happened. Or that she wasn't raped. Just that the credibility issue is way more serious than you or Saletan are pointing out.
Page reference for where it says she went back into DSK's room in the third story? The version on page 13 is as follows:
Version Three. In a subsequent interview conducted on July 27, 2011, the complainant again changed her account of her actions immediately after the encounter with the defendant. On that date, she said that she had cleaned Room 2820 earlier in the morning of May 14. Immediately after the incident, she stated, she left Suite 2806 and ran around the comer, as she had originally reported, not right into Room 2820. After seeing the defendant leave in the elevator, she entered Room 2820 only momentarily to retrieve cleaning supplies. As to the statements that the complainant had made on June 28, she denied making them, and asserted that they must have been mistranslated by the interpreter or misunderstood by prosecutors.11 But that claim is not believable in light of the extensive follow-up questioning about these events, as well as the complainant's insistence on June 28 that the account she gave on that day was truthful. Critically, her willingness to deny having made those statements to the very same prosecutors who had heard her make them on June 28 calls her credibility into question at the most fundamental level.12
I'm not seeing the 'went right back into the room' bit -- I figure it's elsewhere in the memo?
Never mind, it's the card key evidence right above. Still, I'm not getting it as credibility damaging that she wandered around a bit after watching him leave.
pp. 12-13: "Because the complainant now reported that she had entered Room 2820, the Office obtained the electronic swipe records for that room. These records, which were also provided to complainant's counsel by someone outside of this Office, estabilshed that the complainant entered Room 2820 at 12:26 p.m., and also entered defendant's suite during the same minute (also 12:26 p.m.). The exceedingly short window of time that the complainant spent in Room 2820 belied her statement that she had completed several cleaning tasks in the room before returning to the defendant's suite."
Remember, by story 2 she had already explained that she went back into DSK's room to clean it by herself; story 3 just had new evidence about the timing.
It's not that she wandered around a bit after watching him leave; it's that she went immediately back into the room by herself after being in the other room for under a minute.
Really, it's pretty damning if you imagine that what she was trying to hide was that she immediately went back into the suite on her own, and the sequence of the three different stories is entirely consistent with someone trying to hide that fact.
But the 'to finish cleaning the room' bit is all you. And again, you've got her making up an elaborate story because she knows that they'll know she was in 2820, but ignoring the fact that if she knows that they'll know from the cardkey evidence she was in 2820, she knows that they'll know from the cardkey evidence she was in 2806 as well. She has to be cleverly plotting about one fact, and completely ignoring the other. People do crazy shit, as Will says, but you can't explain her alleged lie by saying that it was a rational strategy -- if she was lying, she was being irrational about it.
I really don't see "After the rape I went into the hallway and stayed" and "After the rape, I went into the hallway, grabbed my stuff out of the two rooms it was in, and then stayed in the hallway" as meaningfully inconsistent.
Remember, by story 2 she had already explained that she went back into DSK's room to clean it by herself;
Makes perfect sense as part of the same sequencing error. "What did you do after cleaning 2820? Went to 2806 to clean it."
140.1: If she'd just seen him leave, what on earth would be damning about re-entering his room?
But the 'to finish cleaning the room' bit is all you.
No, it's all in the report. P. 12 (describing the June 28 story): "She further stated that after completing her tasks in Room 2820, she had returned to the defendant's suite and began to clean it as well." In the third version, she retrieved the cleaning supplies in Room 2820 and then immediately returned to the DSK suite.
And again, you've got her making up an elaborate story because she knows that they'll know she was in 2820, but ignoring the fact that if she knows that they'll know from the cardkey evidence she was in 2820, she knows that they'll know from the cardkey evidence she was in 2806 as well.
No, in the second version of the story, she also was giving an explanation of why she was in Room 2820 and 2806, and why she went back to 2806. Namely, that she spent a while in 2820 cleaning it before going back into 2806. What she got wrong (on the theory that she's deliberately lying) was that the cardkey evidence would be so decisive as to timing.
if she was lying, she was being irrational about it.
Well, she certainly wasn't being very smart about it, but that doesn't mean she wasn't lying. In fact, according to the prosecution's report, she frankly admitted that she was lying to the Grand Jury in describing the original version of events (as well as about the Guinea rape and other incidents).
I really don't see "After the rape I went into the hallway and stayed" and "After the rape, I went into the hallway, grabbed my stuff out of the two rooms it was in, and then stayed in the hallway" as meaningfully inconsistent.
But that's not the difference between the two events. In version 1, she went in the hallway and stayed. In version 3, she went into the hallway and then immediately back into the room where DSK was. Not to mention that in version 3, she mentioned seeing DSK leave in the elevator, for the first time.
In version 3, she went into the hallway and then immediately back into the room where DSK was.
I cut and pasted the entirety of version 3 above, and I'm not seeing that. The card key evidence showed that she re-entered 2806, but not either that DSK was there at the time, that she cleaned it after the rape, or that she stayed there.
the same sequencing error
You mean, the error in which somehow the prosecution's extensive questioning about what happened after the rape somehow got a story about what happened before the rape (by the way, it's not clear from the report where she was before she entered DSK's suite for the first time).
And, also, even in the third version of events, she admits that she went back into the room after getting cleaning supplies -- presumably to clean it.
If she'd just seen him leave,
It doesn't raise your hackles even a little bit that the first time she mentions seeing him leave in an elevator before returning to the room is on July 27, three months after the incident and after grand jury testimony to the contrary, and after telling a completely different story about the sequencing of events?
145 -- I didn't mean to imply that we know that DSK was in the room when she went back into it the second time. We don't know that, one way or the other. We do know (or think, based on version 3) that she got cleaning supplies from 2808 and then went immediately back into the DSK suite. Nor is it entirely clear how long she stayed, since apparently the key cards record when someone enters a room but not when they leave a room. However, if she was obtaining the cleaning supplies in 2808 it was presumably to clean the DSK suite, and she stated in the June 28 version that she was cleaning the suite.
More generally, re-entering the room where she had just been raped -- the fact that she omitted from the first account, and then told a clearly incorrect story about in the second account -- is a pretty significant detail, no? Again, the sequence of stories is consistent with someone trying to cover up the facts about the incident. Which, let me say again, does not prove that she was not raped.
she admits that she went back into the room after getting cleaning supplies -- presumably to clean it.
To quote myself: I cut and pasted the entirety of version 3 above, and I'm not seeing that. The card key evidence showed that she re-entered 2806, but not either that DSK was there at the time, that she cleaned it after the rape, or that she stayed there.
Something happened with the June 28th version -- either she told a completely irrational lie, or the prosecutors/translator got what she was saying garbled. I find the latter plausible.
And on your last point, I don't get it. There would be a meaningful inconsistency if earlier versions of her story were "I didn't see him leave or know where he was," and later versions were "I saw him leave." The fact that she didn't mention seeing him leave the first time she was questioned, or, more precisely, that the prosecution's summary of the high points of her story mentions that she saw him leave in one version but doesn't mention it in another, is not a meaningful inconsistency.
