Currently, men are arrested on accusations. Instead, since injuries can be self-inflicted, should women have to prove assault before men are arrested?

[Kelley1]

It didn't matter that E. Jean Carroll couldn't remember the date; her word was enough to convict Trump. Without proof other than her word, Mike Tyson went to prison in 1992 after being convicted of raping 18-year-old Desiree Washington. The students in the false Duke rape case only avoided prison because they proved it never happened, including one student proving he was at another location during the time of the alleged rape.

When a woman accuses a man of assault or sexual harassment, he is presumed guilty. His only defense is to prove it didn't happen.

[abc3643]

1. Trump wasn't "convicted" because that was a civil case, not a criminal case. Trump was found __liable__ for sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll.
2. Her words were insufficient. The words of the other witnesses who took the stand added to the weight of her claims.
3. The jury found "by a preponderence of the evidence" that Trump likely was responsible for his alleged actions and thus liable for them. (They found he did sexually assault her, but they did not find that he raped her as she alleged.)

This 2023 case was a Federal case in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Being a Federal case, the jury must be unanimous in their findings.

This may help. Trump appealed the results of that US District Court trial. Since that US District Court was in New York State, the corresponding US Appeals Court is the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. (F Y I, AR and MO are in the 8th Circuit.)
Below is the opinion from that appeals court in this case. In it is a summarization of the history of E. Jean Carroll's claim and the District Court trial highlights.

===
law.justia.com/.../23-793-2024-12-30.html

This is some of the text from the opinion... I deleted legalese citations.

Also, you will see I put a (*) by the name Carol Martin, one of the two women E. Jean Carroll told of what transpired with Trump the previous day. Carol Martin is someone almost everyone in NYC would know because she had been a long-time, popular Channel 2 WCBS TV news anchor until 1994, 2 years before the events in the case. Given the esteem Carol Martin has in NYC even almost 30 years since she left WCBS, her testimony likely had considerable weight.

===
In this case, after a nine-day trial, a jury found that plaintiff-appellee E. Jean Carroll was sexually abused by defendant-appellant Donald J. Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1996. The jury also found that Mr. Trump defamed her in statements he made in 2022. The jury awarded Ms. Carroll a total of $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
Mr. Trump now appeals, contending that the district court (Lewis A. Kaplan, Judge) erred in several of its evidentiary rulings. These include its decisions to admit the testimony of two women who alleged that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted them in the past and to admit a recording of part of a 2005 conversation in which Mr. Trump described to another man how he kissed and grabbed women without first obtaining their consent. Mr. Trump contends that these and other asserted errors entitle him to a new trial.
On review for abuse of discretion, we conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings. Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial.
AFFIRMED. (Meaning that the US Appeals Court agrees with the opinion of the US District Court.)

...

BACKGROUND
On appeal from a jury verdict, the court of appeals is bound to "construe all evidence, draw all inferences, and make all credibility determinations in favor of the party [who] prevailed before the jury." ...
Here, that party is Ms. Carroll. We describe the narrative heard by the jury accordingly. Mr. Trump did not testify at trial but has denied the allegations that he engaged in any sexual misconduct with Ms. Carroll and that he defamed her.
...
I. The Evidence Presented at Trial
We summarize the evidence presented to the jury regarding the charged 1996 assault and 2022 defamation of Ms. Carroll.
A. The Bergdorf Goodman AssaultIn 1996, Ms. Carroll encountered Mr. Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan.
...
Ms. Carroll pushed Mr. Trump back, but "he thrust [her] back against the wall again," causing her to " bang[] [her] head again." ... With his shoulder and the whole weight of his body against her, Mr. Trump held her against the wall, kissed her, pulled down her tights, and stuck his fingers into her vagina -- until Ms. Carroll managed to get a knee up and push him back off of her. She immediately "exited the room" and left the store "as quickly as [she] could." The encounter lasted just a few minutes.
Within a day, Ms. Carroll told two friends, Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin (*), about the sexual assault. She did not report the incident to the police, however, or share it publicly for over two decades. While conducting interviews for a book that she was writing in 2017, the accounts of assaults perpetrated by Harvey Weinstein came to light and received nationwide attention. As a consequence of the many women who came forward to report their experiences of sexual assault, Ms. Carroll finally decided to share more broadly what Mr. Trump had done to her in 1996.
...

