sacha wrote:astrokid.nj wrote:Mykeru wrote:
The same goes for A Voice for Men. Obviously it's a article of faith that AVfM is a ravenous hate site filled with rapey guys, guys who hate, who hate and rape and rapety-rape-rape.
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But hate, much less pathological hatred of women? Not a bit. At best, you can say the atmosphere in that regard is of an overwhelming sense of betrayal ("But you said this would benefit us too").
You mean you werent convinced by The Cabbie's stellar arguments in the recent debate? He didnt convince you that Elam is a 'Times Square Nutter'?
Somebody left this comment at his blog
Comment_On_Cabbies_Blog.jpg
Betrayal because of naiveté.
That article seems to be the favourite to cite as "evidence". If one actually reads Elam's view of jury nullification, he explains his reasoning quite thoroughly, and logically. His argument is not easy to tear down, he has a strong case. Even those who disagree, would have to do so without the ability to dismiss his points. I'm sure someone can come up with solid reasons against jury nullification in the situation he refers to, but not by rendering Elam's position invalid.
Most (if not all) articles on AVfM are nowhere near as volatile a subject as that one.
For those of you who don't want to dig to find it, the issue is a remark that Elam made about his unwillingness to find someone guilty of rape if he was on a jury. John the other also mentions Jury Nullification in the intro to the A Voice for Men radio show.
Of course, only total nitwits think they are saying "I want to let guys get away with rape". The not too nuanced argument comes from the findings of The Innocence Project that men have spent decades in prison with little recourse for rape convictions. The argument isn't that women lie about being raped, although some do. They also make errors of memory, as Dr. Elizabeth Loftus has shown, particularly in cross-racial identification. Cops have notoriously done loaded photo line-ups for victims which can essentially plant one suspect in a woman's mind.
People make mistakes. We all know that. Human memory is often in error. Most of our memory is confabulation (for instance, memories you have of yourself in the third person can't be real memories, can they? Even if the event occurred, the point of view is reconstructed). We treat eyewitness testimony as more reliable than "circumstantial" evidence, but it is not even close to being as good as "circumstancial" physical evidence.
What's more terrifying is the extent to which prosecutorial misconduct is uncovered. We're all familiar with moral panics and witch-hunts like the Satanic Ritual Abuse and Child Molestation hysteria. What is scary about that is not only the degree to which evidence was manufactured, but how exculpatory evidence was suppressed and, really, how easy it was to convict people on pure bullshit, especially if they were mentally weaker than average or didn't have the resources to fight effectively. One can argue that rape itself has become a moral panic where society is more than willing to send innocent men to prison in order to foster the illusion of security.
I take the position that even if I agreed with the death penalty in principle, I would never be in favor of it in practice because of the inherent flaws in people, our system and, frankly, that being a prosecutor is a exercise in politics. Elam is extending this to rape as well.
So in light of that, Paul Elam saying he wouldn't vote to convict a man of rape even if there was overwhelming evidence of guilt isn't that out there considering 1. What we consider evidence is crap and 2. The evidence that the jury gets isn't necessary the evidence that there is, and juries can't know what exculpatory evidence was withheld, even destroyed in a political, ideological pursuit.
So, the interpretation "Paul Elam likes rape" is only the sort of thing an idiot or someone trying to sell something comes away with.
When I first saw this argument my reaction was "Jesus Christ, you just know this is going to be mined to death". Which is sad to think one has to write in such a way to fill in the spaces where someone can misconstrue. It's like Darwin having to re-write his argument on the development of eyes, eliminating the "It seems impossible" set up just because some douche-bag Creationist ends up quoting only that part.