For those of you (probably most of you) who are not familiar with the recently concluded trial for rape of two NYPD cops these are the facts. A young woman who was drunk (after celebrating her promotion in a Brooklyn bar with friends) was helped out of a taxi in Manhattan by two policemen; Kenneth Moreno 43, and Franklin Mata 29. They brought her to her apartment as she threw up from all the booze. They took her apartment keys and made four trips back to her apartment allegedly to “check up on her”. Moreno admitted that he placed a fake 911 call about a drunken bum in the building’s vestibule so he could have an excuse to return. When the woman sobered up she recalled her pants being pulled down and Moreno forcing himself on her. A few days later the woman confronted him about being raped (she said she was too drunk to resist and can remember hearing Velcro being removed – his bullet proof vest) and asked him if he was wearing a condom or not and if Mata had had sex with her too and he said he was wearing one and only he had sex with her. He also offered to be her boyfriend (he is a married father of two) and as a former alcoholic he could help her. Moreno claimed that he came back to counsel her and said that he even sang a Bon Jovi song to her (yeah right). She filed rape charges against him and his partner who was the look out. The jury of course was never told that his partner at first offered to testify against Moreno but was turned down. Anyway the idiot jury found them not guilty on all charges with the exception of police misconduct and they were terminated from the police force with loss of pensions. The article mentions that too many people get their ideas about crime from watching shows such as CSI (and Law & Order) and feel that if there is no DNA then there is no crime. In this case there was no DNA but the preponderance of circumstantial evidence as well as the bullshit story the two cops were telling pointed to the cops lying their asses off. Also the bad old days of blaming women for being sexually assaulted still has not left us. They still face a two year sentence on official misconduct charges.
by Maureen Callahan
Former officers Kenneth Moreno (left) and Franklin Mata after the trial.
Thursday’s acquittal of two New York cops in the rape of a young fashion executive has already gone down as one of the most shocking verdicts in the city’s history. Officers Kenneth Moreno, 43, and Franklin Mata, 29, admitted to helping the inebriated woman into her East Village apartment in response to a call for help. Surveillance videotape showed the officers leaving, then re-entering her apartment three additional times, with Moreno making a fake 911 call to cover up one of those returns. (Officer Mata, charged with serving as Moreno’s lookout and presumably familiar with criminal law, testified that he didn’t know “if making a fake 911 call is a crime.”)
Moreno, accused of rape, testified that the woman, in between violent episodes of vomiting, attempted to seduce him and that he’d rebuffed her — although he did serenade her with a Bon Jovi power-ballad. Finally, he said, all they’d done was cuddle in her bed, she in only a bra.
The bruising to the young woman’s cervix, the defense argued, was the result of her vigorous scrubbing in the shower, and this tack — revealing a staggering lack of familiarity with female anatomy — makes the not guilty verdict that much more incredible. Wouldn’t any competent jury question whether rough sex was the more likely explanation? Just how credible does a jury find a drunken young single woman in New York City? Did the lack of DNA evidence damn the prosecution — and if it did, should it have?
[…]
Of our five experts, all agreed that there were three major contributing factors to this outcome.
THE ‘CSI’ EFFECT
“That’s what we call this,” says Eugene O’Donnell, a former cop and prosecutor in New York and current professor of law and police studies at John Jay Criminal College. “CSI Seattle, CSI Anchorage
. . . there’s an insistence on the part of the jury that prosecutors have to have DNA evidence. They believe that it’s present and necessary — it’s neither.” O’Donnell believes that “the law needs to be changed,” that judges should be legally bound to inform juries that a lack of DNA evidence doesn’t equal innocence. “We need a remedy with jurors,” he says, “because I don’t think it’s getting through.”
“This is a trend, and it’s upsetting,” says Mary Griffitts, an attorney and jury consultant for such blue-chip companies as Johnson & Johnson.
“ ‘CSI’ has made things more difficult. There’s no law saying that ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ means we show you DNA. It means ‘evidence that points to a moral certainty that is beyond dispute.’ ”
“ ‘CSI’ has not helped,” says Leslie Crocker Snyder, the legendary former New York prosecutor who, in 1974, founded the first sex crimes unit in the country; she also co-authored the rape shield law, which prohibits a victim’s sexual history from being used as evidence, that same year.
[…]
“My first rape case in 1970, two women were pulled off the street in Alphabet City, dragged into a filthy tenement stairwell, and raped,” she says. Crocker Snyder thought she’d cleared the exceptionally high legislative bar: Not only were the two women each other’s witnesses, but the perp had stolen each of their wallets. The jury acquitted, however, because the rapist’s semen was found only on the inside of each woman’s underwear. “Never mind that rapists are famous premature ejaculators,” she says. Twelve years later, the same man was eventually convicted on a separate set of sex crimes.
Compounding the issue: Many juries are easily swayed into believing that 50% of rape claims are fabricated (the actual percentage is 3-5%, on par with false theft claims). “This is an especial problem with rape cases,” O’Donnell says. “Who gets up in the morning and says, ‘I’ll read the paper, feed the cat, and oh, yeah, say I was raped?’ ”
THE FEMALE JUROR
The gender divide on this specific jury was seven men, five women, and our experts say this isn’t surprising — prosecutors are wary of female jurors in rape cases, because female jurors are the most judgmental when it comes to the alleged victim and her behavior. That this accuser was admittedly blackout drunk was always going to be played as a characterological flaw — because it works.
[…]
“The female foreperson had a smile,” says the source in the Manhattan DA’s office. “Traditionally, our harsher jurors tend to be women — they think, ‘I would never have been so drunk that I needed to call for help. I’d never have let those guys into my apartment.’ ”
[…]
Some female victims, he says, reject female doctors and investigators. He really has no idea why: “These things,” he says, “are so deep.”
“It’s a well-known fact that, in rape cases, you generally don’t want women on the jury,” says trial lawyer Lisa Bloom. “Women have said to me, ‘How could she have let herself get so drunk?’ Maybe it’s self-protective, the idea that this could never happen to you.”
REGRESSIVE ATTITUDES
The disappointed member of the DA’s office points to another case that wrapped up this week, in which she hopes women will take comfort: the conviction of a man in the rape of a 61-year-old woman in a nursing home. There were no witnesses to the rape; the woman hit the alarm button; she can’t speak, and gave her entire testimony by pointing at a chart of letters.
“That guy got seven years,” says the source.
But as Griffitts points out, that verdict, in many ways, illuminates the stubborn double-standard so common with sex crimes. “You always look at what the victim was doing,” she says, “which is why this case is different than an elderly lady laying in bed, doing nothing. ‘Blame the victim’ has not gone away. It’s just become a little more sophisticated.”
“The subtext is, ‘She deserved it,’ ” Bloom says. “That’s what’s so appalling.”
Along with sexual and societal mores, the legal system remains just as stagnant: The average sentence for a rape conviction is three years, maybe 11/2 with good behavior.
Moreno and Mata were found guilty of official misconduct and were fired by Commissioner Ray Kelly on Thursday. The victim, meanwhile, has a pending $57 million suit against the city, and the burden of proof is far less onerous than in a criminal trial. The reverberations of this case, however, are long-lasting, and all of our experts are concerned future victims will be far too demoralized to come forward.
[…]
“At least some will still come forward, knowing we’ll take their case seriously,” says the source with the DA. “People say that this can be such a setback. But we’d do this case again.”
Read the rest: Anatomy of a travesty
Tags: Maureen Callahan
