. . . when neither person can remember what happened? That was the question that lingered in the aftermath of the acquittal of a British Army officer accused of rape.
The Telegraph reports:
Parliament should review the law around rape cases where neither party can remember having sex, a military judge has suggested after clearing an Army major of attacking a female Captain.
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Jeff Blackett, [J]udge Advocate General, concluded: "You have been found not guilty by this board. It is intolerable that this case has taken so long to get to court and that is unacceptable... This was an unusual case because neither party can remember having sex."
He said that, in his view, "parliament should look again" at the law surrounding incidents where neither party can properly recall events, adding: "There must be a better way of dealing with these cases".
I would very much like to read a full copy of Judge Blackett's comments. The Telegraph report does not make clear why His Honour felt that Parliament should get involved. If the facts were accurately reported, the law was clear. The accused officer could not have been properly convicted, and should never have been charged in the first place. It looks like a case of prosecutorial tunnel vision and excessive aggressiveness. It should have been obvious that absence of memory does not equal memory of absence of consent. It would be hard to draft a law to force prosecutors to exercise their discretion correctly. The "better way of dealing with these cases" would seem to "Don't lay a charge unless there is a reasonable prospect of conviction." On the other hand, if the newspaper article is inaccurate and there really were reasonable grounds to lay the charge, why would there be any need to change the law? Any prosecutor knows that sometimes the evidence does not prove to be as convincing in court as it seemed when one was preparing the case for trial.
ReplyDeletePerhaps more details will emerge in the UK press.
ReplyDelete