Comment by giraffe_lady
Comment by giraffe_lady 4 days ago
So you've spoken to the wife?
Comment by giraffe_lady 4 days ago
So you've spoken to the wife?
I just presumed "all the evidence in the world" was a little more expansive I guess.
The vast vast majority of DV complaints are unsubstantiated, so speaking to the wife is generally a poor predictor of whether the presumption of innocence will be overcome.
DV is a very complex legal minefield. I have years of working with defendants. I would say that a majority of DV complaints are valid in some way, and that many times the DV goes both ways (but it's rarer for the woman to get charged, even if the instigator).
The biggest issue is that once the perpetrator is removed and/or charged the victim often petitions the prosecutor and police to drop the charges. The prosecutors I know will generally not do this and will push for a guilty plea or trial. It's hard for the prosecutor to know whether the victim is being manipulated into asking for the charges to be dropped, and regardless, a crime has probably been committed, and in the justice system the plaintiff is the state, not the person who was battered. This can lead to a stand-off where the victim refuses to come to trial to testify, and where the prosecutor has a Hobson's Choice of whether to arrest the victim and jail them until trial to get them on the stand or let the case drop.
DV cases are hard.
Some say that prosecutors in your jurisdiction are so reluctant to drop charges, that they may keep a man in jail for nearly a decade without trial, isn't that right 'years of working with defendants' jailhouse lawyer charles? I hope someday you receive compensation for this tyranny that was imposed upon you.
Here's an example in connecticut[].
DV applications: ~8800
DV ex parte granted (no chance for defendant to defend him(her)self): ~5100
DV final order granted after defendant able to defend him(her)self): ~3200
So for example in CT on just a civil standard, only 2/3 of the accusers were able to get even a temporary order when the defendant had zero chance to tell their side of the story. Once the defendant was able to come to court and defend themselves, only about 1/3 of them made it to a final order. And that was by the much weaker civil rather than criminal standard.
[] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tYBTsF7-px-3lCnBFOol...
Sincere thanks!
Some notes: in Connecticut, restraining orders can be granted for a variety of reasons, not restricted to domestic violence alone. Fairly close correlation but it does include, for example, stalking.
It seems unwise to assume that restraining orders alone represent the entire count of domestic violence complaints that reach the legal system. For example, surely domestic violence arrests should be counted? Which seem to be a much higher count than restraining order applications -- 24,850 DV arrests in 2011 vs. 9033 DV applications. I'm not sure how to count the 32,111 "Family Violence Protective Orders" in 2011; are they the result of arrests? Are they yet another possible outcome of law enforcement involvement, separate from either a requested restraining order or an arrest?
There are way more reasons a restraining order might not make it to a final order besides "the requestor was proven wrong." I'd want more detailed data here before reaching a conclusion. Otherwise, this assumes that failure to grant a restraining order proves lack of DV. I am not sure that it would change the percentages you've shown significantly -- we're all aware of cases where restraining orders weren't granted with very bad results, but there's always a tendency to report on the most clickbaity outcomes. Still, worth digging into that one a bit more.
Again, appreciate the cite.
Note that it's not trivial to demonstrate that a restraining order is necessary, even in cases where domestic violence has occurred and has a reasonable risk of recurring.
I understand that you're simply using this as a proxy for the actual unknowable data, but I think it's worth pointing out that the map is not the territory.
It is trivial in many states and jurisdictions to get a temporary order. One was obtained against David Lettermen just by a woman in a different state claiming he was sending her secret messages through the TV.
The final order is more difficult, but quite often (i.e. in divorce / custody court) the only goal was to evict them from the home and disrupt custody to get the upper hand in hearings, so temporary is all that's needed to do the job and then no need to actually defend the claim made 14+ days later when they're already homeless and with the baseline of out of the kid's life.
If you are asking me if I spoke to whoever before hiring Preston... why would I? Whatever he did wrong in the past, he had 10 years to atone for it.