The fact that she didn't mention seeing him leave the first time she was questioned, or, more precisely, that the prosecution's summary of the high points of her story mentions that she saw him leave in one version but doesn't mention it in another, is not a meaningful inconsistency.
Are you kidding? The re-entry to his suite makes no sense at all unless she saw him leave. Otherwise, she's going back into his suite with knowledge that he's in there. And it's not just "the first time she was questioned." She told the first story over a period of months, including in Grand Jury testimony.
either she told a completely irrational lie
Not irrational if she's trying to create an explanation for why she went into both Room 2808 and then back into DSK's suite. I mean, not a good lie, as it turned out, but not irrational.
This is one of the bleakest threads in a while.
If you follow this logic out then there shouldn't be a presumption of innocence for rape charges.
Okay, for the record, the original statement was offered principally as a foil to Will's default assumptions that prosecutors always zealously prosecute rapes, so if they drop the charges there must be no case.
Anyway, the presumption of innocence applies to the jury's decisionmaking duties, not to the decision to prosecute.
Again, the sequence of stories is consistent with someone trying to cover up the facts about the incident.
To get to making it a coverup, you have to assume (a) that she believed that admitting she went back into his room would be damning to her story. Which makes no sense, but sure, people believe strange things. And (b) that she knew that cardkey evidence would show that she entered 2820, but (c) that it wouldn't show that she entered 2806 immediately after. It can't be a coverup that makes any sense -- it's only consistent with someone with a specific set of delusions trying to cover up a fact that wouldn't have been damaging to her allegations at all.
Or you could think that people describing a traumatic incident don't tell it exactly the same every time, and that translators are imperfect.
Are you kidding? The re-entry to his suite makes no sense at all unless she saw him leave. Otherwise, she's going back into his suite with knowledge that he's in there.
I don't understand your point here at all. All I'm saying is that because the prosecution's summary of her initial story doesn't include the fact that she saw him leave, doesn't imply that her story committed her to not having known he'd left.
150: I don't think it's as bad as you're reading it. If I'm understanding Halford correctly, he's trying to demonstrate what a defense attorney would do with the facts from the prosecution memo, rather than anything much about his own beliefs.
that she believed that admitting she went back into his room would be damning to her story. Which makes no sense, but sure, people believe strange things.
Seriously, I think you've argued yourself into believing things that aren't really plausible here. Of course going back into the room is damaging to the story. Maybe not fatal, but damaging -- her current story is that she was violently raped, fled the room in a panic, and then more or less calmly reentered the room, by herself, minutes after the first time we know she was out of the suite, which is 12:26 p.m. Which isn't fatal to her case, but is a problem. Particularly if DSK argues that everything was consensual and she came back into the room while he was there, which he might. The original story: "I ran into the hall and stayed there until my supervisor came" is much less damaging.
Or you could think that people describing a traumatic incident don't tell it exactly the same every time, and that translators are imperfect.
I do think that. But you're acting as if these were stray misinterpreted comments in a single witness interview, or offhand uncorrected comments in a deposition. She told the first version multiple times to multiple investigators, under close examination, and then specifically set it out, in detail, in grand jury testimony. Then, for the second interview, she was extensively interrogated with her counsel present. Do you really think it's plausible that the NYC DA's office, in its biggest case at the time, couldn't ask basic questions about establishing a chronology? Especially when the entire point of the interview was to examine whether their star witness had actually lied to a grand jury, and how? That just seems like a complete fantasy. And then, only when she's presented with incontrovertible evidence that her second and first stories were false, she somehow tells the truth in the third version, months after the fact?
154: I'm not reading anything about people's characters; such an intellectual exercise just wearies me to read (or rather now skim) in such great quantity and detail.
s/b reading anything about people's characters into this
With regard to my thinking, I am certain that I know plenty of people who have been raped, but didnt press charges.
But, I have also represented defendants who have been found not guilty and who I believed were innocent.
5 to life is a long time. In Virginia, if you take a jury and get found guilty, the minimum sentence is 5 years. And you serve all five of those years.
In my experience, my sense of a just sentence is often about 75 percent of what a defendant typically gets.
My view of the criminal justice system is that a whole lot of people are serving entirely too much time. Di is correct that you have to look at each type of offense. But, my statement holds true across the board.
Will's default assumptions that prosecutors always zealously prosecute rapes, so if they drop the charges there must be no case.
My experience is that the prosecutors in sex crimes units are trained professionals who believe in what they do. They are assisted by specially trained investigators who tend to believe victims. They also have federally funded "victim's witness" units to help alleged victims.
That is my default. I am willing to be persuaded otherwise, but I find it hard to believe that people who are dedicated to these cases walk away just because there are some small difficulties in proof.
They walk away when they dont believe the victim.
her current story is that she was violently raped, fled the room in a panic, and then more or less calmly reentered the room, by herself, minutes after the first time we know she was out of the suite, which is 12:26 p.m
If you invent the 'calmly' bit, and leave out that she says that she knew he'd left, that does make it sound bad. Adding the possibility that DSK was in the room at the time also makes it sound bad, sure, but there's no evidence of that either.
And yes, I do believe that a prosecutor talking through a translator could get a story garbled -- it seems more probable than that someone not mentally ill would give one story and then immediately thereafter contradict it and deny having said any such thing.
Inconsistencies between the first and third stories are minor, and I really don't understand your interpretation of the second story as a coverup rather than a translation problem.
I'm really quite dull and dim-witted.
159:Exactly
Lisa Friel and Coleen Dalbert are not contemptible, corrupt enablers of serial rapists. These are good, courageous, dedicated prosecutors who deserve the benefit of the doubt.
It sounds like the prosecutors were experienced, aggressive lawyers: Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, Ann P. Prunty, and Artie McConnell. They dont sound like roll-over sissy lawyers.
Read the brief here: http://www.talkleft.com/legal/dskmotiontodismiss.pdf
If you invent the
I'm not "inventing" that, I'm just describing the way it could be presented by the defense. If I'm raped in a hotel room, flee, and then reenter that same room by myself without telling anyone a few minutes later, isn't that a little questionable?* And, in this case, her story that she saw the DSK leave before she went back in the room, which is the only thing that makes the third story reasonable and not incredibly damaging -- and is therefore of absolutely crucial significance -- emerges for the first time only months after the fact, and after admittedly lying for months about another version of the incident. "I saw him leave and then went back into the room" is not some trivial detail that would be easily omitted from questioning.
I really don't understand your interpretation of the second story as a coverup rather than a translation problem.
Well, look, we know that she lied about a lot of things. She admitted as much. Is it really more plausible that there was a "translation problem" with an incredibly important and extensive interview, conducted in the presence of counsel after an admission of lying to a grand jury, that completely failed to distinguish between events that happened before and after a rape or get the basics of a chronology right? And that this is more plausible than that she lied in a way that was not, ultimately, smart, but was to her advantage?
*Again, does not mean that she wasn't raped.
