On the presumption of innocence and Congressional hearings
The presumption of innocence for the accused is one of the pillars—probably the main pillar—of our criminal law. Its importance to our liberty cannot be overstated.
But Chuck Schumer was at least partially correct when he said of the Kavanaugh hearing that there’s no legal presumption of innocence there:
“It’s not a legal proceeding, it’s a fact-finding proceeding…this is standard operating procedure,” Schumer said. “There is no presumption of innocence or guilt when you have a nominee before you.”
How is he partially correct? The hearing is not a criminal trial. A trial would guarantee much stronger protection for the rights of the accused than we saw in the proceedings on Thursday.
But that’s actually irrelevant, because what really happened was that Thursday’s hearing flipped the presumption of innocence on its head. Topsy-turvy-land, looking-glass world. Although not a trial, it was a quasi-trial of a shortened variety in which it was the accuser who was largely protected and given the kid-glove treatment, and the accused who had to be his own advocate because he was offered almost no protection at all.
Schumer can pretend that what happened to Kavanaugh was “standard operating procedure,” but of course it was not and let us fervently hope it never becomes so (perhaps Schumer would like to face a similar standard if some women who went to high school with him came forward to accuse him?). No one in this country—even someone as old as I am—has ever seen anything quite like Thursday, in a supposed “fact-finding proceeding” in the Senate in its “advise and consent” role regarding judicial nominations for federal judges. The only thing that came close was the Clarence Thomas hearings, and even then Thomas was afforded more of the presumption of innocence than Kavanaugh was, and Thomas’ accuser was faced with more challenging questions.
What’s more, there’s a huge gap between a legally required presumption of innocence on one side of the scale and the trial by tears that we saw on Thursday. In a criminal trial, the presumption of innocence is accompanied by another standard: the necessity of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But in the case of the hearing, no proof was offered except for Christine Blasey Ford’s shaky testimony with so many gaps of memory that it was highly suspect on its face.
Ford’s statement didn’t even meet the civil court test of preponderance of the evidence. It didn’t even meet any rational non-legal test. The only test it could possibly have met was that of the completely subjective and emotional, as I wrote here. That is not enough. That is not nearly enough.
And Chuck Schumer knows it full well. But he doesn’t care.
[NOTE: And please read this by Stacey McCain. It presents quite a timeline for the coordination of Ford’s story by Feinstein, lawyers, and the press for their hit job on Kavanaugh.]
As you say, the standard is the same as Caesar’s wife… above reproach. But if the “reproach” is inventable for any political purpose, than no one is immune. This is not the spirit of the Constitution.
Having said that, neither was the delay of the last Obama nominee for SCOTUS. I felt very uncomfortable with the Republicans for that at the time. Instead of blocking the nomination completely, they should have used their capability to do so to insist on a more centrist nominee. But they didn’t, and now we are seeing the payback.
I’ve read a lot of blogs and sites, but I have yet to see this mentioned:
Does it trouble anyone that Ex-FBI McCabe’s lawyer joined Dr. Ford’s legal team, and the Dems pushed vehemently for an FBI investigation, and they got it?
Naturally, the FBI would never share Kavanaugh’s 6 background investigations’ information or any of the current investigation findings with anyone, would they. Nor would they manipulate an investigation to help any one side, would they.
Oh, look, a squirrel!!
Roy Nathanson:
The Garland situation involved the use of the political power of a majority party in the Senate to block a nomination. It was indeed a naked political power play, but violated neither the Constitution nor anyone’s rights or reputation. There is no comparison to the present situation re Kavanaugh, which is the attempted destruction of the reputation of a laudable human being with little or no evidence, and a trampling on the prospective rights of each and every one of us. It is not even just a difference of degree from Garland; it is a difference in kind.
Minta Marie Morze:
I’ve seen discussion of those issues, but I couldn’t tell you where.
The thing is that there are so many issues in this situation that some of them recede into the background.
juanita broderick says women who accuse democrats of sexual assault like clinton should be believed. women who accuse republicans of sexual assault should not be believed.
I doubt that she said that. Source?
It worth to mention an important fact: a hysterical or just emotionally distressed woman can convince herself absolutely in everything: that she was abducted by space aliens, for example. Everybody knows about girls on the brink of death of starvation seeing in looking glass an obese lady, or about false pregnancies with all symptoms of a real pregnancy present, except pregnancy itself.
Francesca:
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “that” in your comment, but if you mean Ford’s surprise at hearing that the committee had offered to interview her in California, see this.
