Posted on 06/19/2007 8:45:29 AM PDT by george76
Tory Bowen says she knows what happened to her ...
But she won’t be able tell her story to jurors... because a judge’s order bars witnesses from using words like “rape” and “sexual assault” in the trial of Pamir Safi, who is accused of sexually assaulting Bowen.
In my mind, what happened to me was rape,” said Bowen, 24. “I want the freedom to be able to point in court and say, ‘That man raped me.’”
Last month, Lancaster County District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront denied a motion by prosecutors that would have prohibited Safi’s attorneys from using words like “sex” and “intercourse” when describing the encounter between Safi and Bowen.
The Lancaster County Attorney’s Office had argued the words would imply Bowen consented to have sex.
Cheuvront also has sustained an earlier motion by defense attorneys barring the words “rape” and “sexual assault kit.”
In Bowen’s opinion, Cheuvront’s ruling means she will have to lie on the witness stand.
“The word ‘sex’ implies consent,” she said. “I never once would describe (what happened) as sex. He’s making me commit perjury.”
“I have a problem (with a judge) directing a witness, not the government, to say certain words. It impugns their candor, their credibility.”
Most of all, Murphy said, Bowen won’t be able to explain to jurors why she’s using clinical words — or, worse, words that imply consent — when she describes the encounter with Safi.
“Jurors will go back to their room and say, ‘She didn’t feel it was harmful. After all, she called it sex,’” Murphy said.
“It’s like saying to a robbery victim, ‘You can’t say you were robbed, because that’s a legal judgement. You can only say you gave your stuff to the defendant,’” she said. “That’s absurd.”
(Excerpt) Read more at journalstar.com ...
So what did happen?
there is more to this case...
There’s ways around it.
Safi and Bowen were strangers to each other when they met at a downtown Lincoln bar the night of Oct. 30, 2004. According to testimony from the first trial, the two had drinks and then left together after the bar closed at 1 a.m.
Bowen told an investigator the following day she could not remember most of the previous evening and that she did not willingly accompany Safi, according to a Lincoln Police report from November 2004.
She told the investigator she could only recall waking up in a strange apartment with an unknown man who was “having sexual intercourse with her.”
Now I ‘get it’.
I wish I could take a stick to the judge. Then later, I wish the police would refuse to allow the jolly jurist to describe himself getting sticked as “an attack” in their report. He could only describe it as “an encounter [with a stick]” or a “chance meeting [with a stick]”.
I wonder where the feminist groups are. Shouldn’t they be protesting this idiot judge’s ruling?
I have also begun to wonder if Mr. Safi is a practitioner of the ROP?
Deconstruction of the language - and the failure to have a national language - will destroy this country.
Judge “Jeffre”! Puhleeze!
” He raped her. “
This judge seems to have been studying the vocabulary of bill clinton.
More uncovered meat ?
Did he? There has already been one hung jury.
Woman picks up a man in a bar, leaves willingly, goes to his home, and then claims ‘rape’?
I’d say its he said she said....and she should have known better. Not saying it wasn’t ‘rape’ as defined, just that this is going to be almost impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
I don’t see anything remotely construed as physical abuse, like bruises being referenced. Or scratches on either one of them.
Appeal the findings and order on the defense motion...
Put the lib judge on notice...
Just guessing : He could have used a date rape drug...
or she is a ...?
just another example of how our judicial system has gone wrong. last night on o’reilly they were talking of a judge that gave a convicted rapist probation because he felt that he was depressed when he committed the crimes. people better wake up soon before it is too late, or is it to late already?
‘Just guessing : He could have used a date rape drug...’
Or she was buying her own drinks.....
‘or she is a ...?’
I won’t speculate. I just know if you pick a man up, go to his house, and then claim to ‘wake up to find him having sex’ with you....well, why did you go home with him, again?
Now, if a date rape drug is detected, I think that absolves her to a large degree. But if she's simply drinking too much, blacking out, and winding up in bed with a stranger ... well ...
Yep, I agree with Paglia.
If a date rape drug was present, that would have come out in the first trial. I also suspect the judge wouldn’t have insisted on these stringent rules of what can be stated, and what can’t.