But you're acting as if these were stray misinterpreted comments in a single witness interview, or offhand uncorrected comments in a deposition. She told the first version multiple times to multiple investigators, under close examination, and then specifically set it out, in detail, in grand jury testimony
This is where we're parting company, really. We don't have transcripts of those multiple times, we don't have transcripts of her grand jury testimony. We don't have a transcript of her June 28 interview.
What we have are three summaries, by a prosecution that wants out of the case and is presenting her as a liar. For example, you don't know that she never mentioned seeing DSK leave before July 27. The prosecution doesn't say that that was the first time she brought it up -- it just includes it in the summary of her July 27 interview, and not in her the summary of her initial story.
The prosecution memo is very light on quoting her, which strikes me as weird, when the big credibility issues are about inconsistencies between her various stories. There's a lot of room for her to have given basically consistent stories that could be described as the prosecution does.
If you take the prosecution's evaluation of her at face value, she's lying all the time. If you look at what they say about her stories, I don't think it's nearly that clear.
after an admission of lying to a grand jury
I'd like to see some quotes from her on the 'admission of lying' as well. Did she say "I lied to the grand jury" or did she say "In my grand jury testimony, I said I went straight to the hallway and stayed there -- that wasn't right, I went into room 2820 at one point."
Is it really more plausible that there was a "translation problem" with an incredibly important and extensive interview, conducted in the presence of counsel after an admission of lying to a grand jury, that completely failed to distinguish between events that happened before and after a rape or get the basics of a chronology right? And that this is more plausible than that she lied in a way that was not, ultimately, smart, but was to her advantage?
Where she told basically consistent stories before and after, and on one day she was understood to have told a false, and from her point of view (if she were rational, and using the facts we know she had) uselessly false story? Yeah, I think there's real potential for that one day to have been a translation problem.
159: I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain the State's Attorney in the county in which I reside does not have such a special unit with special training. I agree -- I would find it hard to believe that people dedicated to prosecuting this sort of case would walk away lightly. But not every prosecutor tasked with such cases is dedicated to prosecuting this type of case.
I mean seriously, the purported "translation problem" is just made up out of whole cloth. Yes it's not impossible as a matter of pure logic and we won't know until we obtain the transcripts through a state FOIA request and hire our own Fulani translator. But you have a major prosecution that absolutely hinges on the credibility and precise chronology of this evidence, and your assumption is just that either (a) the NY prosecutors were so incompetent that they couldn't get the witness to nail down a precise chronology when that was the entire point of what they were doing, and when they've presented court papers saying the opposite, or (b) the interpreter was so bad as to be almost insane (confusing the words "before" and "after").
167: I do not disagree.
LB: I am certain that you interview your witnesses in person in every case and that you would never rely on a summary or even a transcript of their testimony before presenting them to a jury. Why? Bc you want to see how they come across.
It isnt perfect, but Im willing to defer to those who have seen her give statements and be examined.
Also, her lawyer didnt do her any favors by parading her around.
163:Well, I would guess in such a high profile case as this, the top prosecutors would be consulted or informed.
LB, since you are not talking about incompetence, it might be fair for you to attach actual names to your accusations. We know the names.
What exactly are you saying about Joan Illuzzi-Orbon?
Several years back, I watched a PBS show about asylum-seekers being interviewed by the INS, in many cases through translators. What the producers then did was then take the video of the interviews to translators who (presumably) knew the language well, and subtitled the scenes with what the offline translator translated the speaker as really saying. The contrast with what the real-time translator said was striking in some instances - they summarized both questions and answers, often leaving out extremely relevant details. For example, one woman told a story of being brutalized and threatened in her home country - but the real-time translator left out the detail that she said this had happened because her father had publicly criticized the government, instead making it sound like a simple assault.
Having seen that show, I'm inclined to believe that a translator could indeed botch a line of questioning such as LB suggests in 104.
It's not made up out of whole cloth by me, it's what the complainant said happened. Before July 28, she says she left the room and stayed in the hallway. After July 28, she says she left the room for the hallway, but re-entered the two rooms for a bit before returning to the hallway. An inconsistency, but not a huge one.
On July 28 only, she has a radically different, and provably false, story about cleaning room 2820 after the rape and then returning to 2806 to clean it as well. She says that the radically different story on one occasion out of her multiple interviews was a misunderstanding by the translator. No, that really doesn't seem implausible to me.
170: Man, I love "Let's you and her fight". That never gets old.
My belief on the plausibility of a translation fuckup is colored by the fact that the prosecution's translation of the phone call has gotten much less aggressive since it was originally leaked.
Well, but the questioning would have had to have been so bad, or the translation so poor, as to fail to distinguish between what happened before and after the rape, when the entire point of the line of questioning was to determine what happened after the rape. And this was with her counsel present and her being encouraged to tell her entire story, not a context like a deposition where you get clipped answers. And there was no change to the story, or attempt to change it, until incontrovertible evidence arose disproving it. Not to mention that she apparently (according to the prosecutors) simply denied having said things that she in fact said. And that, according to the prosecutors, her English was perfectly fine.
I don't deny that her lawyer is claiming a translation error, but what else is he going to do? Because otherwise, he can't win his case.
You also keep saying that the first and third stories aren't materially inconsistent, but that's just not true. In the current version, she goes into the room after seeing DSK leave. In the first version, she flees the room, doesn't go into any room to call a supervisor because they have do not disturb signs on the hallway, and stays in the hall. How is a decision not to reenter the room not a highly material discrepancy? Especially since we do know that the first version was one repeated many, many times including to a grand jury.
Finally, all of this leaves out the other, incontrovertible evidence of lying in the report, including the rape in Guinea that she admitted was a lie, after (apparently) rolling on the floor in tears after telling the story.
I think the rolling on the floor and her crazy aggressive lawyer did her in.
The DA decided not to be part of a circus act.
I think it is interesting(depressing) to note here, that the "argument" has basically broken down along gender lines.
Wait seriously? Fulani? How experienced a Fulani translator does the prosecutors office have access to?
Actually, interesting evidentiary question here. Assuming civil suit goes forward, DSK wants to raise the alleged inconsistent stories, does such evidence ever come in? If all of this were in English, sure. But to establish that she said what the prosecution said she said, the prosecutors can't just say she said it because they are relying on the hearsay of the translator who said she said it.
178 -- probably a pretty good one. At least here, the range of translators/interpreters in various languages for the Court system is pretty damn amazing.
But, in any case, (a) the translator is unlikely to have been so bad as to have completely failed to distinguish events that happened before from those that happened after the rape, and (b) she had her lawyer, who presumably she'd told the story to before [since the whole point of the interview was to correct her first story], present. If the interpreter was telling some crazy version of events that didn't reflect reality, why didn't her lawyer stop it?
The Translator could testify as to what she said.
179 -- we have special interpreter rules here that basically avoid that problem. Don't know about NY.
The translator isnt any different from any other witness to whom she gave a statement.
It is a good thing that they have made more rigorous translator requirements. They used to let the brother or friend do the translating.
Even professional translators used to think it was ok to summarize. You would watch the translator and the defendent talk back and forth for 5 mins, then the translator would say "He said he is guilty and doesnt regret it!"
182 -- But does the translator have to establish qualification as an expert in the language?
