Trevor Bauer situation…anyone following this? (2 Viewers)

[Judge Smails]

I don't feel bad for that guy.

Edit: his track record before that incident doesn't give him the benefit of the doubt for me.

hmmmm. I don't feel bad for Wander Franco. I do feel bad for how Bauer was completely jobbed on this. People know that Bauer is an odd duck and therefore were quick to crucify him. This is something he could have been criminally charged with let alone lose his livelihood and career. She should get the book throw at her. I ****ing hate gold diggers

 

[IvanKaramazov]

I shed no tears for him either, as Bauer is probably a jack-***.

But I'm always surprised by the double standard in these he-said, she-said situations.

When a woman is assaulted, we as society have been taught (rightly!) to ignore here past reputation and focus solely on the relevant events of the accusation, even if she's been known as an uber-promiscuous person in the past.

We don't extend this same set of rules to guys like Bauer. He's been known as a creeper-type who likes to have rough sex with likely many women, etc. We totally allow that to affect our judgement when accusations are thrown about. We shouldn't.

I disagree with this 100%. We should obviously take people's past behavior into account in situations like this. Courts shouldn't, but the rest of us should.

The bolded is at the core of what I'm talking about. Why should we take past behavior into account if courts do not? Not saying I disagree, but I'd like to know why?

Because we're not courts of law, and it's a category mistake to treat those two things as similar.

We (rightly IMO) bend over backwards to give criminal defendants every benefit of the doubt, and every procedural rule leans toward "don't send innocent people to prison." That's why we have things like the exclusionary rule, "beyond a reasonable doubt," unanimous juries, and so on. But when people like you and me form our opinions about what probably went down, we're not sending anyone to prison, so there's no need to bend over backwards like that.

For example, OJ Simpson was acquitted of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson. But we all know he did it, and it's fine for us to understand that he's a double-murderer even if one particular jury disagreed. Given the way we designed our justice system, some guilty people will go free. We know that. We don't have to pretend that they're literally innocent.

With regard to past behavior, I think it's fine for courts to ignore this, because again we're giving the defendant the presumption of innocence. But if a dead body turned up in OJ Simpson's house and his Isotoner gloves had the victim's blood on them, I'd feel comfortable tentatively assuming that he killed again. So would you and everybody else.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

I don't feel bad for that guy.

Edit: his track record before that incident doesn't give him the benefit of the doubt for me.

hmmmm. I don't feel bad for Wander Franco. I do feel bad for how Bauer was completely jobbed on this. People know that Bauer is an odd duck and therefore were quick to crucify him. This is something he could have been criminally charged with let alone lose his livelihood and career. She should get the book throw at her. I ****ing hate gold diggers

I genuinely don't understand why this sort of thing doesn't lead to prosecution and long prison sentences, comparable to those we would hand out for rape. It's a malicious attempt to ruin somebody's life, like extortion dialed up to 10. And it makes life worse for actual victims when so many of these allegations turn out to be lies. There is a clear social incentive to punish this behavior severely, yet we just don't.

 

[rockaction]

There is a clear social incentive to punish this behavior severely, yet we just don't.

Handing out jail time for accusations a court finds false would have a chilling effect on coming forward with charges. We have a competing social incentive for women to come forward after sexual abuse. So much of it goes unreported and rapists walk among us because of it. That's why we don't.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

There is a clear social incentive to punish this behavior severely, yet we just don't.

Handing out jail time for accusations a court finds false would have a chilling effect on coming forward with charges. We have a competing social incentive for women to come forward after sexual abuse. So much of it goes unreported and rapists walk among us because of it. That's why we don't.

There's a big difference between "a court doesn't find this accusation credible enough to convict" versus "a court finds this accusation to have been maliciously fabricated." We make these sorts of distinctions all the time with regard to things like defamation. No reason why we can't do it here.

Edit: Eh, on further reflection, you're probably right about this one. It's a balancing act, and I do think we're leaning a little too far toward "let people make false accusations with no consequences," but you're right that we want to encourage people to come forward with true complaints, and maybe we're not that far off from the right settings.

 

[Battersbox]

I shed no tears for him either, as Bauer is probably a jack-***.

But I'm always surprised by the double standard in these he-said, she-said situations.

When a woman is assaulted, we as society have been taught (rightly!) to ignore here past reputation and focus solely on the relevant events of the accusation, even if she's been known as an uber-promiscuous person in the past.

