Rape Shield laws and the constitution

The increasing reach and the "unintended" consequences of rape shield laws have had more than a few Constitutional problems mainly those where a defendant has a right to a fair trial. These laws, enforced to make sure accusers are not "smeared" in court, have more than a few times kept juries from seeing or hearing evidence that is extremely relevant to the persons accused and may been responsible for sending an innocent man or boy to jail for something they did not do and given how frequent false rape accusations are rape shield laws are even more deadly to basic constitutional. These laws also shield the accusers' identity from the media and despite the amount of damage a false rape accusation can bring the person accused does not have his identity shielded.

On November I, a Manhattan court withdrew all charges against Oliver Jovanovic, who was a Columbia University student. Oliver was at the center of a "cybersex" case where he was accused of kidnapping, sexual assault and sexual torture. 

In 1998, Oliver was convicted of attacking Jamie Rzucek who was a student at Barnard College and was given a minimum sentence of 15 years behind bars. Jamie said that Oliver kept her in his apartment against her will for over 20 hours and that he sexually abused her. The defense argued that no torture had ever occurred and Jamie's claim that she was sodomized against her will by Oliver was disputed by the medical evidence, the jury eventually concluded that no torture ever happened and everything that did happen was consensual.

This of course, was crippled by William Wetzel's (the judged) decision to exclude some of the e-mail messages between Oliver and Jamie where she talked about her "adventures" in sadomasochism, including her then relationship in it with a man. These emails, Wetzel concluded, were not admissible thanks to New York State's rape shield laws because they dealt with the accuser's sexual conduct which was (under the "law") not allowed.

Thankfully, the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court, set dismissed the conviction because they claimed that the judge had applied the rape shield law improperly which left a "distorted view of the evidence." The case was now set for a much needed retrial, but Jamie proved did not want to testify a second time, and prosecutors eventually dismissed the case. Oliver's innocence came at a very high price: about $500,000 in legal fees, as well as 20 months in prison.

Even before the Oliver trial, the best known case to raise the "rape shield law" issues was that of Marv Albert (a sportscaster), who was accused by his "friend" and sexual partner Vanessa Perhach of assault and oral sodomy. At the trial, Albert's attorneys tried to bring up Vanessa's sexual conduct with other males, especially those who left her (as Albert was about to). She reportedly was very unstable and went on to harass and threaten a former boyfriend's family, and even made false accusations of crimes against one of them as a form of revenge (according to a Eugene kanin study the most common reasons for a false rape accusation by a woman was "spite or revenge), a former boyfriend of Venessa's was also even willing to testify.

Thanks to rape shield laws ALL of this evidence was not allowed by Judge Benjaimin Kendrick. Of course the rape shield laws only protect the woman in a case like this and the judge allowed a women to testify against Marv, in which she claimed that Marv had sexually assaulted her a few years earlier. With the defense unable to do anything because of the rape shield law, Marv was forced to plead guilty to misdemeanor assault. The outcome was a shock to many people observing the case and even those, like Geraldo Rivera who generally had a lot of sympathy to a victims' (accusers) rights concluded that case was "shockingly unfair".

In 1993, 18-year-old Charles Steadman was accused and convicted of sexually assaulting his foster sister Jessica who was 22 in a he said/she said case where there was NO physical evidence of force and a defendant that claimed that the sex was consensual. The jury was in the dark about all of the facts of the case because they did not know (thanks to the rape shield law) that when Jessica accused Charles of sexual assault, she was actually already facing criminal charges of having sex with minors. (She eventually received probation for her crime.) This definetely gave her a reason to lie especially considering she had sex with Charles when he was not of legal age. This might have lead her to believe that if she claimed to be a victim that would improve the legal situation she was in or she might have worried that if her encounter with Charles were ever known, she probably would become in even more trouble with the law. Of course none of this could be introduced because rape shield laws made her sexual activities not admissible.