People do crazy stuff all the time. Stuff that makes NO sense whatsoever. Spend a year as a prosecutor or a criminal defense lawyer or as a prosecutor. After that, you will have a pile of great stories of insane behavior by otherwise normal looking people.
Preach it brother.
185 -- at least here, yes, if it's challenged and put at issue.
And Di made me look this up -- the simple rule seems to be that A "generally unbiased and adequately skilled translator simply serves as a 'language conduit' so that the translated statement is considered to be the statement of the original declarant, and not that of the translator." Correa v. Sup.Ct. (2002) 27 C4th 444, 448, 117 CR2d 27, 29. So, you can challenge whether or not the translator is adequately skilled and/or biased, but if neither apply there's no hearsay problem.
170:Who exactly do you think you are arguing with and criticizing, Halford? Who would you be talking to if she was here.
We have signatures and can get pictures.
Or do you think the two males on the team put one over on Illuzzi-Orbon? I am sure she would appreciate that.
Discussion like this usually involve a blend of the concrete "facts" and an avoidance of actual blame on real specific people so that it can be felt as a general attack on the patriarchy and the injustice of the system. Basically, a mood, an attitude is indulged and promoted.
Nobody cared about the details of Obama's birth certificate either. Or real interest rates. Or whether there were WMDs.
Behind every discussion of facts is an attempt to generate feelings. I think in the courtroom as well.
makes sense. Only case I ever tried involving an interpreter was an asylum case, and that court had its own rules.
Who exactly do you think you are arguing with and criticizing, Halford?
LB, and, indirectly, William Saletan? Except that I'm not criticizing, just arguing to pass the time.
191:Maybe that was bad punctuation, but it was not directed at you. LB is arguing and criticizing people she doesn't want to name, and I don't think she is scared of libel or slander.
191: Bob puntuated that wrong. He meant "...with? Halford?" The idea being to instigate a girlfight between LB and one of three prosecutors. Because a real feminist can't criticize a female prosecutor or something.
It's probably good that I didn't have time to read this whole thread, because I think it would have made me very, very angry.
A few pieces of information to inform whatever discussion is going on, plus a couple of questions.
1. Do the transcripts state which language she was interviewed in? It is common for authorities to interview West Africans in French even if their first language is Fulani, Mende, or one of dozens of other languages. This can have significant consequences for accuracy, as people are then essentially being interviewed in their second language.
2. Is it stated anywhere what the interpreter's home language was and whether he/she was certified? There is no national certification for interpreters, although various states have certifications for court interpreters (I don't know if NY is one of them). I imagine the prosecutor's office would use an agency; agencies generally hire freelancers, whose command of the languages they claim to speak is not always independently assessed (good agencies do, of course, but not all agencies are good, and all agencies can have quality-control problems).
3. Regardless of the above points, a person's own receptive and expressive language skills can diverge widely. That is, a person may understand a great deal of English but have a relatively limited vocabulary for telling a story, or (perhaps surprisingly) be quite comfortable and sound almost fluent in their speech, but struggle to decode and understand what is being said to them.
In addition, some speakers can become very comfortable and almost accentless with vocabulary and phrases they use often, yet still have massive limitations outside their normal daily range. E.g. a Vietnamese-speaking welfare caseworker who can explain the intricacies of TANF in English but cannot understand the question "At what point was the perpetrator apprehended?"
All of these issues often cause native English speakers to accuse others of "faking" not being able to speak English. This can have horrific consequences, as in one case I am familiar with where homicide investigators relayed critical information to the family of the missing child over the phone and refused to acknowledge later that there could have been any difficulty in understanding the message.
4. All of this is not even to touch on the chronology issue. It is my overwhelming experience that people who have grown up in cultures that track time differently than the US (and even Americans who have limited formal education) can sometimes struggle to follow the sequencing that is commonly demanded in US legal culture. For example, this can be a particular challenge with Haitians who speak little or no French, as Haitian Creole does not express time and tenses in a way that a native English speaker would tend to expect.
As a result, it's not uncommon to get a lot of "You lied!" accusations by a school official or police officer when the answer is more like "I misunderstood."
Shorter me: Having watched a lot of lousy interpreted interviews (though not interrogations), I wouldn't believe almost anything without some assurance that the authorities and the interpreter involved were highly experienced.*
*Because I know a heck of a lot of law enforcement folks whose mental model for language translation is basically "word-for-word substitution." The idea that an interpreter might ever have to use judgment to translate a phrase most appropriately, and that using a different interpreter on a different day to take the same witness's statement again might produce a different translation, is foreign to them.
Bob, LB is arguing with Halford (and Will!) about a legal document he finds convincing and she doesn't. She doesn't purport to have access to the same information the actual prosecution has and can't argue with them because they are not here to respond.
Even accepting everything in 194 as true and applicable to this case (which strike me as extremely unlikely in this particular context, but whatever) the fact is that she had her lawyer, who presumably speaks good English and knew the actual story, present. For the purpose of telling the story. If the translation really was so bad as to completely confuse what happened before and after the rape, there is no reason why her lawyer couldn't have intervened to set the record straight. Or, if he couldn't do that at the time, he could have done so after talking to his client afterwards. He didn't do that; rather, the story only changed once evidence emerged proving the prior story untrue.
191:No it wasn't. LB has been in that fight all along.
The point and purpose of the thread is in 177.
Now, back to timeline...
As always, Witt makes great points. The translation issue doesnt get me too fired up as a basis that she lied.
My basic instinct is that prosecutors dont walk away easily.
No, di, it is not an argument about the facts, this is an argument about the judgement of the prosecution team.
We are simply not in a position to judge the complainant's credibility by looking at transcripts or other written material.
or as will said above
My basic instinct is that prosecutors dont walk away easily.
I'd tend to agree with that as a general proposition, but this case is such an extreme outlier that I almost feel like all bets are off, on everything.
Plus, who wants to risk being the next Marcia Clark?
This office recently prosecuted New York cops for rape.
DSK is not scary. He went to nothing overnight.
201 kinda implies that the evidence as presented here was as favorable for the prosecution as the OJ evidence, which, you know . . . .
199: It's an argument *about* their judgment, but not an argument *with* them. An argument based on what is publically known, becausr that argument is interesting, while acknowledging that what isn't known to us could easily shift the argument.
177 probably applies more strongly to the respective assumptions Will and I are making as to how much we trust prosecutors. But that may be more a VA/IL bias than gendered for all I know.
204:
I suspect that it is mostly basic anchoring bias. In the face of blurry information, we look for things that support our prior thoughts or bias.
What, we have courtroom lawyers here, don't we?
Are the lawyers saying that a jury determines a witness's credibility on the stand by what facts are presented and refuted? Maybe, just a little.
What are the prosecutors supposed to present in a brief as the reasons they don't find her credible but various discrepancies and contradictions?
But like a jury, that may have little to do with why they actually don't find her credible.
If they believed her, or believed a jury would believe her, they would work around the problems, or try. This is what, in this case, I believe about this NY sex crimes office.