We don't extend this same set of rules to guys like Bauer. He's been known as a creeper-type who likes to have rough sex with likely many women, etc. We totally allow that to affect our judgement when accusations are thrown about. We shouldn't.

I disagree with this 100%. We should obviously take people's past behavior into account in situations like this. Courts shouldn't, but the rest of us should.

The bolded is at the core of what I'm talking about. Why should we take past behavior into account if courts do not? Not saying I disagree, but I'd like to know why?

Because we're not courts of law, and it's a category mistake to treat those two things as similar.

We (rightly IMO) bend over backwards to give criminal defendants every benefit of the doubt, and every procedural rule leans toward "don't send innocent people to prison." That's why we have things like the exclusionary rule, "beyond a reasonable doubt," unanimous juries, and so on. But when people like you and me form our opinions about what probably went down, we're not sending anyone to prison, so there's no need to bend over backwards like that.

For example, OJ Simpson was acquitted of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson. But we all know he did it, and it's fine for us to understand that he's a double-murderer even if one particular jury disagreed. Given the way we designed our justice system, some guilty people will go free. We know that. We don't have to pretend that they're literally innocent.

With regard to past behavior, I think it's fine for courts to ignore this, because again we're giving the defendant the presumption of innocence. But if a dead body turned up in OJ Simpson's house and his Isotoner gloves had the victim's blood on them, I'd feel comfortable tentatively assuming that he killed again. So would you and everybody else.

Thanks for your reply. I don't necessarily disagree with anything you wrote.

I'm not so much talking about what anonymous people on a msg board think of a creep like Bauer because ultimately, he's not ever going to be punished by our opinions. But, he can be punished (unjustly) all the same via lost earnings, public ridicule, etc. if he's accused of something he's ultimately innocent of. Obviously it's not the same as if he'd been found guilty in a court of law and sent to prison, but it can still be unjust. I mean, of course I won't lose any sleep if a guy worth tens of millions loses out on the chance to earn tens more millions, but it doesn't make it just.

 

[Battersbox]

I don't think the creepiness of dudes who like legal, rough sex with CONSENTING women shouldn't be held against them, but it often is.

Of course we should hold it against them. Not for legal innocence/guilty determinations, but certainly in the court of public opinion.

Creeps should be treated like creeps.

I don't know. What people do in the privacy of their bedrooms is their business, not mine.

Again, I'm speaking with the assumption that all parties were willing participants.

To flip the script--there are plenty of men who love to be tortured by dominatrix-type women, and plenty of women who love to dish out physical punishment on them. I don't understand either side of that equation, but I don't think anyone should suffer legally nor monetarily for it.

 

[Zow]

I don't feel bad for that guy.

Edit: his track record before that incident doesn't give him the benefit of the doubt for me.

hmmmm. I don't feel bad for Wander Franco. I do feel bad for how Bauer was completely jobbed on this. People know that Bauer is an odd duck and therefore were quick to crucify him. This is something he could have been criminally charged with let alone lose his livelihood and career. She should get the book throw at her. I ****ing hate gold diggers

I genuinely don't understand why this sort of thing doesn't lead to prosecution and long prison sentences, comparable to those we would hand out for rape. It's a malicious attempt to ruin somebody's life, like extortion dialed up to 10. And it makes life worse for actual victims when so many of these allegations turn out to be lies. There is a clear social incentive to punish this behavior severely, yet we just don't.

Not saying I disagree with you, but I can proffer three of them:
1. There's a strong public policy in not trying to quell sexual assault victims from coming forward and those victims may do so if they think there's a possibility they could be imprisoned if they aren't believed.
2. Proving something didn't happen is actually really, really hard. Our system is set up to determine whether an act can be proven to have occurred by a certain burden of proof (e.g. more likely than not, beyond reasonable doubt). In other words, a finder of fact is not tasked to determine whether something didn't happen (i.e. the finder of fact finds the person "not guilty" rather than "innocent").
3. My Woz input: in working a lot of sex crimes, my two cents is that the situations oftentimes fall into the "gray areas" of life. In other words, while I do occasionally see these situations, rarely is it as simple as some guy breaking into a girl's room and forcibly raping her. Instead, oftentimes it's a situation that I would best describe as "messy" whereby maybe the victim was too incapacitated to consent, maybe there was a communication breakdown (girl didn't want to but didn't say "no"), or maybe the alleged assailant went too far and did act Y when he should have known the victim only consented to sexual act X. And, in my personal opinion, these situations morph after the fact when the victim may speak to a friend or loved one (I see a lot of bad breakup sex situations or sex after a breakup) where the friend, while doing so with good intentions, may influence the victim's sense of what occurred and the victim genuinely comes to believe their version of what occurred to be true (in which case, the report while factually false may not be made with the victim believing it to be false, so it shouldn't be criminalized because there's no "evil" intent).

