Evon Orsi
November 6, 2014
Criminal Justice Process
Article Dissection
I chose reading number 11, which is titled The Role of Rape Myths and Jury Selection in the Outcome of a trial. This reading highlights many myths and stereotypes exemplified in jury cases involving rape. Judy Shepherd wrote the reading itself. In the following essay you will learn about a specific rape case, and how those myths and stereotypes affected the outcome. It will be strange to learn how some people can be easily convinced when presented a skewed view. First off before you learn about the exact trial and the outcome, one must first understand some of the rape myths and stereotypes. It is reported that only 31.6% of all rapes and sexual assaults were reported to law officials in 1998.1 That number is incredibly smaller than any other crimes. This to me makes since due to the delicate and inappropriate nature of rape. Along with that number it is reported that less than 1% of all rape cases result in conviction in the U.S.2 Those numbers to me are just puzzling, and I believe one of the reasons they are so low is these myths and stereotypes. Some of the myths represented in the book include “victims are lying, victims are malicious, sex was consensual, and rape is not damaging”3. In my mind none of those statements are credible or have any right in the court of law. Along with those views many people think that women who go out alone are putting themselves in bad positions to possibly get raped. That to me is ridiculous, we do not live in a country where every time a woman leaves for the night a man must accompany her. That is just asinine to think that way. One final stereotype, and one that played a very large role in this case, is that women who are intoxicated are more likely responsible in rape cases. This means, that women who are drunk in rape cases are less credible and they are viewed as feeble.
All the information above also can be directly correlated with education level. The less educated the person the more likely they are to believe all those myths and stereotypes. Unfortunately a good amount of jurors chosen are not as well educated as they should be. The less educated jurors can cause cases to go in the wrong direction. Many of these jurors are prejudiced against the prosecution and more lenient towards the defender when the victim showed ‘contributory behavior’.4
Now with all that in mind one can approach the case study and see why it went the way it did. This exact case study is from the eyes of a juror involved. At the end of each day the juror would go back and write down his findings best he could, so he’s credible in that sense. The trial was for a burglary (forced entry) and rape. The trial itself lasted 6 days, and the jurors deliberated for 2 days. This case was then again retried 7 months later and went on for 9 days that time around. The trial itself took place in the year 1999. The crime takes place in Athabascan, Alaska that is a small village in Alaska, no bigger than 200 people. The crime was conducted took place in fall 1998. This village was small enough where there was no actual police force just a village public safety officer (VPSO). The VPSO was to take care of any small stuff and handle larger situations such as rape, murder, etc. until they could contact the actual state police. For cases of rape the local health aide had a rape kit that they were able to do preliminary procedures and to collect information to send to an actual crime lab. Now the actual crime took place a weekend of a softball tournament and wedding, which caused many outsiders to come into the village. The victim was a 66-year-old Alaska native woman. Her husband was out of town this weekend, so she was attending the festivities alone. The alleged assailant was a 55-year-old Alaska native man from a neighboring village, and these two have known each other since childhood. The Prosecutor told the story like this; the woman was out