If they believed her, or believed a jury would believe her, they would work around the problems, or try. This is what, in this case, I believe about this NY sex crimes office.
Yes, I think everyone here agrees with this, including LB. The question is whether the motion made by the prosecution suggests decent reasons why they didn't believe her, or didn't think a jury would.
Maybe I've argued myself into believing this, but it seems like the prosecutors here acted exactly as we would hope prosecutors would act. They took the accusation deadly seriously and commenced an extensive investigation, including arresting the suspect at the airport. They then continued the investigation thoroughly; there was no question of slighting or ignoring the rape allegation. Then, when very substantial doubts about witness credibility emerged, they dropped the case, even at considerable reputational risk, rather than risk prosecuting a potentially innocent person on the basis of witness testimony that they could no longer credit. If the role of the prosecutor is to do justice (and I think it is and should be) it seems to me that this is exactly how we want prosecutors to act.
I sat on a jury once, just once.
It started and the lawyer put his plaintiff on the stand, who gave his name and address. The lawyer looked at us and went to chambers.
That was it. No fun.
206.1: Not me, for the most part. From an appellate mindset, I would read the presentation of the facts as argumentative and insufficiently supported by an objective record. Quotes, a signed statement, that sort of thing. As a pure stylistic writing critique, I'd ease off on the overly dramatic rhetoric. I generally find subtlety more compelling. But things work differently in the courtroom, so I will defer to the real litigators here...
Well, it's fair to say that this particular legal document was at least 50% designed for an audience of the general public and the press, not just the courts.
Not having read the whole thread: an asst US Atty spoke to my criminal law class last year, and she seemed quite decent, but when someone asked whether she'd ever had to do anything in her job that she disagreed with or that struck her as not right, she replied that no, she'd always thought everything she'd done was not just correct but right. I mean fuck, when I was a fucking secretary I'd had to do squicky things from time to time. I don't trust prosecutorial ethics whatsoever.
(Just to keep bickering, complainant said she saw defendant leave the room in an interview at the hospital the same day it happened. So that's not a part of the story that emerged later. See page 13, fn 12.)
212 -- That footnote is just more evidence that she wasn't telling a consistent story. In the interview she gave at the hospital, she said that DSK left the room before she did. However, the examiner's notes were apparently a little unclear on this, as the reports acknowledge; although it'difficult to do so, it's possible to read the examiner's notes as not directly stating that DSK left the room first.
In her third story, she left the room first, and then re-entering the suite after she saw (from the hallway) DSK leaving in the elevator.
These two stories are absolutely, 100% inconsistent. Indeed, the hospital interview story is also 100% inconsistent with the other two. The hospital interview story wasn't relied on by the prosecution (to their credit) in the memo, since the examiner admitted that it was told ambiguously, but if it had been relied upon there would have been four completely inconsistent versions of the events that she was describing.
So, wait, a story that says she saw him leave, and is ambiguous as to who left first is 100% inconsistent with one that says she left first and saw him leave? I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Anyway, you were way off in claiming that she'd hadn't mentioned seeing him leave until her last interview.
Are you insane? The version she gave to the examiner says (probably) that he left the room after they had sex, with her staying in the room, without saying a word. Arguably, it could be read as saying that she left the room first after they had sex, which is what she said in the three other versions. Accordingly, the hospital version is inconsistent with the other three.
Version 3 requires her seeing him leaving in the elevator after she had left the room and was in the hallway. Those are simply not consistent stories -- the hospital story and the elevator story can't work together. How can she run out of the room after they have sex first but he leaves the room first? You are really grasping at straws here.
Well, I think 215 establishes that we can stop bickering, because there's no chance we're getting anywhere on this.
When I said "are you insane" I forgot to mention that I like insane people. But seriously this would be like the easiest defense trial ever.
48
My point is that hiring and paying a prostitute, if that were an available version of the facts which it doesn't appear to be, would be more plausible than raping someone, partially because it is so much less reckless. Once his story (if this is the story) that he caused her to believe she'd get paid and then he didn't pay her, he loses that increased plausibility because it would be just about as reckless, reputationally, as raping her.
It might be just as about as reckless but it (not paying) is more understandable as a thoughtless action in the heat of the moment. Raping a maid because of a flash of anger is less plausible (at least to me) than stiffing a whore. In other words he might have intended to pay her and changed his mind midway (although I don't recall that being part of the leaked story which IIRC was more along the lines that he didn't realize that she expected to be paid).
Oh, no hard feelings of any kind, and I'm sure the Martian skies are lovely this time of year.
67
Mostly, I don't think prosecutors need to apply a "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard to their own opinion of a case, because I don't think it's possible for them to do so in a way that's similar at all to what a juror would do -- the immersion in professional experience with crime seems as if it would wildly distort a prosecutor's sense of doubt (I think, depending on the person, plausibly in either direction. You could get someone slipping toward "Anyone who's been arrested is guilty, lock 'em all up" or "I've seen a whole lot, and been wrong a lot. I don't believe anything at all beyond a reasonable doubt these days.") More likely than not is a standard anyone can apply.
I don't see why experience makes it harder to assess guilt. Unless what you are saying is lawyers are professional liars who are accustomed to first convincing themselves of their lies the better to persuade other people.
In any case I don't think more likely not is nearly good enough for the repesentative of the people. For one thing a lot of time if the prosecutor's assessment of the probability of guilt is say 60% this is because the investigation was sloppy with significant loose ends and running down the loose ends would likely raise the probability to near 100% or drop it to near 0%. I believe it is the duty of the prosecution to insist that significant loose ends be cleared up before prosecution proceeds. And the prosecution should not encourage sloppy police work by proceeding with marginal cases.
74
... If there's any evidence that she was working as a prostitute, that'd make the "he stiffed her" story plausible, but the only thing I've seen about that is the Post story sourced to the defense - ...
There was this Post story sourced in part to the prosecution.
The so-called victim, whose web of lies has crippled the Manhattan DA's case against the former International Monetary Fund boss, played host to a parade of paying male visitors in the weeks after Strauss-Kahn's arrest, a prosecution source said.
"While she was under our supervision, there were multiple 'dates' and encounters at the hotel on the DA's dime," the source said of her paid hotel room. "That's a great deal for her. She doesn't have to cover her expenses."
If there's a party in this case with less credibility than the maid, it would be the New York Post.
but when someone asked whether she'd ever had to do anything in her job that she disagreed with or that struck her as not right, she replied that no, she'd always thought everything she'd done was not just correct but right. I mean fuck, when I was a fucking secretary I'd had to do squicky things from time to time. I don't trust prosecutorial ethics whatsoever.
Christ, that's insane. Of course there's shitty laws and policies. I've done loads of stuff I disagreed with.
Did she really believe believe, or is she in a position where she could be trying not to say anything that might show up in a confirmation hearing down the line some day? I'm not sure which would be worse.
Find LB & Witt way more convincing than Halford on the translation issue. To put it mildly. Not least because as a student volunteer in an immigration clinic, I have had one translator who was delightful, competent & fluent in Fulani & English have trouble understanding a client who was speaking a different dialect. (One was from Guinea, one from Burkina Faso IIRC).