I think Garland is a decent and well-qualified individual and deserves a chance to serve on the Supreme Court. His treatment at Republicans’ hands (though involving no aspersions cast on his personal honor) was undeserved and motivated purely by political considerations.
So next time when Democrats take control of both houses of Congress and of the presidency they should re-nominate and confirm him. It would be a great compromise option and many Republicans may support him under such circumstances. We need more centrists like him on the Supreme Court.
Neo,
I took Francesca’s ‘that’ to be in response to the troll’s comment about Broderick.
MB:
Thanks for the suggestion, oh ye concern troll.
And I’m absolutely sure the Democrats would return the favor under similar circumstances.
There are still some naively idiotic Republicans, but for most of the GOP that ship has sailed.
There’s a good analysis of the inconsistencies in Dr. Ford’s story at this link:
https://nypost.com/2018/09/25/eight-big-problems-for-christine-blasey-fords-story/
Minta Marie Morze on September 29, 2018 at 3:39 pm at 3:39 pm said:
I’ve read a lot of blogs and sites, but I have yet to see this mentioned:
* * *
I haven’t seen that particular dot-to-dot, but a lot of people have noted that the anti-Trump-FBI is perhaps not the best place to get an unbiased investigation.
The sharing of confidential information with the Democrats has probably already happened.
Minta – look at the GatewayPundit link Snow recently put up on “Trail of Tears”
https://www.thenewneo.com/2018/09/29/trial-by-tears/#comment-2406258
Snow on Pine on September 29, 2018 at 5:10 pm at 5:10 pm said:
Well, well, well.
According to an article out today**, it turns out that “Research Psychologist” “Doctor” Ford was misrepresenting her credentials (starting with the first sentence of her prepared testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, no less), that she is not a licensed psychologist in the state of California, nor has she ever been, and, that, in fact in the ten days before her testimony the folks at Stanford made some seven revisions to her bio on their “Stanford Profiles” website, culminating with their changing her title:
From: “Research Psychologist, Psych/General Psychiatry and Psychology (Adult)”
To: “Affiliate, Psychiatry and Behavioral Science”
** https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/09/holy-crap-christine-fords-stanford-bio-page-was-altered-updated-10-days-before-hearing/
Something important in all this to-and-fro about “not a legal proceeding”:
The presumption of innocence has to have some weight *outside* the courtroom, within the principles and morals of society, as well.
If it does not, then courtroom results have no heft outside the courtroom unless they match the public verdict, as well. Which ultimately destroys Rule of Law. This is where lynch mobs form. Or a man is shunned by the community, though he was legally exonerated.
The funny thing about mob rule – it’s not really democracy as folks like to think of it. Folks think “democracy” and they think about individuals, making their own decisions and voting their own minds.
But, mobs are easily led. They are not a mass of individuals, but a group, a flock. In reality, mob rule is often rule by some clique (or a single person) with the power to present ideas as true, and thereby herd the mob about for their own ends.
His treatment at Republicans’ hands (though involving no aspersions cast on his personal honor) was undeserved and motivated purely by political considerations.
The Senate was never under any obligation to consent to his elevation to the court. Nothing done to him was ‘undeserved’. He was left in peace. The last Democratic nominee raked over the coals was LBJ’s seedy crony, Abe Fortas. In the intervening years Wm. Rehnquist and Samuel Alito were subject to inquisitions that no Democratic nominee has had to face since Fortas and Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and now Brett Kavanaugh have been subject to campaigns of defamation so vicious and ugly you’d have to reach waaay back into the 19th century to find a precedent if you could find one at all.
juanita broderick says women who accuse democrats of sexual assault like clinton should be believed. women who accuse republicans of sexual assault should not be believed.
Juanita Broaddrick never said anything of the kind. Democrats cannot stop lying.
IUPB
they took your silence as agreement
Since the late 1970s, early 1980s, feminism has always attacked presumption of innocence constantly as unfair to women, minorities, inter-sectional, gays, etc. / changes to address this that we the peoplle allowed, from hiding the accuser, to hiding the perpetrator, only if either is a woman… to presumption of guilt as a norm on campus, to that in family court, to other areas…
of course. wait 30 years before you do anything and its precedence is solid as concrete
All your going to do is sit on this screwed up train and ride it
your time to act was when i was annoying you 10 years ago
NOW… its time to watch your chickens of inaction roost
ie. the end of our nation as it was as the feminsts intended it to be as they have always said and claimed, and thats that..
