Retired Judge Nancy Gertner on sexual assault investigations on campus

A very interesting and thoughtful article in The American Prospect by the author of "In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate," among other things sharply criticizing Harvard's new sexual assault policy. Here's an excerpt, in which Judge Gertner discusses a case that helped shape her thinking on the matter (paragraph breaks added):

A young man, a freshman at a local college at the time the incident happened and a friend of a former roommate of mine, was referred to me. (In my memoir, I call him "Paul.") He'd had sex with a classmate, his very first sexual encounter; he believed his classmate had consented. And while we can never know what went on between them, the facts—her actions, her words, the testimony of others—made her charges wholly unconvincing.

A few examples: She went out of her way to invite him to her parents' home a short time after the sex to stay for the weekend. Nine months after their sexual encounter, she claimed to have been raped and mentioned his name following the breakup of a different relationship and her hospitalization for depression. She accused Paul during a conversation with her father, but accused another male student while speaking to a classmate. Witnesses reported nothing out of the ordinary that evening, no evidence of drinking, no impairment, not even anxiety about what had occurred.

Her account itself was improbable, internally inconsistent, and contradicted by the evidence and the testimony of her own classmates. While from decades of work on rape and my women's rights advocacy, I understood that this young woman could be telling the truth—that her behavior in the days and weeks after the sex, and even her multiple accounts of what went on, could be explained by post-traumatic stress disorder, or simply embarrassment—her account seemed unlikely.

By the late 1980s, when the accusations against Paul were brought, the women's movement had succeeded in making some of the changes for which I and others had fought. The popular media finally reported on the horror of date rape and its consequences. District attorneys and police belatedly began to prosecute the offense.

The definition of rape changed in states across the country, although progress was far from uniform. Gone was the mandatory corroboration requirement and limitless attacks on a woman's "chastity," whatever that meant in the late 20th century. Still, we were a long way from adequately dealing with these issues. There were many jurisdictions where change came slowly or not at all, where prosecutors and even courts not so subtly sided with perpetrators and blamed victims.

While I believed that Paul had been wrongly accused, and would be exonerated, true to my practice I declined to represent him. I asked one of my law partners to step in, and then watched with horror as the prosecution unfolded.

The atmosphere surrounding date rape had changed more dramatically than I had appreciated, at least in Massachusetts. The district attorney, though he fully understood the weaknesses of the case, felt compelled to bring the charges lest he face political repercussions, for being yet another politician ignoring a woman's pain. Even the grand jury ignored their serious doubts about the case and indicted Paul. As I later learned from one of its members, they felt comfortable indicting Paul because I was rumored to be representing him and they assumed he would be acquitted.

And the judge—with life tenure—likewise felt the pressure. The judge was critical; my partner decided to waive the jury when a program on date rape was aired on the eve of the trial. While the judge expressed his skepticism throughout the trial—every single comment of his pointed to reasonable doubt about Paul's guilt—his verdict was "guilty." He did not say so explicitly, but the message seemed clear. If he acquitted Paul, he would be pilloried in the press. "Judge acquits rapist," the headlines would scream. But if he convicted Paul, no one would notice.

I took over the appeal. The brief my firm filed was what I described as a feminist brief: Just because the legal system has moved away from the view that all rape accusations are contrived does not mean it must move to the view that none are. This conviction was not just technically imperfect, I argued, it was a true injustice. I was successful. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed Paul's conviction on a procedural error, the trial court's evidentiary rulings. The prosecutor could have retried the case, but, thankfully, chose not to do so.

After decades of feminist advocacy (the case establishing the right to choose abortion in Massachusetts, the first introduction of Battered Woman Syndrome in a defense to a murder charge, and on and on), I was picketed by a women's rights group when I spoke on a panel following the reversal of Paul's case; I was a "so-called women's rights attorney," one sign announced, simply because I had represented a man accused of rape.

When I explained why, including the fact that I believed he was innocent, a demonstrator yelled, "That is irrelevant!" The experience was chilling; to the picketers, a wrongful conviction and imprisonment simply did not matter. Paul would have been incarcerated, but for my firm's advocacy and the appellate court's independent review.

Still, advocacy and appellate review could only go so far: Though the charges against Paul were dropped, he was expelled from the college he had been attending; he struggled to reapply years later and finally get his degree. Worse yet, he continues to suffer from the stigma of the accusation to this day, many, many decades later….

But there's a lot more in the article, which is very much worth reading.