 

[General Malaise]

I don't feel bad for that guy.

Edit: his track record before that incident doesn't give him the benefit of the doubt for me.

hmmmm. I don't feel bad for Wander Franco. I do feel bad for how Bauer was completely jobbed on this. People know that Bauer is an odd duck and therefore were quick to crucify him. This is something he could have been criminally charged with let alone lose his livelihood and career. She should get the book throw at her. I ****ing hate gold diggers

I genuinely don't understand why this sort of thing doesn't lead to prosecution and long prison sentences, comparable to those we would hand out for rape. It's a malicious attempt to ruin somebody's life, like extortion dialed up to 10. And it makes life worse for actual victims when so many of these allegations turn out to be lies. There is a clear social incentive to punish this behavior severely, yet we just don't.

The Brian Banks' case is a travesty. Fake rape charges, dude spends 5 years in prison, woman recants her story, says she made it all up but only after she successfully sued the high school for 2 million and that's that. No clawback on the money, no punishment. Sad. Just sad.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

I don't feel bad for that guy.

Edit: his track record before that incident doesn't give him the benefit of the doubt for me.

hmmmm. I don't feel bad for Wander Franco. I do feel bad for how Bauer was completely jobbed on this. People know that Bauer is an odd duck and therefore were quick to crucify him. This is something he could have been criminally charged with let alone lose his livelihood and career. She should get the book throw at her. I ****ing hate gold diggers

I genuinely don't understand why this sort of thing doesn't lead to prosecution and long prison sentences, comparable to those we would hand out for rape. It's a malicious attempt to ruin somebody's life, like extortion dialed up to 10. And it makes life worse for actual victims when so many of these allegations turn out to be lies. There is a clear social incentive to punish this behavior severely, yet we just don't.

The Brian Banks' case is a travesty. Fake rape charges, dude spends 5 years in prison, woman recants her story, says she made it all up but only after she successfully sued the high school for 2 million and that's that. No clawback on the money, no punishment. Sad. Just sad.

Thanks, and for the record, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about -- clear-cut cases of malicious accusations, not just misunderstandings.

 

[Zow]

I don't feel bad for that guy.

Edit: his track record before that incident doesn't give him the benefit of the doubt for me.

hmmmm. I don't feel bad for Wander Franco. I do feel bad for how Bauer was completely jobbed on this. People know that Bauer is an odd duck and therefore were quick to crucify him. This is something he could have been criminally charged with let alone lose his livelihood and career. She should get the book throw at her. I ****ing hate gold diggers

I genuinely don't understand why this sort of thing doesn't lead to prosecution and long prison sentences, comparable to those we would hand out for rape. It's a malicious attempt to ruin somebody's life, like extortion dialed up to 10. And it makes life worse for actual victims when so many of these allegations turn out to be lies. There is a clear social incentive to punish this behavior severely, yet we just don't.

The Brian Banks' case is a travesty. Fake rape charges, dude spends 5 years in prison, woman recants her story, says she made it all up but only after she successfully sued the high school for 2 million and that's that. No clawback on the money, no punishment. Sad. Just sad.

Thanks, and for the record, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about -- clear-cut cases of malicious accusations, not just misunderstandings.

But in practice/reality, it's not this simple.

 

[parasaurolophus]

I don't feel bad for that guy.

Edit: his track record before that incident doesn't give him the benefit of the doubt for me.

hmmmm. I don't feel bad for Wander Franco. I do feel bad for how Bauer was completely jobbed on this. People know that Bauer is an odd duck and therefore were quick to crucify him. This is something he could have been criminally charged with let alone lose his livelihood and career. She should get the book throw at her. I ****ing hate gold diggers

I genuinely don't understand why this sort of thing doesn't lead to prosecution and long prison sentences, comparable to those we would hand out for rape. It's a malicious attempt to ruin somebody's life, like extortion dialed up to 10. And it makes life worse for actual victims when so many of these allegations turn out to be lies. There is a clear social incentive to punish this behavior severely, yet we just don't.

Maybe just any prison sentences at all would be a positive step. Doesn't have to be long.