I think we tend to underestimate the difficulty in working with rape victims in the role of either defense or prosecutor. I worked with several teens who were the victims of sexual abuse and rape (mostly girls) and was astounded at the degree to which (1) they felt they had caused the rape to happen regardless of how ridiculous that idea is given the actual circumstances and (2) the sense of guilt they felt that the perpetrator was doing time. I think these have got to be some of the hardest cases to try no matter what side of the judge you’re standing on.

Absolutely not. The judicial system has never approached perfection.

# Do you believe that prosecutors are inclined to bend the truth?

Absolutely. No one has yet convinced me that district attorneys at any level can completely divorce their jobs from the politics, and politics is synonymous with “bending the truth”. Throw judges into that as well.

These are the same answers I would have given before the Duke Rape Case, as are the following for the first three questions.

#1. Even true victims intentionally distort the actions in their descriptions. Lying is an inherent part of being human.

#2. I have no reason to think otherwise. Without doubt, both blacks and whites lack credibility, and one is probably even less credible than the other (that is simple statistics). Which one? I don’t know, thus by default that I am white, I trust whites more because I understand the culture more and I believe I am more likely to detect a falsehood.

#3. Yes, and to abstract this: Blacks are disposed to bring false charges against whites, just as whites are disposed to bring false charges against blacks.

Is Thompson asking those questions as a defender or a prosecutor? The link to the article is dead.

The law professors blog deals with this issue and the link is below.
More at http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/crimprof_blog/2004/12/2_false_rape_st.html

I think our baseline beliefs about rape can come from one of two places (1) empirical data – some sort of study or research we might have read and (2) experience – either (a) our own, (b) that of people we know, or (c) general experience reflected in media (news, television, movies, etc.).

The issue isn’t new, of course, but a false accusation of rape that gets as much coverage as this has may change the calculus of enough jurors to have measurable effects on outcome. The tough case that went one day yesterday might go the other way today if the baseline assumption of enough jurors moves from “Why would a woman lie about being raped?” to “women lie about being raped all the time.”

The actual probability, whatever that is, of a false accusation of rape hasn’t changed, but the perception has. The question is whether it’s troublesome. It certainly is to me.