(For the overseas crew, for context…) The New Zealand media has been dominated over the last few days with the outcome of a major trial. Three police, including the current Assistant Commissioner, were accused of a very unpleasant group sexual assault some 20 years ago. They were found not guilty. The same three men were recently found not guilty of another, similar, sexual assault. It has come out since the verdict that two of the accused were already in prison, serving time for a third (similar) sexual assault for which they had been convicted.<\/i>
\nThe legal system is not designed to protect women. It is designed to protect everyone<\/i>.
\nIt sucks that it has to be this way, but on the evidence I’ve seen, Clint Rickards should<\/i> be walking free. The evidence of guilt is simply not strong enough to be beyond reasonable doubt.
\nAllegations of sexual assault and of rape are always hard to prosecute. Such allegations often come down to contrary versions of events (“It was rape” vs. “It was consensual”). Choosing between them is a conundrum the legal system is ill-equipped to solve.
\nThe law has to look after everyone. Its fundamental workings must generalise across every kind of transgression and still deliver acceptable results. It is wrongheaded to be disappointed in the legal system for failing the complainants in these cases. As far as I’m concerned, the system worked admirably. The verdict may taste unpleasant, but it indicates that our legal system is doing exactly what it needs to be doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(For the overseas crew, for context…) The New Zealand media has been dominated over the last few days with the outcome of a major trial. Three police, including the current Assistant Commissioner, were accused of a very unpleasant group sexual assault some 20 years ago. They were found not guilty. The same three men were … Continue reading The Law Does What It Does<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-83","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}