=======
Unfortunately, a transcript of the original E. Jean Carroll trail in the US District Court is not publicly available although some depositions are.

[abc3643]

I want to more directly answer your original question...

"... Should women have to prove assault before men are arrested?"

First, an arrest implies that we are discussing a criminal, not civil, trial. (The E. Jean Carroll case is a civil, not criminal.)

In short, the women do... once for the arrest, but 3 times in a sense before the conviction.

This needs some elaboration...

First, after an assault (*) occurs, what the woman would need to do is go to the authorities (starting with the police) and tell them in as much detail as possible what happened and provide any evidence that she can.

Once all that is done, a determination as to whether or not to prosecute the man alleged to have assaulted her becomes the responsibility of the Office of the District Attorney.

So, in a sense, this is the first "trial". She and the police need to convince the DA that the crime actually occurred.

If the DA feels that there is enough evidence between what she said and other things AND (and this is important) the DA feels they can get a conviction, then they will file charges.

This is when the man is arrested.

Now for the second "trial"... The DA then must then go before a Grand Jury and convince them that the crime has occurred and that the alleged commited the crime. If the Grand Jury feels that what the DA is presenting to them is reasonable - that the DA has "probable cause" - then the Grand Jury will permit the DA to go to trial - the actual trial which is the "third trial", so to speak. This is the real trial that requires a unanimous jury.

... But, again, this is a criminal trial. In a civil trial, it is only in that one trial does the woman (the petitioner) need to show "by a preponderance of the evidence" that the respondent, the man alleged to have committed assault, has done so.

(more)

[abc3643]

===

(*) I put a (*) by "assault" because what I described is pretty much for ANY felony crime, not just assault.

Generally, this is process involving a criminal prosecution.
1. The victim informs the police of the crime.
2. The police investigate and collect evidence.
3. If there's enough evidence including an alleged "perp" (perpetrator), they go to the DA who will then recommend or not charging the alleged perp with a crime.
4. Once the alleged is arrested (and, per Miranda, informed of what they are being charged with), the DA goes before a Grand Jury to get approval to go to trial.
5. If the DA convinced the Grand Jury, then the Grand Jury will approve going to trial.
6. The trial occurs.

[Kelley1]

I have no way of knowing what happened. I don't like Trump, due to his support for Israel, but this is not related to or relevant to that. However, find it hard to believe men would do that in a department store. I assume it is political and for money. If the trial were in Wyoming, North Dakota, or South Dakota, or most Southern states, it would have been a different result.

[Kelley1]

@abc3643 It may take all that to be formally charged, but men are often arrested and handcuffed on accusations. I remember reading about a 911 call. A bipolar women slightlly cut her husband. The police immediately placed him in handcuffs. The policewoman talked to the children and learned that their mother had attacked their father with a knife. They removed the handcuffs from the man and said the woman needs therapy. Unlike the husband, she wasn't arrested. An arrest does not require charges, if police detain you, that is an arrest.

[abc3643]

Well, PEOPLE may be arrested and handcuffed on accusations or less. I was arrested in 1994 (but not handcuffed). I was charged with a misdemeanor, went to an arraignment with a public defender. I was given an "ACOD" and never went to trial.

Police do what they have to do based on what their reasonable beliefs are at the time. They are no different than anyone else. (This is how I got my misdemeanor charge.)

But, the criminal justice system more or less works albeit it is composed of fallible emotional and occassionally involves duplicitous humans such as DA Nifong and the Duke accuser.

You have a math minor and know a bit about statistics. So, I expect that you understand the Central Limit Theorem. Because the criminal justice system has so many steps involved, the efforts of those trying to corrupt it are usually unsuccessful.

In the Duke case, we have 3 failures:
1. The lying accuser.
2. The overzealous, prosecutorial misconducting District Attorney.
3. The perjuring DNA lab person.
If any single one of those 3 people behaved properly, the case never would have gone to trial.

