The 6th Circuit got it right again! The same court which sided with persons required to register as sex offenders in Does v. Snyder, issued another well-reasoned decision in Doe v. Baum, et al.
The case concerned the “he said/she said” situations which can arise with sexual assault accusations on University campuses. In this case; the University of Michigan. The accused (male) and the alleged victim (female) were at a fraternity party, there was drinking, the two went upstairs and had sex. The female later insisted she was too drunk to consent, while the male countered that the sex was consensual and that she was not that drunk. More than a dozen witnesses testified – the female witnesses corroborated her side of the story, the male witnesses, his.
At the end of the day, nobody truly knows except the two involved. The case does not concern the criminal aspect of the process, but the procedural aspect. The University took the side of the alleged victim and kicked the male out of school, but refused to allow him to cross-examine his accuser first. The male sued the school for violating his due process rights and discrimination.
Due process is the constitutional “right to be heard”, which includes the right to cross-examine your accuser. Since this case involved he said/she said, the credibility of what “he” or “she” said is critical. The discrimination, he argued, arose when the University took the side of all the female witnesses over the male witnesses.
In today’s climate of “sexual harassment hysteria”, entities are so scared of backlash that they seem to employ a take-no-chances approach and just believe the accuser and sacrifice the accused. The 6th Circuit, in essence, said that cannot happen. “being labeled a sex offender by a university has both an immediate and lasting impact on a student’s life….The student may be forced to withdraw from his classes and move out of his university housing. His personal relationships might suffer. And he could face difficulty obtaining educational and employment opportunities down the road” The cost to the University in facilitating the cross examination is insignificant in contrast to the cost to the accused for not having that opportunity.
A copy of the decision can be found here: https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/UofM.pdf
Can it be that Victimhood in America was just curtailed a bit? Oh my. We’re getting common sense back. Thank God for these lawsuits.
Good decision.. although students are the reflection here it’s every single registrant that is affected by the repercussions. Its not a question of maybe or we might suffer societal problems its a stigma that leaves a indelible mark on the registrant forever! JEV
The way that colleges have sided with alleged victims at the expense of alleged perpetrators on college campuses, with virtually no due process rights for the accused to defend HIMSELF, has bothered me for some time. In a recent case in my home area, a young woman falsely claimed to have been raped at the local community college.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/06/19/michigan-woman-who-lied-about-being-raped-on-college-campus-sentenced-to-jail.html
While no one was ever named as a suspect, one guy I knew who was on parole and attending classes there did have to put up with being questioned intensively by police. Ironically, the fact that he was forced to wear a GPS while on parole gave him alibi evidence. But it was just one of many articles I have read the past 15 years about women making false rape allegations. Yet juries and colleges seem to always believe the accuser instead of the accused, despite the lack of any physical evidence.
I also wonder why intoxication renders a female incapable of giving sexual consent, but the same does not hold true for males. More than once, I have seen a sober woman drag an intoxicated guy into a bedroom for sex. Yet it would be hard to get a prosecutor to charge her with rape, and even harder to get a jury to convict her. It’s getting to the point where you almost want to wear a body camera 24 hours a day because it’s the only way you can defend yourself against false allegations.
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Not once but twice now. More arsenal for our cases down here.
About time somebody got it. Or should I say got it again? He said/she said was never enough to convict in years past. The problem with today’s procedure of automatically believe the accusation and the presumption that a sex assault investigation that didn’t result in guilt of the accused wasn’t taken seriously is that it’s WAAAAAAAY to open to false accusations and abuses of the system.
I wish all courts can rule with reason like the 6th circuit court does.