New Law - Just Desserts

[Rook]

Listening to the radio today I heard a story about a man who spent seven months in jail convicted of raping his on and off girlfriend. He proved his innocence by showing the court letters he receive in jail from his girlfriend talking about how much she loves and misses him and wants to move on.

The courts are now trying her for perjury and contemplating a law that would require her to stand trial for the crimes that he was accused of.

I have thought of a simpler, more streamlined version to what they are talking about.

The Law of Just Desserts. If someone who currently serving punishment for a crime that one has accused them of can prove, at a later date, unarguably of their innocence; the accuser of said crime must serve out the entirety of the accused's sentence.

So I put it up to vote and opinion.

[Gelare]

Oct 8, 2008 15:59:48 GMT -5 Rook said:

The Law of Just Desserts. If someone who currently serving punishment for a crime that one has accused them of can prove, at a later date, unarguably beyond a reasonable doubt of their innocence; the accuser of said crime must serve out the entirety of the accused's sentence.

To decide whether this would be a good law or not, let's consider what the consequences might be. First, a reduction in criminal cases, since people will be loath to accuse those whom they are not absolutely sure committed a crime. Also, assuming this happens (which it might not, I don't know) a reduction in the number of people accused of crimes which the accuser knows they did not commit.

The second point above would be unambiguously good - it does no one any good to try innocent people for crimes they didn't commit, so reducing the incentive to do so out of revenge by introducing the possibility of severe retribution (or just desserts, as the name of the law implies) would reduce the incidence of this useless activity.

The first point, however, is not as positive. If people who accuse others of crimes might suffer the fate they're trying to impose on criminals, people who have actually had crimes inflicted upon them will be very wary of reporting it and accusing anyone. Say you have this girl, as in the original example, who gets raped by her boyfriend. She hopes to turn him in to the police, to get help and justice. Now imagine that if her boyfriend can manage to shake off the charges she brings against him, she goes to jail as a rapist. Without going into the emotional details of feeling trapped, alone, degraded, whatever, such a law would severely discourage the reporting of cases which the state, even if they're false leads, would probably do well to pursue.


I would wonder, though, how it might affect frivolous lawsuits if whichever side was ruled against, plaintiff or defendant, had to pay a portion of the other side's legal fees (say a fixed amount, like $1000, or a fixed percentage, like 50%). It seems like that might make it easier for individuals to sue companies with vast legal departments, and would cut down on people attempting to use the legal system to squeeze money out of people when it might not be wholly deserved.

[Rook]

To be honest, I had thought about the former example of people being wary of accusing someone of something for fear of going to jail themselves. But the law does not say that if you accuse someone and they are not convicted, you're tried for that crime. The law says that if, after being sentenced, there is undeniable proof that the accuser had lied and had the accused imprisoned out of malice, that there would be said retribution.

A good amendment to clear that confusion, and that fear of coming forward with crimes you're not sure of their guilt, would be:

The Law of Just Desserts. If someone currently serving punishment for a crime can prove at a later date, unarguably, of their innocence and that the accuser acted in full knowledge of the accused innocence; the accuser of said crime must serve out the entirety of the accused's sentence.

In your scenario the girlfriend accuses the boyfriend of rape, and the boyfriend shakes off the charges. In that scenario there would be no legal retribution to the girlfriend. But, if the boyfriend was jailed and she was caught bragging about how she got him jailed or, as in the former example, sent him love letters admitting her perjury she would serve his sentence. This is similar to the people who get paid disability and are secretly filmed working on their roof or climbing mountains on their vacations. It's fraud, and it should be punished.

Now about lawsuits, I'm not sure if that would help people fight large legal departments. Think of it, if the individual gets a lawyer that costs $1000 and the big legal department is ruled against. The corporation only owes the individual $500. But if the individual is ruled against they have to pay 50% of the legal firm's $500,000 legal fees. It would make it riskier for an individual to sue companies. But that might be a good thing considering there would be more inhibition to attempting to fleece large companies for personal gain. Normally you stand to lose the legal fees of one lawyer, not the large fees of a companies legal department.

[Gelare]

Oct 9, 2008 14:02:14 GMT -5 Rook said:

The Law of Just Desserts. If someone currently serving punishment for a crime can prove at a later date, unarguably, of their innocence and that the accuser acted in full knowledge of the accused's innocence; the accuser of said crime must serve out the entirety of the accused's sentence.

Unarguably is pretty much never a word you want in any law, because that's exactly what lawyers do: they argue cases. If there's a trial, there's an argument. For criminal trials, the U.S. uses the standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt", which, for the time being, we could adopt here. (The reasons why criminal trials have a standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" but civil cases have a standard of "upon preponderance of the evidence" is actually quite interesting, but, right now, irrelevant.)

