Except the crown didn’t “cover it up” - especially if they were unaware of it, as would seem to be the case.

literally no behavior after the assault somehow negates the fact that the assault took place.

Ok, but considering that in a trial like this it is essentially he said / she said, how can they determine guilt in any way other than documented behaviour around the time of the alleged crime? I mean one of the women basically said “I loved how you treated me, let’s fuck again tonight”

Now I understand why Ghomeshi asked for a bench trial. A “the victims perjured themselves” defense would be hard to sell to a jury.

I wonder why you had to post this as a “top level” comment. Oh wait. Because literally *nobody* in these comment threads have said that having sex with, being nice to, or having any kind of civilized contact with your rapist makes him not a rapist. That strawman sure had it coming though.

It’s not the positive communication or the proposed sexual encounters that would necessarily inject reasonable doubt into this case.

Reading the prosecutions closing statements, it was not about their behaviour during or after the assault, it is the fact that they lied to police, the crown and covered it up until they were on the witness stand. If the defense wasn’t allowed to get their own evidence, the truth would not have come out. The fact that…

It should be illegal for ANYONE accused of ANY crime to not be put on the stand.

It is possible that perjury can be indicative of trauma.

Have you seen how many innocent people get railroaded into admitting to stuff they couldn’t and didn’t do? And this is what happens at the hands of some barely educated cop, imagine what a brilliant lawyer can do.

It’s my understanding that Canadian criminal law is akin to US criminal law in that that the accused must be found guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Stories about defense attorneys going after alleged victims are weird to me. That is the attorneys job and part of the adversarial process. I feel that stories like these should be reserved for outrageous cases where the attorney does something worse.

Yeah - He’s getting off. The whole ‘I sent him 300 messages and banged him like crazy’ after the ‘assault’ occurred - I just totes forgot to tell the cops about it until right before the trial = Not Guilty.

I mean, One of the women admitted to misleading the police during the trial, and the communications between the accusers and Jian is pretty damning.