> I agree that you can't run a decent criminal justice system on presumption. OTOH, the pragmatic decision not to prosecute in cases where dragging the complainant's name through the mud is likely to succeed makes it possible to rape with impunity if:
> --you rape a woman who survives as an immigrant by hook or by crook
> --you rape a woman who "improved" the truth to make her asylum application more likely to be approved (so very like police "testilying")
> --you rape a prostitute
> --you rape a woman who has had a lot of sexual partners
> --you rape a woman who is kinky
> --you rape a woman who dresses provocatively
> --you rape a woman who likes to flirt
> etc.
>
> So, given this dilemma, what do you do?
This works fine as a hypothetical if-then statement, but it has nothing to do with the DSK case.
This case didn't fail because the complainant's name was dragged through the mud. Nor did it fail because she lied on her asylum application, dressed provocatively, was kinky, worked as prostitute or any of these other reasons you mention. As a prosecution source told the NYT the other day, the NY prosecutor's office wins rape convictions all the time where the complainant is a prostitute or a drug addict. And in this case, the prosecutors knew from Day 1 that the woman's asylum application contained lies, but it was considered a non-issue -- they confidently expected any jury to view that as irrelevant.
This case failed because the complainant proved to be such a proficient fabricator that the prosecutors - who initially had no doubts about her reliability - eventually realized that they themselves did not believe her story beyond a reasonable doubt.
SA