So we'll say that the accused is later acquitted (which means the prosecution didn't have enough evidence to keep him in jail after he appealed) and that he can himself show beyond a reasonable doubt that the accuser acted in malice and in full knowledge of the accused's innocence.

Our choices are basically the following:
1. Nothing happens to the accuser. Life goes on.
2. The accuser is brought up on charges of perjury.
3. The accuser suffers the same full punishment as the accused would have. (Just desserts.)

Personally, I think option #2 is the correct one - and it sounds like that's what's happening in the example you gave. Trying to get an innocent sap sent to jail on murder charges is a heinous thing to do, and should probably be discouraged by law (in the form of, say, calling it perjury and putting people on trial for it). But is it as bad as actually committing murder? Probably not.

Oct 9, 2008 14:02:14 GMT -5 Rook said:

Now about lawsuits, I'm not sure if that would help people fight large legal departments. Think of it, if the individual gets a lawyer that costs $1000 and the big legal department is ruled against. The corporation only owes the individual $500. But if the individual is ruled against they have to pay 50% of the legal firm's $500,000 legal fees. It would make it riskier for an individual to sue companies. But that might be a good thing considering there would be more inhibition to attempting to fleece large companies for personal gain. Normally you stand to lose the legal fees of one lawyer, not the large fees of a companies legal department.

There are some circumstances I could imagine where it could be argued that having a percentage of legal costs being paid for, or some specific amount per month the proceedings have gone on or something, is a good idea, but to simplify it, let's say the losing party in any civil case outside of small claims court (which means any case involving more than $5000) has to pay $1000 toward the legal expenses of the party ruled in favor of.

Now, lawyers, like most things, have diminishing marginal returns. So if one person hires a lawyer for $2000, and the other person hires a lawyer for $10000, the second lawyer isn't five times as awesome as the first - he's maybe twice or three times as awesome, or something. So even though the massive corporate legal department spends, say, five times as much as Joe Shmuck (because remember, they don't bring their full legal might to bear on each minor case, that would be wasteful), their legal team isn't five times as good. If the company wins, they only get a tenth of their legal fees reimbursed. But if Joe wins, he gets fully half the money he spent on hiring a lawyer to fight for him back.

I think you can see where this would be going, blah blah, even the playing field, but I'm not sure if it'd actually work; that is, it might make more problems than it solves. Just something I was musing about.

[Rook]

So your contention is that it's not as severe a crime to intentionally condemn an innocent person than to commit the crime in question. As a matter of honor and honesty, I believe it is. That puts us at an impasse.

I look forward to the opinions of the rest.

[Nesslandria Haneh]

Laws are generally left a little ambiguous so that they can be interpreted to fit each situation. I would shy away from defining the law too tightly lest some hot shot lawyer will find a loop hole to exploit, etc.

It can be difficult to prove that someone intentionally 'framed' someone else for a crime. Usually, the one doing the framing is the actual guilty party, so not much of a problem exists there if the 'framer' is found out and the accused cleared. But in the case of the girl accusing her boyfriend of rape, that can be tricky. What if she believes that he truly did rape her in that instance, but they make up and she decided that she could forgive him and that the jail time served was enough 'penance.' Then she did not lie or intentionally commit perjury, but she would still get nailed by the 'just desserts' law. The law (in general) is meant to protect the innocent, even if it sometimes fails. I'm with Gelare on this; there are just too many variables, hence the charge of perjury exists to punish those who give false testimony. As it has been said before, better 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man be falsely imprisoned. That is how American law operates. I'm more of the mind that it's better a few innocent men suffer than a single guilty man go free.

[Gelare]

Oct 10, 2008 20:24:28 GMT -5 Nesslandria Haneh said:

As it has been said before, better 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man be falsely imprisoned. That is how American law operates. I'm more of the mind that it's better a few innocent men suffer than a single guilty man go free.

"Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." ~Sir William Blackstone

The Countess brings up another interesting point: what should be the ratio of criminals going free to false convictions? It is one thing to say that 100 guilty men should go free rather than one innocent man be wongly imprisoned. It is an entirely different thing to say that ten, or "a few" guilty men should go free rather than one innocent man be wrongly imprisoned. Some tyrannical dictators would say that enforcing order is so important that we should endure multiple wrongful convictions for the sake of correctly punishing one criminal who might otherwise go free. And some would, surely, like to say that we should not allow any innocents to come to harm via the legal system.

To get one thing out of the way first: let us assume we have a legal system. This system is run by humans and based on evidence. Given that this system is run by humans (who are fallible) and is based on evidence (which are not necessarily facts), there is a probability p that the court will make the wrong choice - either letting a guilty man go free, or jailing an innocent man. In order to avoid wrongfully convicting any innocent men at all, you can only try zero people in these courts, because if you try to try any positive number of people for crimes, each one has a probability p that he will be wrongfully convicted. Also, in order to avoid letting any guilty men go free, you must try everyone in these courts - and convict them all! - because otherwise each person who should go to jail has a chance p of not going.

