The implications of what you are saying are truly terrifying and are entirely incompatible with living in a free society. A state that can compel incriminating testimony (or punish silence) is a police state, full stop. The right to remain silent in the face of criminal accusations is absolutely indispensible to…

Why do you think they dropped the ball on this? I imagine it has something to do with the calls to always believe victims. When the police and the crown can’t question the victims about what happened for fear of the stigma that will happen if the victim says out loud that someone in the system questioned her account…

It’s fundamentally unfair that the defense is not constrained from calling anybody they can ask to testify, yet the prosecution is constrained in who they can ask.

I think that’s problem though. In general I believe sexual assault allegations and I (still) do believe Ghomeshi acted criminally toward the women. However, the prosecution’s case was shoddily established and the witnesses damaged their own credibility by withholding key information and being less than forthcoming…

Because he doesn’t have to prove his innocence. It’s what a ton of people forget in cases like this. The crown must prove his guilt. If his lawyers feel like they haven’t proved his guilt, why put him on the stand?

Sorry, this needs to be responded to. The right against self-incrimination is INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT. If the court can hold an accused’s person right to silence against them, then the entire burden of proof in criminal matters shifts. The right against self-incrimination is a crucial part of the foundation of living in…

It seems what he meant to saw was that their case relied wholly on witness testimony and the credibility of the witnesses had been badly damaged by their reporting to the police and to the Crown only selective peices of information.

If the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt, and all you have is testimony of people who have been objectively proven to have lied in court during the same trial, then no, that's not enough.

that’s a poorly worded statement by the judge, but the witnesses’ credibility was severely damaged. if that hadn’t happened, then their testimony would’ve been enough to convict. if they don’t look credible, then the testimony is not worth much without other evidence to back it up.

The judge also said ‘ having reasonable doubt is not the same as saying the events did not occur’.

But he is right. There is a vocal set of people who are committed to “believing survivors/accusers” based on nothing other than the fact that they have accused someone of sexual assault. This describes many commenters here on Jezebel. It ignores any interest in finding the actual truth and is a bananas way of going…

Well, I can tell you one thing that has changed. Serious students pursuing degrees in hard sciences have to study in locked rooms so that BLM people will not barge in and scream at them. And the environment on campus is like that in China in the early days of the Cultural Revolution. At any time you could find…

“what could’ve incited the women accused of assault”

Ahhh, so the victim was asking for it?

This is pretty victim blamey.

It’s not just the video. Do you see how busy that bus is? Not everyone on it was involved in the assault. The police officers interviewed several bystanders, who all said that the black women were the ones who initiated the assault. Now, don’t get me wrong, you can go ahead and believe that everybody lied if you want,…

Still, there’s debate over whether the video of the incident released tells the full story about what could’ve incited the women accused of assault.

This is why people need to stop rushing to humiliate and trash people publicly and instead wait for actual information to surface before reacting to stuff like this.

And they'd go triple apeshit if someone said "maybe the victim did something to incite the attack"

Regardless of what anyone SAID, physical violence isn’t justified. Isn’t that what everyone is taught today starting in kindergarten?

“So do we now stop defending black women because of what happened?”