His wealth & power & the press attention mean that there are far more likely to be adverse career consequences for going to trial & losing in embarrassing fashion than a normal case. As LB says, it might have been right, or at least totally defensible, to drop the case, but when combined with the fact of the leak coming from the prosecution's office I'm not psyched about the way they're portraying the accuser.
She either really believed believed, or she did a goddamn unbelievable job coming across as a believer believer. I know there's psychological mechanisms whereby you adopt the ethos of the place that's paying you, and I've certainly experienced that sort of thing myself (as recently as this summer, at my unpaid public-interest litigation internship), but this person was quite far gone. I understand that AUSA positions are very hard to get, so maybe you need that degree of hi-glad-to-meet-you-happy-to-be-brainwashed-today-sir (maybe we should call it mental whateverness?) to get past the first interview.
(I also suspect she's thinking about a confirmation hearing down the line, but she still seemed quite genuine.)
Also because Halford's hammering on the supposedly gaping chronological inconsistencies that do arise in stories reminds me in an unpleasant way of DHS attorneys in asylum cases. (I listened to a lot of hearings in 2005-6)
Sometimes people do lie on asylum applications, of course, & sometimes the DHS questions are totally legit. & expose major, credibility-destroying inconsistencies (the fabricated rape would be one). But it's just incredibly easy to screw up the chronology in describing events in one's own life, even traumatic ones.
228: it reminds me of what you can see in any comment thread on any news story involving police brutality, people parsing everything the victim did to find that little something that she did wrong that made it all her fault...
"Gee, she wasn't consistent in whether or not she visited another room in the aftermath of the rape and for how long, I read here in this summary put out by a party with obviously no interest in putting her actions in the baddest possible light, so that must mean she wasn't raped".
Kinda squicky.
The argument in this comment thread is be about whether the victim was responsible for the perceived destruction of her credibility, not about if she was raped or not or if she was to blame for getting raped.
228 -- please. Explain to me why her own lawyer, who spoke English, presumably knew the story, and was present at the hearing, couldn't have corrected the account. The translation thing is just bullshit, frankly, and this wasn't an asylum hearing.
229 -- go fuck yourself.
By "bullshit" I don't mean that there aren't often real problems in translations. There are. In this particular case, though, it's bullshit. To credit the idea that this was a translation problem here, you'd have to believe that a translator told a story (in English) after extensive questioning that got the most important single detail wrong -- namely, what she did after the rape-- and that her lawyer who was there listening the while time never intervened to correct during the interview or after the fact. That's not like taking some generic witness statement. It's not even like a crossexamination, where you might play lawyerly tricks to get an answer from a witness that wasn't exactly what they meant. It would mean that she and her attorney mysteriously allowed a story to go out that was completely the opposite of what she later said. That just doesn't make sense at any level.
I shouldn't really have to reply to Wisse, but no one knows whether or not she was raped. People who are crazy liars can get raped. In this case, though, the credibility issues were extraordinarily severe. As for how the DA's office treated her, they were clearly mad that she lied (and she did lie). On the other hand, what were they supposed to do, drop the case without explaining why?
1. 229 is completely right.
2. It's tough for me to take Robert seriously, I mean he's a christian we already know he'll believe anything.
While I'm assuming 234.2 is intended as a joke, it doesn't come across well, at least to me.
Anyway his stance on intellectual property law is sufficient to discredit everything he says. Plus he promised to write us a book on the history of the LA police department, which I think we all now know was a lie, thus severely damaging his credibility. I'm beginning to think he isn't even really the former lead singer for Judas Priest.
211, 227: I think one has to be relatively senior, or exceptional in the gifted & talented (and just taking a spin through the revolving door) sort of way, to be willing to utter a discouraging word about one's work as a government lawyer to strangers. On the other hand, she may just have been lucky; I have had to do plenty of things at work that I thought were stupid (n.b.: I am selfish and immature), but have never been asked to do anything untoward.
I think there's also a weird issue with professional advocates -- if what you do for a living is persuading people, one of the ways you can do that is by persuading yourself. And it's a job where you're personally ethically responsible for everything you do -- if someone in charge tells you to do something unethical, you're supposed to refuse (which, in an actual job situation, can be tough). Put those together, and I've met a fair number of lawyers who I've gotten the impression are self-deceived, albeit sincerely, about how impeccably ethical everything they've ever done is.
Oh, and throw in equivocation (again, not consciously dishonest) between "I've never been asked to do something in violation of the ethical rules" and "I've never been asked to do anything I thought was wrong." The ethical rules allow for an awful lot of sketchy behavior.
To credit the idea that this was a translation problem here, you'd have to believe that a translator told a story (in English) after extensive questioning that got the most important single detail wrong -- namely, what she did after the rape-- and that her lawyer who was there listening the while time never intervened to correct during the interview or after the fact.
Are you certain what she did after the rape is the most important detail? And I don't understand how the fact that her lawyer let two versions of the story pass helps us distinguish between the translation error and witness unreliability.
One thing about translation. If the accuser testifies via translator and the prosecution attributes all inconsistencies with her past accounts to bad translation, I, as a juror, will be reluctant to trust her trial testimony as well.
And another thing about burden of proof. If the defense had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accuser was lying then LB's scenarios about confusion and translation errors would be relevant. But since in fact the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accuser is telling the truth (about the incident) they are less so. Even if you convince the jury that it is possible the accuser was not deliberately lying this is a long way from eliminating any reasonable doubts that the accuser is lying.
I will also add that the lack of neutral language is extremely disheartening. A thread full of the phrase "had sex" is a thread that is implicitly taking sides, and erasing the victim's report of her own subjective experience.
I don't think English has a solution at this point -- terms such as assault and rape cause the same problem in the other direction, as they immediately have legal connotations. But man, as a female human being in this society, is it depressing to read this thread.
232.1: Her lawyer wasn't paying very close attention? Her lawyer hadn't gotten the facts of his case down yet and didn't recognize the inconsistencies? The colloquy went down as LB hypothesized above and so her lawyer didn't hear the accounts as inconsistent? This is not, as you seem to imagine in 233, a matter where the interpreter listens to a long narrative and then reports the story back. Question. Translation. Answer. Translation.
The idea that we're not arguing about whether she was raped but whether she lied about what happened after isn't quite right either. The whole point is whether or not the purported inconsistencies undermine her claim that she was raped.
242:
A man and a woman enter a room. Two hours later, she reports to the police that she was raped. He says they had consensual sex.
Which person do you immediately believe? What is the first thing that comes to mind?
1.That she was raped?
2.That she made it up?
3.That you need more information?
I've been trained so that my first thought is number 3. After years of dealing with people who make up lies for no discernable reason, I instantly react to number 3.
I believe Di and LB have previously said that their default is number 1.
244:Number 1, and that can include arrest, treatment for the victim, empathy and comfort
But I'm not in a courtroom yet, and that is a huge fucking difference.
I was asking outside a courtroom.
In a courtroom, there is a presumption of innocence. Without any more information, neither person is entitled to be believed more than the other person. Thus, he should be found not guilty to the presumption of innocence and the tie in credibility.