Again, courts, as a human construct, are necessarily fallible. So the question, if we want a court system at all, cannot be whether we wrongfully convict anybody, but rather what ratio of criminals going free to innocents going to jail we want. Of course, not having a court system is totally an option, and that does allow you to avoid the problem altogether. But then what? What do you all think? Let no guilty man go free? Let no innocent man be unjustly harmed by the system meant to uphold justice? Better that ten guilty men go free? A hundred? One?

One last point: the Countess mentioned the American legal system. I don't know the exact statistics offhand, but I'm pretty sure fewer than a hundred guilty men go free for each wrongful conviction - while it's a broad range, I would put the number somewhere in the 5-25 range.

[Rook]

The legal system is variable. The laws that are set down are the laws that all need to follow throughout the Kingdom. They are enforced in each Barony, County and Principality as the Baron(esses), Count(esses) and Prince(esses) deem appropriate be that deputizing citizens and appointing judges, developing citizen watch systems or acting as the magistrate themselves.

Personally I believe perjury is too slight a punishment. If the death penalty is involved in a case where you wantingly convicted an innocent man you've done more than simply lied in court, you've tried to have that person killed. sending a person to jail takes their entire life away, it robs them of their freedom. It's much worse than making up things so that you can get the money in a lawsuit, it's condemning someone to some form of punishment. If it can be proved that you did it intentionally you deserve to have the same punishment, to go through what it is you sent someone through out of whatever spite or revenge the accuser was working under.

And in regards to the Countess Nesslandria's comments about forgiveness. First, rape is not something you can feel after the fact. You can feel coerced or tricked, sure, but it's only rape if you have refused, said no, before it's happened and then it was forced upon you against your will. Feeling guilty, or after the fact thinking that you shouldn't have or didn't want it to have happened is no rape.

Second, if she came to forgive him than that information would come out in the evidence, namely the letters and phone calls between them. There is a different between 'I forgive you, I love you again.' And 'Forgive me for what I did I love you.'

[Nesslandria Haneh]

Gelare, you are an encyclopedia of knowledge. ;D

I think if the death sentence is involved and the perjury is discovered, a charge for conspiracy to commit murder or attempted murder or something like that should be added on.

As for the rape subject, I don't think I explained myself very well. It's obvious to the victim when a rape has occured because it is a violent crime. But there are those out there, in instances where they were shouldn't have, were reluctant, or later regretted the act of having sex, may wonder if that act should be considered rape. I know to rational minds there is no question as to if there was consent, but intimacy and sex throw a wrench into even the most rational of minds.

Battered women usually have very low and fragile self esteem, so I don't see it as being too far fetched for a battered woman who was raped by her boyfriend to feel guilty for that boyfriend to be punished. They may feel that they are not worth the 'suffering' of that boyfriend while he's in jail, so she may send letters apologizing to him and asking for his forgiveness. In that case, the boyfriend is a worthless human being already, so he might not feel too bad about turning the law around on his girlfriend to 'put her in her place.'

[Rook]

As to your first point, the law, as I have been informed, is designed to protect men who were not refused sex before it happened from being charged with rape by women regretting the intimacy later. It is a boundary I strongly agree with as well. You see, if someone is reluctant, but does not refuse, than it is not rape. Now, if you coerced them with chemical influences, blackmail or threats of violence than that comes under the rape category. It is rape if you force them to say yes just as much as if you ignore the word yes and have your way.

Agreed, sex and intimacy, any emotion really, makes black and white rationalism extremely difficult. It is a hard job to put objectivity to a subjective matter. But it is hardly fair to a man to be accused of rape because the woman, who consented at the time, later thought it should be rape. That's like a bank giving stacks of money to a man and then thinking better of it and charging him with theft.

As to your second point, both situations and reasons you have presented about forgiving women be corresponding with their rapists while their rapist is in prison are valid. Both those scenarios are possible, but are not threatened by the just desserts law. The defining difference between both of your points and the woman who provoked this discussion is that if you follow the letters of your examples the woman forgives the man of the crimes before the law has finished serving its punishment. In the case I cited for the inspiration of the law the woman admitted her perjury through her correspondence. A man cannot turn her letters against her if her letters don't specify that she lied about his guilt. This law would be in place to add severity to the crime of perjury for liars who have forced innocent people to serve punishment.

[Nesslandria Haneh]

Oct 18, 2008 1:13:45 GMT -5 Rook said:

But it is hardly fair to a man to be accused of rape because the woman, who consented at the time, later thought it should be rape. That's like a bank giving stacks of money to a man and then thinking better of it and charging him with theft.

I whole-heartedly agree. Too many people rush into sex when they're unsure and unready.