the only people who could have fought this, bailed and were presumed members of the opposition to their future… too bad i guess… maybe next time people wont let weeds and crap grow unattended till its so large you cant ignore it any more..
try to say its not them and i will show you 30 years of such
and too bad you didnt fight seizures and defend drug addicts, as now they come for you
you didnt defend the banks from activists doing damed if you do damned if you dont, now what?
too bad you didnt protect men, allowing (the feminist concept of) “unequal treatment for equal outcomes” to be enshrined by law, now they come for you
neimolloer warned you
under Title IX the standard of proof is a mere “preponderance of the evidence,” meaning that if the adjudicatory body leans 50.01% in favor of the victim it is to find the accused student guilty. Third, Title IX does not guarantee that an accused is given a hearing before it is determined whether he committed sexual assault, and allowing the accused to cross-examine witnesses is discouraged.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-shatz/feminists-we-are-not-winn_b_6071500.html
So if this LAW undid a foundation of our judicial system., why did we allow it?
oh yeah, men are all evil, white men are the source of slavery, etc…
and we could not have any discussions on it.. go ahead… take a look back at the 12 or more years of trying and its forced to be ignored… like senkaku islands will lead to war, we HAVE to ignore it… we cant do a thing about a precidence for this thing being placed like chess pieces in our legal system, while we sit and say no no no, until o crap, now what?
Presumption of guilt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_guilt
In 1990, Yale professor and radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon, is alleged to have addressed a graduation crowd thus; ‘look about you. Statistics tell us you have just laid eyes on someone guilty of sexual assault’. In her 1989 book Towards a Feminist Theory of the State she alleged that ‘all sex is akin to rape’.
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High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques has criticized UK police training and methods which allegedly assert that ‘only 0.1% of rape allegations are false’ and in which all complainants are treated as ‘victims’ from the start. In three cases which later collapsed, including those of Liam Allan and Danny Kay, police withheld vital evidence from the defence
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Quote from feminist:
My favorite activity to day is going through replies to the Stan Lee news & blocking eveone who says “innocent till proven guilty”
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A Voice For Women!!
Jessica Valenti Calls for End to Presumption of Innocence, Due Process
https://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/jessica-valenti-calls-for-end-to-presumption-of-innocence-due-process/
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The Span of My Hips
Body love, mental health, and critical theory
Why I Don’t Subscribe to “Innocent Until Proven Guilty”
The IUPB framework is applied selectively. (Alleged) rapists are granted it, while their victims are presumed to be lying until proven innocent (in the extraordinarily rare case that sexual assault is actually convicted).
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The criminal justice system is set up by–and for–those in power. Grand juries rarely indict police officers and the courts are simply not set up to attend to the realities of most sexualized violence. So if you are a vulnerable person (a woman, a person of colour, any number of intersecting identities), relying on the court to tell you who to stay away from, who to keep your eye on, who to warn your loved ones away from, you’re trusting a rigged system to keep you safe.
[so the fix will be to give THOSE same people presumption of guilt? great feminist logic in action!!!!]
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Geek Feminism Wiki
Kavenaugh is getting the “Title IX” treatment….
[and dont worry, this is coordinated INTERNATIONALLY by the Internationale and its organizations, fronts, etc… even people admitting to sabotaging the system are in the news]
Judge Kavanaugh’s Nomination Puts Girls’ Rights At School At Risk
Don’t Turn The Kavanaugh Confirmation Into A Title IX Kangaroo Court
The Kavanaugh-Ford Hearing and Campus Sexual Assault: 3 Parallels
Could new Title IX rules invite retaliation? – POLITICO
Transgender Students & Title IX — Obama Administration Rewrites It
Sexual Misconduct Attorney | Know Your Title IX Rights?
[bet you didnt know laws could confer rights… and erase or modify others]
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“Take her at her word” v “innocent until proven guilty” (self.Feminism)
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Margaret Atwood is a blood-drinking monster
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/margaret-atwood-is-a-blood-drinking-monster/article37609895/
Moderates like Ms. Atwood, with their odious ideas about due process and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, are traitors to the Revolution.
As one letter to The Globe put it the other day: “Revolution isn’t about justice. It’s about change.”
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‘Guilty until proven innocent’: life after a false rape accusation
A growing group of men are calling for changes in the law around sexual assault to protect those who are the victims of false accusations, reports Jonathan Wells
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11912748/Guilty-until-proven-innocent-life-after-a-false-rape-accusation.html
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Feminist Actress Doesn’t Believe in ‘Innocent Until Proven Guilty’ for Sexual Assault
feminist actress/activist Amber Tamblyn (Joan of Arcadia, The Sisterhood of theTraveling Pants) has decided that people accused of assault or rape are “suspect until proven innocent.” On Twitter, the #metoo actress posted: “People keep asking me if I believe in innocent until proven guilty. When it comes to sexual assault, I believe in suspect until proven innocent. Goodnight.”
