@BillRM,
Quote:
Tell me firefly had you ever come to the conclusion that any woman who had level a charge of rape was not being truthful? One woman in your life that your question her truthfulness?
Lord being able to get a rape conviction against a Kennedy would be like winning the superball lottery.
Poor Dr. Kennedy found no guilty but he still need to put up with the kind of nonsense you had just posted.
I would only know that a woman had made an untrue rape accusation if she admitted it or if her charges were clearly exposed as fraudulent. And I am aware of cases where that happened. Otherwise, I would assume the woman was telling the truth, and I would assume the defendant was innocent, until I had seen and heard the evidence presented at trial.
In the case of the William Kennedy Smith trial, the entire trial was televised and I watched it, so I heard the all the evidence and testimony. The deck was stacked against Patricia Bowman, and the D.A., from the moment she walked into the courtroom because the defendant was a Kennedy, and particularly because Sen. Kennedy was implicated in the events of that night. You are right, getting a rape conviction against a Kennedy would have been like winning a superball lottery, and the D.A.'s odds of winning it would have been as slim as the odds of winning that lottery.
As was the case with O.J., the Not Guilty verdict did not convince a great many people that Smith was innocent. There was a lot of controversy with this case. The judge's decision not to let those 3 other women testify at the trial upset a lot of people, who felt that a repeated pattern of behavior, particularly rape, is important info for a jury to hear about, particularly in a date rape trial,which hinges almost exclusively on the credibility of the two parties. Had that testimony been allowed, with cross examination by the defense, Smith's acquittal might have been more acceptable in the court of public opinion. These women, all very reputable professionals, talked to the media anyway about their alleged rape experiences with Smith. It would have been much better if all the talking had been done in the courtroom.
What do you mean that poor Dr Smith (his last name is not Kennedy), even though found Not Guilty, still has to put up with the "kind of nonsense" I posted? What about this situation is "nonsense"? There is a difference between being found Not Guilty and being found innocent. Smith's trial is a matter of public record and it was a highly publicized trial. I listened to the testimony and I found Bowman's testimony very credible and she did have evidence of bruising. She also passed two polygraph tests and a voice stress test. Personally, I felt he had raped her. He had a top notch lawyer, who simply did a better job than the D.A., and who managed to raise reasonable doubt in the jurors minds. I'll accept the legal verdict of Not Guilty, but that doesn't mean I thought Smith was innocent. And I think O.J. did those murders too, despite his Not Guilty verdict.
Immediately after the verdict, Bowman said, "All I have endured is worth it if I made it easier for one woman to make what for me was the only choice I could." And she continued to urge other rape victims to report their assaults.
The reason I brought up this case was because it brought the whole subject of date rape to widespread public attention, the way the Bobbitt case brought spousal rape to public attention. And, leaving out the celebrity factor of a Kennedy, it is a very typical date rape scenario. And it does show the problems involved in trying to get convictions in cases like this, and the sort of things the alleged rape victim is put through when she reports a rape.