Why doesn’t censorship apply? A government agent is restricting her speech.
Maybe the judge should be “gravitationally suspended” from an “arborescent form” that is “vertically superior” using a “vegetable-based cord.”
We need to know this guys history. If he is drugging his dates this may not be the first time.
No, it doesn't.
I wonder if she had any friends at the bar who could have helped her if she was drunk or if he put something into her drink ?
Drinking alone at 1 am as the bar closes...
Date rape drugs avoid all of that, please note her testimony that she awoke to find a man having sex with her.
Where is the ACLU ?
Very true. Read the clip below from a juror's handbook covering jury nullification.
Meanwhile, out in Nevada, a 50-year-old florist and grandmother almost landed in prison for her efforts to help spread the word to jurors. When her son went on trial for drug charges in federal court, Yvonne Regas and a friend papered the windshields of nearby parked cars, hoping to let the jurors learn the completely unexpected fact that her son faced 450 years in prison for a single drug transaction nine years earlier. Federal authorities charged her with jury tampering and obstruction of justice, but eventually dropped the charges. Presumably, they gave up hope of figuring out how they could get jurors to convict her without showing them the contents of the pamphlets she had been distributing--and then her jury would know the truth about nullification.
Who is Pamir Safi?
Somehow I don’t think he is that nice Norwegian boy from down the street.
And he probably isn’t Presbyterian, either.
Seven of the jurors at the first trial voted to convict Safi, but Chuck Morrison and four other jurors were either undecided or in favor of acquittal.
Yeah there is. Like “I was forced by Safi to have an intimate encounter that I objected to”. Geeze. There are lots of words in the English language.
Won’t hold up on appeal. Victim can testify to whatever she wants to, and the defense attorney can cross-examine her to cast doubt on various aspects of her testimony.
If he drugged one of her drinks, she didn't "leave willingly." To a rapist, that's the beauty of these drugs. You can just stroll your victim out of the bar and onlookers are none the wiser.
Happened to a friend of mine. Fortunately, someone she knew spoke to her in the parking lot, realized she wasn't tracking, and pulled her away from the guy. Tests confirmed she'd been drugged. She had no recollection whatsoever of leaving the bar.
Sounds like a loony judge, but it's nothing a clever person couldn't get around...
"When he shoved his genitalia into me without my permission, consent, or willingness, I..."
The jury will get it.
In Bowen’s opinion, Cheuvront’s ruling means she will have to lie on the witness stand. "The word ‘sex’ implies consent,” she said. “I never once would describe (what happened) as sex. He’s making me commit perjury.”
Hyperbole, but that's nothing new for a courtroom debate. He made a stupid ruling (probably while trying his best to make sure that there are no grounds for appeal). Take it and move on. Use it later (in your own appeal) if need be.
Seems Mike Tyson was put in prison for exactly the same thing. When a woman says stop or no, no matter when she says it, it means stop. Not stopping can get you 20 years.
Many of the date-rape drugs leave the system so quickly that if you don't test for them within a few hours, you can't find them.
Don’t go to a bar alone if you are going to get so drunk you don’t remember where you went and with whom.
‘Drinking alone at 1 am as the bar closes...’
Yep, bad things happen on a routine basis in such situations.
‘Date rape drugs avoid all of that, please note her testimony that she awoke to find a man having sex with her.’
Uh huh, so does a ball peen hammer, but as we see neither a hammer nor a date rape drug is alleged.
Please note she picked up a man in a bar, left for his home at 3 AM, and then claims to have woken up during sex.
‘If he drugged one of her drinks,’
Yep, and if he beat her senseless that would also apply. If he held a gun to her head, that would work as well. If he tied her to a boat and dragged her home via a local waterway that would also qualify.
Lets see...nope, nothing to suggest a ‘drug’...nor a beating....nor a gun to the head....nor a boat come to think of it.
And thats why the case ended in a hung jury.
I think rapists should be imprisoned for life, btw.
I also think personal responsibility is personal responsibility...and this young woman errored in that.