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Why I No Longer Call Myself A Feminist
https://www.cosmo.ph/lifestyle/not-a-feminist-anymore-a733-20170131-lfrm4
That means taking the victim’s word for what it is and/or setting up policies that will harshly punish the accused. There is hardly any due process in that. If a woman has to prove she was assaulted? You’re promoting rape culture! they say. To feminists, there is no “innocent until proven guilty” in these cases; yet the presumption of innocence is a human right. Systems of justice rely on that to prevent people from ruining innocent lives.
[nice she writes in 2017, but the thing that did this was created in 1972… talk about waking up slow to a new incarnation of communism and control.. without the supreme court and that limit, we will probably have a dictatorship soon (which is their stated goal but who listens to them? you hear them, but do you listen?)… ]
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Radical Feminism And The So-Called ‘Rape Epidemic’ | Above the Law
For the college-age male accused of sexual assault, it’s “guilty until proven innocent,” where the blameless are sacrificed at the ideological altar of radical feminism
https://abovethelaw.com/2015/12/radical-feminism-and-the-so-called-rape-epidemic/
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Why Feminists Are on the Wrong Side of Justice When it Comes to Betsy DeVos
https://acculturated.com/feminists-wrong-side-justice-comes-betsy-devos/
Radical feminists don’t care about equality. They don’t care about justice. They don’t care about men. And they don’t seem to really care about women, either.
DeVos plans to undo an Obama-era policy that threatened universities with litigation and the loss of federal funds if they failed to comply with the government’s new criteria for handling allegations of assault.
for the students accused of assault, things are far from noble. “Innocent until proven guilty” was replaced by “guilty if there’s a 50.01% chance he did it.” Who needs an impartial jury of one’s peers when there’s a single, appointed investigator with the power to determine who gets expelled?
Due process went out the window. Could the accused see the evidence against them? Nah. Cross-examine witnesses? Nope. Employ legal counsel? Not really.
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[and who never can get work, may lose family if they find out, and on and on too, and not one iota of evidence… you would think in my murder investigation they would have first checked to see if the person was dead… they werent… but hell with that, he murdered her anyway!!!!]
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MGTOW means not having to fight a losing battle to save people that hate you!
From the ever increasing evidence, as members of Congress reveal themselves—who they really are, what they think, and their naked ambition, their thirst for power—by their words and deeds, we can see that we voters have, in many cases, assembled quite a despicable crew.
Revealed are people you would not invite to your house, not trust that they wouldn’t steal the silverware, or knife you in the back, if it was convenient, and served their interests.
Time to start flushing all most all of them out of their cushy congressional seats.
Bit by bit, element by element, as it is closely examined, Dr. Ford’s whole story is falling apart.
Gatewaypundit’s people are doing a great job of fact checking Dr. Ford’s story, and it turns out they may have found another lie.
According to a story they’ve published today**, Dr. Ford was running/housed what appears to be some sort of couples counseling business at her home address.
It seems to me that having a second, different door for clients to enter and exit –without disturbing her family–makes much more sense than having a “panic door” as she claimed that second door to be.
It does seem like someone took the details of her life and experiences and recast them in a way to further Ford’s J’accuse narrative.
It would really be nice to see what Ford actually told her therapist/ But of course, her lawyers refuse to give the Senate Judiciary Committee that evidence.
** https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/09/this-doesnt-look-good-business-was-listed-operating-out-of-christine-fords-home-would-explain-second-door/
Democrat questioners were asking Kavanaugh about his high school years and his behavior during that time.
I hope that the FBI will also be diligent is checking out Dr. Ford’s high school years and her behavior, particularly as documented by her Holton-Arms high school yearbooks, apparently available, despite attempts to scrub them from the Internet.
** See https://www.scribd.com/document/389218606/Excerpts-From-Christine-Blasey-Ford-s-HOLTON-ARMS-Yearbook-by-Cult-of-the-1st-Amendment
I am also curious about Dr. Ford’s Internet/social media presence, which news accounts say she scrubbed from the Internet prior to her testimony.
I think that the FBI should be curious enough to try to use their resources to recover this material, as well as her Holton-Arms high school yearbooks.