Another loss for the taxpayers

A Philadelphia jury has found the two LaSalle University basketball players (in a case I've posted about twice) not guilty of rape:

A jury yesterday found two former La Salle University basketball players not guilty of raping a 19-year-old woman last year, but the judge rebuked the pair for their behavior.

"This court does not condone your actions, or the lack of respect you showed" the woman, Common Pleas Court Judge Shelley Robins New told Gary Neal, 21, and Michael Cleaves, 23, moments after jurors announced their decision.

Nor do I condone their actions. But to call drunken sex rape is to torture the meaning of the word.

Not only did this woman get drunk, she went to the athlete's bedroom, refused to leave with her friends who asked her to leave, and then sat on a man's lap and told him that she'd performed oral sex "on a basketball player they both knew." She didn't report the "rape" until a considerable time later, and her story changed repeatedly. According to the Inquirer, "she refused to directly answer questions. She was also combative with the defense attorneys." The trial testimony provides ample evidence from which a jury might have concluded that, far from being a victim, she'd played a major role in setting in motion the whole chain of events:

During the graphic and explicit two-week trial, members of the La Salle women's basketball team testified that in the days before the alleged assault, the woman had suggested that the group obtain alcohol. Earlier that day, witnesses said, she had examined a photograph of the men's basketball team and said she wanted to meet the players. And before she started drinking that night, she got a double-shot glass from her car.

Two La Salle women's basketball players testified that they believed that the woman was trying to "hook up" with Neal and Cleaves.

What I don't understand is why the DA spent so much time and taxpayers' money on such an obvious loser of a case.

(I suspect the DA saw it as a winner regardless of result.)

posted by Eric on 11.05.05 at 07:36 AM





TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://classicalvalues.com/cgi-bin/pings.cgi/2995






Comments

You can test whether you are by impulse a gynosexual or an androsexual by your reaction to the phrase "women's basketball team" or "men's basketball team".

Had the women's basketball team been exclusively gynosexual women, and had the men's basketball team been exclusively androsexual men, none of this nonsense would ever have happened.

Now, why didn't I think of that?

(Steven, sometimes you're more right than I am!)

:)

Eric Scheie   ·  November 5, 2005 12:34 PM

Dear Eric:

Thank you!

I'm always right -- except when I'm wrong. When I'm right, I'm very, very right. When I'm wrong, I'm very, very wrong.

Yeah, I'd say justice was done here.

AS for the prosecutor, he probably figured he'd be politically screwed if he chose not to prosecute a rape case; I don't blame him. Also, he may not have known how lame this case was until well into the proceedings. Maybe it took a full-blown proceeding to bring out all the details. If the issues you rightly cite were highlighted for the public, then it probably wasn't such as waste after all.

Raging Bee   ·  November 7, 2005 10:21 AM

I Am Charlotte Simmons!
Are you kidding me? Can we all kowtow to Thomas Wolfe now, please?
I mean even the correct phrase!!! "Hook up!!!"

Harkonnendog   ·  November 7, 2005 07:33 PM


March 2007
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
        1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31

ANCIENT (AND MODERN)
WORLD-WIDE CALENDAR


Search the Site


E-mail




Classics To Go

Classical Values PDA Link



Archives




Recent Entries



Links



Site Credits