Is the Head of the IMF a Sex Criminal?

You know this, do you, Hawk? You know, I think that when the US runs out of foreign bogeymen to scare the populace into supporting their illegal invasions, the Feminists might be just the thing to fill the bill

NEW DELHI: With 22% annual increase in the number of rape cases, the government's nod to amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code that would protect rape victims from suffering further trauma during the process of investigation is being seen as a landmark step for ensuring gender justice.

In a strong impetus for the cause of gender justice, women judges will preside over rape cases in a bid to make the courtroom and trial process less traumatic for the rape victims. Acknowledging that the protection of the rape victim should be of utmost importance while investigating and judging such a case, the amendments also provide for in-camera hearings.

The amendments are aimed at protecting the interest of the rape victim from the registering of the FIR to the trial process. During the investigation stage, the rape victim can record her statement at her residence and in the presence of a woman officer.

The French are questioning themselves, Hawkeye.

Woman falsely shown as DSK accuser
Friday May 27, 2011

A 23-year-old Senegalese woman will file charges against media and internet sites that published her photo as that of the Guinean woman accusing Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault, her lawyer says.

Yaye Dieynaba Diallo has hired three Senegalese lawyers to prepare the lawsuit and seek damages, saying she has been a casualty of the high-profile case against the former head of the International Monetary Fund.

'Nothing is decided yet, but we are considering a procedure for invasion of privacy, right to publicity and defamation,' one of the lawyers, Samba Ametti, told AFP.

She said the photograph of Diallo was taken from a social networking site without her permission, and was portrayed as a photo of the 32-year-old hotel chambermaid who has accused Strauss-Kahn of sexually attacking her in New York.

The alleged victim is of Guinean origin, from a tiny hamlet called Tchiakoulle in the north of the west African nation, an AFP investigation revealed.

Diallo began receiving calls on May 18 telling her her photograph was all over the internet, said her lawyer.

'It intensified in Senegal because a private television station used the same picture for a comedy show on the case. There were derogatory comments made about the photo,' Ametti said.

Local media said Diallo was shocked and traumatised at being unwittingly thrust into the spotlight, and had sought psychological treatment before hiring the lawyers.
http://www.skynews.com.au/topstories/article.aspx?id=618063&vId=

Was it? If he was forensically examined, wouldn't he have to agree to such a procedure?

NEW YORK, May 26 (Reuters) - The possibility of a payoff arises frequently in cases such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn's sexual-assault charge, where the defendant has power and wealth and the accuser has neither.

It came up again after The New York Post reported on Tuesday that friends of the indicted former International Monetary Fund chief tried to pay off the alleged victim's family in exchange for recanting her claims that Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her and forced her to perform oral sex on him: What would happen to the prosecution's case if the Sofitel hotel maid decided to retract her allegations?

On Wednesday Reuters reported that Strauss-Kahn's lawyers denied the report, and there is no evidence that a payoff attempt occurred. But the conjecture alone raises complex legal and ethical issues.

Prosecutors confronted with a suddenly recalcitrant witness must contend with the requirements of the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees a defendant the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him."

Their paths around this mandate are limited and not particularly appealing, analysts say.

First they could subpoena the witness, requiring her to testify and hoping she would decide to stick with her original story. But such a move could backfire if the witness backed the defendant's version of events.

If the witness delivered a different account of events on the stand, prosecutors could impeach her credibility by pointing out that she told a different version to police or to the grand jury. The threat of perjury is also available if the witness previously testified under oath -- as she did last week in front of the grand jury.

Normally the hearsay rule prohibits prosecutors from introducing previous out-of-court statements, experts say. But there are exceptions, several of which could be applicable in the Strauss-Kahn case.

EXCITED UTTERANCES

According to authorities, the alleged victim immediately told hotel staff and police officers that she had been assaulted. These statements could be admissible under the "excited utterance" exception to the hearsay rule, which allows unsworn statements made spontaneously following a shocking event to be submitted as evidence of what occurred.

"Most likely, there were a whole bunch of excited utterances -- to hotel staff and to the first police officers that arrived," said Daniel Bibb, a former Manhattan prosecutor. "This kind of evidence is common."

Another hearsay exception, known as "immediate outcry," and available only in sex-crime prosecutions, would permit prosecutors to submit certain out-of-court statements the alleged victim made following the incident, Bibb said. This exception is often used to bolster the credibility of alleged victims who do not report the crime to authorities right away.

Prosecutors could also proceed without her testimony altogether, relying on the physical evidence collected at the scene, for instance. Going ahead even without a victim's testimony is done most frequently in domestic violence cases, which are often hamstrung by witnesses who eventually decline to testify to protect their partners. It's generally known as "evidence-based prosecution."

But this would be an unlikely option for Strauss-Kahn's prosecutors. "You don't see that happening in many sex crimes cases," said Anne Milgram, the former attorney general of New Jersey, who doubts a case could be made against Strauss-Kahn without the alleged victim. "The prosecution needs the witness in this case."