Maybe. The fact she picked him up, left the bar at 3 AM and went home with him, apparently quite willingly is why the case is being handled the way it is.
Under the circumstances, I can understand the judge not allowing ‘rape’ to be used, since it clearly hasn’t been established, and only alleged the morning after she went to his home willingly.
What makes you think he did not stop?
‘Many of the date-rape drugs leave the system so quickly that if you don’t test for them within a few hours, you can’t find them.’
Not ‘next morning’ quick. Sorry, there is nothing to indicate she did anything more than got drunk on her own accord, picked up a man and went home with him.
And where, exactly, are posters getting the notion a date rape drug was used in the first place? There is nothing to indicate anything of that nature.
Rape IS sexual intercourse without the woman's consent. And since she was apparently under the influence, having blacked out quite a bit, it is still rape because she didn't have full control of her faculties.
I just am astounded the judge won't let her use the word to describe what happened to her.
Every day I think I've heard it all, then something like this comes along.
Yes, next morning quick. Roofies can be detected for up to 72 hours, but GHB, the most common rape drug these days, often can't be detected in as little as 4 hours after ingestion.
"Bowen, a 2005 graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said after a night of partying at Brothers Bar and Grill, she woke up in bed with then 31-year-old Pamir Safi, a man Bowen claimed she could not remember meeting.
Two years after reporting the alleged first-degree sexual assault, the case of State v. Pamir Safi went to trial in October 2006. But on Nov. 6, the judge ruled the case a mistrial after the jury could not declare a verdict.
Bowen said her story began on Oct. 30, 2004, when she and several of her friends went to a costume party at Brothers Bar and Grill, 1339 O St. Bowen alleges she remembered having some drinks with her friends, and then nothing until the she woke the next morning.
"I have no clue who this person was," Bowen said. "I've never gone home with anyone from a bar - that isn't me.""
One was what she told the hospital nurse after the assault about when in the morning it occurred.
"The nurse testified Tory said it was 2 o’clock in the morning,” Foreman said. “She had her brain on enough that she knew the time.”
Safi testified he and Bowen had sex shortly after they arrived at his apartment and then fell asleep. When he awoke sometime after 7 a.m., he said, he began to have sex with her again, but she stopped him.
How does this square with,
"Bowen alleges she remembered having some drinks with her friends, and then nothing until the she woke the next morning."?
‘Rape IS sexual intercourse without the woman’s consent. ‘
Yep.
“And since she was apparently under the influence,”
Yep.
“having blacked out quite a bit,”
Nobody knows for sure.
“it is still rape because she didn’t have full control of her faculties.”
Only if she’s telling the truth. This is he said, she said.
I don’t know if she was raped, or just very very embarrassed the next morning at her own behavior.
Hence the hung jury the first time around, hence the curious judicial ruling.
‘Not ‘next morning’ quick.
Yes, next morning quick. Roofies can be detected for up to 72 hours, but GHB, the most common rape drug these days, often can’t be detected in as little as 4 hours after ingestion.’
Excluding her statement, do you have anything to support a ‘date rape drug’ in this matter?
Me neither. And its pretty obvious the first jury didn’t find it as well, hence the hung jury.
Here’s an interesting story with interviews with the first (hung) jury.
http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2006/11/12/local/doc45565b0e3336f182485880.txt
On the one hand, the guy’s an Army reservist whose deployment to Iraq was put on hold until this case is resolved. Two other girls who claimed he got them drunk and raped them (but neither case led to charges) testified at his trial against him.
On the other is the victim, dressed like Jessica Rabbit for a Halloween party (what did Carlos Mencia call Halloween, “National Dress Like A Whore Day”?) who now works for the College Republicans in DC. The jury thought some of her testimony wasn’t credible (for example, she claimed not to rememeber anything from the time she left the bar until the next morning. But the ER nurse testified the victim said she remembered having sex when they got to the defendant’s hosue at 2am. So the jurors voting for acquittal that she consented and then woke up with buyer’s remorse.
From the evidence, I don’t know what happened. But its like in baseball, ties go to the runner-— if there’s reasonable doubt, you have to vote the defendant not guilty.
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