244: You are mischaracterizing my position, and I think LB's, too. And the framing is, in my mind, counterproductive. My default in probably any situation you can think of will be 3. "Need more information" is a given, for me, to a probably unhealthy degree.
In your scenario, how you respond given your admitted incomplete knowledge depends on how you weigh the competing interests. Personally, I think the harm -- to society as well as to the victim -- of wrongly dismissing her claim as incredible outweighs the harm to him of having to respond to a claim that turns out to be false. Not that I'm suggesting that being falsely accused of rape is no big deal, but that being raped and then not believed is a bigger one.
So when she makes that initial report to the police? Yeah, my immediate first response is to treat her claim as if it were true because, at that stage in the game, greater harm comes from wrongly blowing the charge off than wrongly following it up. Following a full-blown trial at which each side has presented all their evidence? Well then the weighing of the interests changes because a false *conviction* is far more serious than a false accusation.
223: If there's a party in this case with less credibility than the maid, it would be the New York Post.
The DA's office is certainly in the running.
well, sure.
That is why he gets arrested simply when she swears out a warrant. All it takes is her statement that she was raped for him to get arrested.
So, an initial claim results in medical treatment and care, and, typically, an arrest. (Not always, but in most jurisdictions and in most cases.) So, until the trial, she gets the benefit based almost exclusively on her mere statement.
From there, the burden shifts. But, the system is designed to believe her until the trial. (Thus, he is on bond or, in many cases, in jail.)
244: If your position is "I don't form opinions without a full, deep understanding of all the facts," that's very sensible if you've got access to all the facts, or think you might be able to get it later, and you don't have any desire to form an opinion under other circumstances. Someone who thought: "Situated as we are, reading news stories, there's no way for us to have any sensible thoughts about the probabilities of what happened in this case, and this whole discussion is pointless," would be saying something fairly reasonable -- in fact, most of what we talk about is pointless.
Once you have an opinion at all, though, you're stuck working with the information you have.
250:
Sure, but in the absence of complete information, we fall back on our preconceived notions.
249: Your question in 244 was about "immediately," though, not about "at trial."
251: Or we weigh the comparative risks of being wrong in either direction...
I was asking what your reaction in your head was, not whether we provide comfort when she says it.
242.1: for that to make sense, the lawyer would have had to not only fail to correct the statement at the time, but fail to do so for almost a month later. Plus it's just implausible that he hadn't heard the story, since the whole point of the meeting was to tell a new story. To get to the translation problem now, you'd need a total failure in the part of the questioners, the translator, and her lawyer, and you'd also need to assume that no one at the NYC DA's office thought about that failure before issuing it's report. it's only if all three are basically incompetent that you get the result. Is that really remotely more likely than that
238 -- it's a pretty important detail, since she was having the meeting precisely to tell the prosecutors that she needed to correct her prior grand jury testimony, given under oath, about the rape. That's a big deal. She, the prosectors, and her lawyer had an enormous interest in getting the story right at that point.
I honesly could take more offense to some of the comments here (235.2 gets it right) but there's a broader question here. When I first skimmed the story, I assumed that droppng the case was a weak move -- poor people lie about a lot of bureaucratic stuff, it seemed like the major lie was on an asylum application, and who cares about minor inconsistencies. Take the case to trial! But if you actually read what the NY DA's office says were it's reasons for dropping the case, it goes well beyond that. There are some very serious accounts of some very serious lying about the incident. More than enough to, unless you think the report is deliberately false, create serious doubt as to the charges, and (IMO) the only way you get around that is to tendentiously read the report or come up with wildly implausible scenarios, which is what I think Saletan and, with respect, LB is doing here. Seriously, read the report.
So, you have a rare instance of a prosecutors office weighing the evidence after a thorough investigation an deciding not to prosecute. That's a good thing. Are we supposed to not talk about the issue because (as I agree) there's still a realistic possibility that she was raped, even if she lied about various things? Maybe, and obviously the safest thing to do is to just STFU about the whole topic. But if you're interested in both the criminal prosecution of rape and the criminap system more generally, it's an important issue. If LB and Saletan are right, basically the NY DA's office acted with near-criminal incompetence in investigating the case and in making the decision to drop it. I think that if you look at the report carefully, that's dead wrong, and that's true even if you strongly buy into the feminist critique of rape prosecutions generally. And while I agree that working through the details above can be a little unseemly, that's exactly what a prosecutor or defense attorney would have to do, because that's how you prove a case.
I tend to think that DSK raped the maid, that the maid would have been a wholly unreliable witness at trial, and that the DA's office turned on her when they realized that.
it's just implausible that he hadn't heard the story
I didn't say "hadn't heard the story." I said "didn't know his case." Maybe it's just me, but I've know attorneys who, even living with a case for years, don't manage to know it the way you'd think they should. Maybe like Will's experience leads him to go all Dr. House "everybody lies," my experience leads me to, "when in doubt, assume the lawyer* fucked it up."
*Unless the lawyer is me. I never mess up.
If LB and Saletan are right, basically the NY DA's office acted with near-criminal incompetence in investigating the case and in making the decision to drop it.
Could you do me the favor of looking up at everything I've said, and trying to tell me what you're basing that on as a statement of my opinions on the case? I could swear that I've consistently said that her general credibility problems due to things she's lied about unconnected to this case are a serious problem for prosecuting it, and that dropping the prosecution may have been the right decision -- a memo saying "Given the way in which the defense will be able to impeach her credibility, and the necessity of her testimony to make the case, we do not think that there is any likelihood of a conviction and are therefore dropping it" wouldn't have bothered me.
What I've been on about is their treatment of what seem to me like very resolvable inconsistencies in her story about this event. I'm also bothered a great deal about the leak to the press by the prosecution that seems to have flatly misrepresented the phone call with her fiance.
but fail to do so for almost a month later.
This is silly. You don't have a full sequence of communications between the lawyer and the DAs office. That it took a month to set up a new interview with her, once the relationship had gotten contentious, doesn't tell you much about the timing of when the lawyer got on top of it.
256 sounds about right, subject to equivocation over "totally unreliable witness". What I'm objecting to isn't dropping the prosecution so much as the aggressive under-bus-throwing.
I tend to think that DSK raped[was accused of raping] the maid, that the maid would have been a wholly unreliable witness at trial, and that the DA's office turned on her when they realized that[, so we'll probably never know whether he raped her].
Given that, LB's "What I'm objecting to isn't dropping the prosecution so much as the aggressive under-bus-throwing" doesn't seem wrong.
The trajectory of the official story clearly goes from "too credulous" to "too dismissive" and now I guess we're supposed to think they have it "just right".
261: Maybe the maid was hoping for some sort of payment. Sorry, but I'm not really seeing any great likelihood of consensual non-commercial sex.
258 - I'm bothered by the leak,too, though it was nice to see the report downplay the issue, and explicitly point out that there's nothing wrong with seeking money in a civil case. And you have said that the overall decision might make sense, which I should have noted.