In many domestic violence cases, lawyers say, there is additional evidence of a crime: bruises, for example, or neighbors who heard fighting

Egalite mon amis

If you mean paying for it, no.

A case of "Any minion will do, as long as they have an adequate receptacle and I can add to my jollies by scaring the **** out of them."

The New York Times
May 26, 2011
Strauss-Kahn’s Lawyers Suggest Credibility Issues on Accuser
By JOHN ELIGON

The lawyers for Dominique Strauss-Kahn have suggested that they possess information that would undermine the credibility of the hotel housekeeper who has accused their client of sexual assault.

The suggestion was made in a letter sent by Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers to Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, that asked him to do whatever he could to stop law enforcement officials from leaking information in the case.

In the letter, which was sent on Wednesday and added to the court record, Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers, William W. Taylor III and Benjamin Brafman, said they were concerned “that our client’s right to a fair trial is being compromised by the public disclosure of prejudicial material even before these materials have been disclosed to his counsel.”

“Indeed, were we intent on improperly feeding the media frenzy, we could now release substantial information that in our view would seriously undermine the quality of this prosecution and also gravely undermine the credibility of the complainant in this case,” the lawyers wrote.

While the stated purpose of the letter was to lodge a complaint about leaks to the news media, it also served as a form of legal gamesmanship — allowing Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers to hint at damaging information about the victim without revealing it.

Indeed, Mr. Vance’s office responded with its own letter, noting that it was dismayed that Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers “chose to inject in the public record your claim that you possess information that might negatively impact the case and ‘gravely’ undermine the credibility of the victim.”

The letter, which was signed by Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, the chief of the hate crimes unit, who was just appointed to the case, indicated that prosecutors knew of no such information.

“If you really do possess the kind of information you suggest that you do, we trust you will forward it immediately to the district attorney’s office,” Ms. Illuzzi-Orbon wrote.

Attacking the credibility of the housekeeper may be a critical part of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s legal strategy. Although there have been leaks that there is DNA evidence tying Mr. Strauss-Kahn to a sex act, it would not indicate whether that act was forced or consensual — putting greater weight on the credibility of the woman and of Mr. Strauss-Kahn.

Both sides have begun the process of accumulating background evidence on Mr. Strauss-Kahn and the housekeeper.

Prosecutors, for example, have said they have been in contact with “more than one” woman who said that she had been sexually assaulted by Mr. Strauss-Kahn; at one court appearance, a prosecutor said, without elaboration, that Mr. Strauss-Kahn had “a propensity for impulsive criminal conduct.”

The defense has hired investigators from the firm Guidepost Solutions to look into the woman’s background and examine any weaknesses in her account.

Mr. Taylor and Mr. Brafman also appeared to be using the letter as a way to speed up the discovery process in which the prosecution is supposed to turn over evidence to the defense.

In addition to asking Mr. Vance to do everything he can to stop the leaks, the lawyers asked that his office “promptly provide us with copies of all of the scientific reports that have been completed and have already been leaked to various media outlets.”

The defense was referring to reports that Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s DNA was found on the uniform of the hotel housekeeper.

The letter also asked the prosecution to turn over all police reports and formal statements made by the accuser because her statements already had been reported by the press.

The letter said all of the leaked information was attributed to sources within the New York Police Department. But the defense lawyers said they wanted to bring the issue to Mr. Vance’s attention.

The lawyers also cited what they characterized as a “wide array of prejudicial information about Mr. Strauss-Kahn, including information which even if true, would never be admissible in any court.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/nyregion/strauss-kahns-lawyers-suggest-credibility-issues-on-accuser.html

More legal gamesmanship...hint at credibility issues with the maid, without having to back it up. No wonder the maid just acquired two more lawyers--she's going to need them to try to protect her from the things that will be said about her. This is only the beginning...

One very important fact has been largely absent from the coverage of the sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and, until latterly, leading candidate to be the next president of France. The hotel housekeeper whom he allegedly assaulted was represented by a union.

The reason that this is an important part of the story is that it is likely that Strauss-Kahn's alleged victim might not have felt confident enough to pursue the issue with either her supervisors or law enforcement agencies, if she had not been protected by a union contract. The vast majority of hotel workers in the United States, like most workers in the private sector, do not enjoy this protection.

I shall say this only once.

Do not underestimate the sheer, utter arrogance of this man.

And now you're goading.

As more and more women enter police forces, the ranks of attorneys, D.A.s and P.A.s and judge ships, this good ol' boy network that protected the cock-sure sexual assaulter in the past will disappear.

We knew that her credibility was going to be called into question once we heard about all of the hysterics, the spitting, and her sticking around the scene of the alleged crime.

This matters in two ways, one her hysterics about being afraid of being fired now are now even less credible than they were before, and two we now know that she is not quite the lowly paid no rights worker that she has been portrayed as.

Was it? If he was forensically examined, wouldn't he have to agree to such a procedure?

He would also have probably led a life of state protected debauchery for some time

If that is not hysteria about an innocent man waiting to be trialed then what would be ?