On Aug 24, 2011, at 9:11 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> Doug: "Well, yeah, but how do you think a trial would go if the only
> witness had completely concocted a story about a gang rape in her
> past?"
>
The DAs said that would have been no barrier in itself--that past lies
don't, in their practice, exclude testimony they believe to be
truthful about a current crime. What made this extortionist a totally
incredible witness was a stream of lies told to the police and the
grand jury under oath and under penalty of perjury about her own
actions in the immediate context of her invented rape. Most damning
of all was her lie about not returning to the "crime scene" after DSK
had gone down to check out of the hotel. When she told that story she
didn't realize that her card key contained a complete record of where
and when she had used it to enter (but of course not to leave) every
room she entered. Confronted with that fact she invented a second
series of lies, and then a third story line. But the devastating fact
is that she had the opportunity and the means (semen and skin
particles from DSK's sexual encounter with a call girl shown in hotel
records to have lasted from about 2 to 3:30 am) to fix the "forensic
evidence" needed to buttress her concoction.
> [WS:] I think the case would have had a very different outcome if the
> defendant were not some stinking rich/high status bastard
All those pejoratives simply denote anyone able to hire competent legal counsel for defense against false accusations. DSK is, in fact, not rich at all. His wife is an heiress to the Sinclair Oil fortune and she is paying for everything (but stands to recover it, maybe much more, from a damage suit against the City of New York for false arrest and false imprisonment and against its billionaire mayor for defamation).
The DAs' statement tried to cover their ass by alleging that there was some sort of sexual encounter between DSK and the extortionist, just not one that could be shown to be involuntary, on the basis of the phony "forensic evidence" that she had fixed. Even that is virtually incredible. Who can believe that a man in his mid sixties, who had had sexual intercourse less than 9 hours earlier, who was still naked from his shower and hurrying to dress and pack for a lunch with his daughter and a flight to an international meeting, would suddenly be so aroused by the accidental intrusion of a room-cleaner that he would become erect, chase and physically assault her, and even ejaculate-- all in the less-than-seven minutes between her first entry into his suite and his matter of fact call to his daughter telling he was running a bit late? Only someone who can also "believe" with the DAs that a universally known international figure, required by his job to be present in the US most of the time, and with his passport in the hands of the NY police, would somehow flee to France (by swimming the Atlantic?) and never be seen again.
> - probably
> prosecutors would have offered some "plea bargaining" agreement in
> exchange for a more lenient sentence, as it is often the case.
> Prosecutors enjoy a wide range of discretion in these matters, no?
If they did (as at some very early stage they might well have) it would certainly have been dismissed with contempt. French standards of justice condemn such "discretion" whose essential purpose is to coerce false confessions. Not to mention that Polanski has shown that even a coerced plea bargain can be torn up by American prosecutors and judges without even the shred of an excuse.
> In any case, whether Strauss-Kahn was "pilloried" by the gutter press
> or got away with a crime thanks to his status and wealth,
Why the disjunction? Any one who walked by a NYC newsstand with open eyes knows there's no "whether" about it. And its just stupid to suggest that he "got away with a crime" when there was according to all the evidence no crime and he was subjected to very severe punishment for no crime at all.
> the fact of
> the matter is that while the US has the highest per capita prison
> population in world - the rich are rarely prosecuted and almost never
> put behind bars in this country, except when they screw other rich.
> Can anyone deny that? Shane?
why should anyone deny the undeniable?
Meanwhile I repeat my original question: As to the "poor" (she with $60.000 in undisclosed bank accounts from mysterious sources) getting "prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law" we have here innumerable documented instances of lies "under oath and on penalty of perjury" and of "fraud": we have here facts known by the DAs for months now with absolutely no arrest, absolutely no prosecution. Will there now, or ever, be a prosecution? or will this "poor" be let off with a quiet trip back to Guinea? Wojtek?
Shane Mage “The law is like a spider’s web; the small are caught and the great tear it up.”
Solon