My reaction was based on your reaction to the "minor" inconsistencies. To get to calling them minor, for reasons I won't re-argue, you have to basically assume that the DA's office completely screwed up and then issued a misleading report. The Saletan article really does suggest that the DA's office mangled the investigation and is more or less lying about it.
259 -- he didn't correct until after the records proved story 2 to be false.
Anyhow, if the office had issued a one-page statement saying "she would have credibility issues at trial" and dropped the case, I think there would have been huge public speculation, and rightly so, that the office was hiding something. So they issued a report saying "she would have credibility issues at trial, for the following reasons.". The sufficiency of which we're now debating.
though it was nice to see the report downplay the issue,
That wasn't my sense of what they did with it in the report -- they brought up a conversation where someone else talked about money, and used it to impeach her credibility because she'd said she wasn't interested in money. Even though they were less aggressively misleading in the signed report than in the anonymous leak, that's still misrepresentation in my book.
I don't necessarily think they screwed up the investigation or the decision not to go forward -- I don't know. I do think the report justifying that decision was drafted misleadingly (certainly on the phone-call front, and plausibly on the rest of the 'inconsistencies') to cover their asses politically by painting her as badly as possible.
Oh please. You know that they wanted to say, "Holy smokes! She was an insane loose cannon and we didnt want to be a part of her circus!"
Since we are guessing, I am guessing that the truth was much worse than they put in the Motion. They omitted the crazy stuff she said or did with the staff in the office.
Since we are guessing, I am guessing that the truth was much worse than they put in the Motion.
Then, how do explain the "leak to the press by the prosecution that seems to have flatly misrepresented the phone call with her fiance"?
They omitted the crazy stuff she said or did with the staff in the office
The only way this make any sense to me is if you're talking about miscellaneous stuff she did or said that made her seem "weird" -- which would have obviously been inappropriate to include in a legal document, but could have influenced the prosecution either not to believe her at all or to think that a jury wouldn't believe her.
269:
I guess I am not really interested in defending prosecutors but so much. I think they prejudice juries and the public against the accused entirely too much. See perp walk.
Oh please. You know that they wanted to say, "Holy smokes! She was an insane loose cannon and we didnt want to be a part of her circus!"
Yeah, see, that sort of thing concerns me. "Not that we don't believe her, but damn! We sure as hell don't want to put up with her crazy for a whole prosecution that will be a media circus to begin with..." Hopefully, that's *not* what they really wanted to say.
Why not? If it was the only thing, it would be a problem. But they doubt her credibility, plus she is a totally loose canon.
(This office has prosecuted people for raping prostitutes so it doesnt seem like an office who only prosecutes rapes cases involving nuns.)
I don't think it's appropriate to start one sentence with "Oh please. You know that" and then start the next sentence with "Since we're guessing,".
272: I'd be more inclined to give them some benefit of the doubt if they had not screwed the pooch so egregiously from the very start on this case.
272: what are you talking about?
Leaving aside will's ability to read the tea leaves and conclude that the DA is being very diplomatic and polite by not saying flat out that this woman is a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty and has wasted everyone's time ... I would imagine that they'd deem her an unsuitable witness just because of the earlier lying about being raped back in Guinea. Although that was lying in order to get asylum, while this would be ... I guess, lying in order to sway the French election? ... it still looks bad to the jury.
Although that was lying in order to get asylum
Not actually true, but at this point why should anyone read the actual motion before drawing conclusions about what it must have said?
I was reacting to the comment that they went overboard to trash her. I thought they said what they needed to say.
Ive had the suddenly overly dramatic witness/client before. Invariably, the entire office knew it just by how they acted in the waiting room or conference room.
Body language/voice level/etc all influence us, yet you cant put in a Motion. That was my point. I firmly believe that the DA feels like the Motion was a toned down version of how they really felt.
Not actually true, but at this point why should anyone read the actual motion before drawing conclusions about what it must have said?
What the motion says about her being prepped for her asylum interview by some third-party preparer with a false tale of rape is consistent with the training I received back in the day prior to handling an asylum claim about unscrupulous types out there who "prep" asylum seekers for money and feed them bullshit stories to include. (The training was along the lines of "be aware this happens frequently and so you may need to correct things that were submitted before you got involved.") Especially where asylum seekers are coming from nations that aren't exactly known for the integrity of their courts, etc. (I plead ignorance wrt Guinea...), it's not so crazy to think that asylum seekers buy into the idea that you don't get justice by playing it straight.
Not sure how that fits into this argument, but I thought I'd put it out there.
I think what Rob was referring to with the "not actually true" was that the false rape story wasn't in her paper filings -- I know she represented that she gave the false rape story orally in an asylum interview, but I don't know if that's corroborated.
Also agreeing with Rob that "screwed the pooch" from the beginning seems wrong. They were overenthusiastic with how they treated DSK (perp walk, extended time before allowing bail) at the beginning, but that seems like a reasonably minor set of errors given the difficulty of managing with a prominent defendant and trying not to look unfairly lenient.
282: Yeah, I understand that, but I'm not sure how paper vs. interview makes a difference in whether "lying to get asylum" was "actually true."
Ug. Shall we all agree that the perp walk and the bail issues are horribly unfair to people accused of crimes?
276, 283: I'll take a look at the timeline and some of the earlier stuff at the time, but it is clear to me that they went too far in that direction and everything since has been somewhat determined by trying to recover from that in the face of the developing reality. In part I'm thinking of some article right after things got shaky claiming that "hardened" investigators had been "moved to tears" by her initial story.
For instance here. (And I'm talking as much politically as in a strict legal sense. But they knew this was always going to be political.)
"What's most curious is hearing the line prosecutors saying early on that they had a strong case, a very strong case," Mr. Shargel said. "Obviously, they hadn't looked very hard. I have enormous respect for Cy as a prosecutor, but this is like a series of bad dreams."or (cam't find the article but found the quote elsewhere):
"I am told she is the most convincing reporter that most people have ever interviewed," Ms. Fairstein said. "I am told that experienced, senior people cried when she told her life story, in each of the agencies."
285: Absolutely -- when I say minor errors, I think any deviations from the norm in how DSK was treated were excusable, but that doesn't mean the norm is okay.
288: But aside from any unfairness (or not) to DSK, my understanding is that doing so rushed some elements of the investigation* and led to them saying things like:
Prosecutors had sought the restrictive conditions in part by arguing that the case against Mr. Strauss-Kahn was a strong one, citing a number of factors, including the credibility of his accuser, with one prosecutor saying her story was "compelling and unwavering."*For instance:
After Mr. Strauss-Kahn's arrest, the district attorney's office faced the question of whether to ask a judge to keep him in custody. To do so, the office had to obtain an indictment within five days. The alternative was to agree to a bail package so that prosecutors could take their time investigating the case before deciding whether to indict, according to four people briefed on the matter.
I've chosen willful overstatement as a tactic to force LB into the arms of Halford.
That should be "the *muscular* arms of Halford."
Although I forgot that, as a mens rights advocate and fundamentalist Christian/rape apologist, I'm supposed to be fat and disgusting.