Following developments this week, once again there is great wailing and gnashing of teeth concerning the purportedly low conviction rates for rape. Now it is the turn of Janice Turner to wring her hands in despair and lament the denial of justice to rape victims.
The fundamental point frequently glossed over is that in many trials the entirety of the evidence does not assist the jury in reaching a verdict of guilty. It is this inability or refusal to confront the crux of the issue that prevents progress being made whereby the truly guilty can be convicted and punished appropriately. In a significant number of cases, too often the prosecution case simple recites facts that would apply to any “courtship” taking place daily, up and down the country but where in the case before the Court, some four-fifths of the way through the ritual that would in almost every other case have led to consensual sexual intercourse, something went awry. It is not a simple problem of it being one person’s word against another’s. I have met women who have been raped in a social or “dating” situation. Having known each woman for some time, I had no doubt in accepting as true what they had told me, but how is a jury to make such a determination of veracity, having met the victim only once upon the occasion of her giving evidence from the witness box? Is it so surprising that jurors err on the side of caution, particularly given the burden of proof borne by the Crown?
The “something must be done” campaigners have rarely had the benefit of sitting through numerous trials where having listened to the Crown’s evidence, it has become impossible to dismiss the thought that “something doesn’t add up here”. You have to be involved in a trial and listen dispassionately to the evidence before you can understand how a doubt about a defendant’s guilt can creep into a juror’s mind. In those cases where the mating ritual has proceeded to that final stage, the reason for it coming to an abrupt halt must be plausible. Perhaps fearing the loss of the Court’s sympathy (or more importantly that of the Police) in some such cases for instance, victims omit evidence that explains their behaviour and makes the Crown’s case truly complete.
In reality, a low rape conviction rate is little to do with juries having prejudices about how a woman should or should not behave. Juries are not packed with individuals who were born before sex was invented in 1963. Most have “been there, done that” and any curio from a bygone age would be put right, quickly. Tinkering by way of “re-educating” juries must just as surely lead to miscarriages of justice as would rigging the rules of evidence.