[abc3643]

Back to the E Jean Carroll case. What happened to her with Trump was 20 years before he ran for President and her case wasn't until he was out of office. Since she told the other women the day after the event in 1996 and not later, that essentially rules it out being a "con-job". People don't plan that far ahead and if they could make predictions that accurately to do so, their talents are better employed in the stock market or horse racing. This is a major reason why E Jean Carroll was believed. The bigger major reason was Trump himself; recordings of him behaving as a sexual assaulter were introduced in the trial... including the infamous "grab 'em by the pussy" tape. The unanimous jury found Carroll's assertions about sexual assault believable (but they didn't regarding rape). That's why she won the case.

[Kelley1]

@abc3643 Obviously, she didn't plan 20 years ahead. However, Trump was disliked in New York. Either for money or the better good of punishing Trump, it would be easy to get two women to lie when there is no way to prove they lied. I don't know if they lied, but I believe, as likely as not, that they lied, especially since it is highly unlikely an educated man would sexually assault a woman in a department store.

[abc3643]

The problem with lies is ultimately an inconsistency arises. And, of course, there is the legal danger of perjury. For instance, in the Duke case, while he was not charged with perjury, per se, DNA Security, Inc. (DSI) Director Brian Meegan was terminated because, at the request of DA Mike Nifong, he did not release the full DNA report, yet testified in the trial that the lab didn't withhold anything. He could have been charged with perjury, but still lost his job.

My point is that, in legal situations, lying is a very dangerous thing to do... unless you're the President of the United States.

[Kelley1]

I have to roll my eyes that they might be prosecuted for perjury. The Democrats were after Trump, even more so in NYC. Anyone who attempted to harm Trump would be aided, not prosecuted.

With the exceptions of Nixon and Clinton, presidents are not punished for lying except lying may harm their poll numbers.

[Just_Ken]

Trump was not convicted. It was a civil judgement. Basically she said that Trump & about 30 other guys she's met throughout her lifetime have raped her. Trump said he did and she took him to court for slander and was granted a shit ton of money because he "might have". They actually changed the law in new york state that you cannot protest your innocence if youve been convicted of rape. This set up and injustice was ond of the reasons trump won. Another was thd kavansgh. Ridiculous a woman. an can accuse a man of rape decades ago but can't provide a time, day, month, year of when it was supposed to have happened.

[MisterWack]

A lot of issues I find is the system sucks in general.
Every state and community does things differently, even police stations and those on duty can make or break a person’s ability to seek help.

I’ve read too many times, a woman tells everyone “he’s going to k-ll me” only for nothing to happen and it takes years before there is any real evidence to book the murderer.

I don’t think there is a one way is better, but something has to be done.

There was even a guy who suspected his wife of poisoning him, so the cops turned him away until he got evidence in which he returned with video evidence and got her arrested. Like imagine if he ate the poison before going to the police in the first place. There’s a lot of issues here.

[slatyb]

Very few sexual assaults are reported. Trump wasn't convicted of sexual assault, which requires evidence beyond reasonable doubt. E. Jean Carroll filed a civil suit for her injury, and a jury found that there was sufficient evidence to grant judgment in her favor. The standard for judgment in civil suits is a preponderance of evidence.

[Kelley1]

Most assaults are not reported because they do no harm. During an argument, someone gets pushed. No one fell, it hardly hurt, but that is assault, but it did no harm and is not reported. Almost all sexual assault is verbal; it is psychologically painful but does no real harm and is not reported. Swatting a woman's butt is also sexual assault, but does no harm and is not reported.

What is normally considered sexual assault (harmful) is usually reported.

[BadApple69]

It should be a law that if someone accuses someone and it’s proven to be false she/he should be arrested and prosecuted. Then the actual victim can sue for damages. That way the E. Jean Carrol and Christine Blasey Ford types won’t falsely accuse people UNLESS they have proof and/or witnesses. Remember Monica Lewinsky? Bill Clinton’s cum stains on her dress was pretty good proof of what happened.

[msc545]

There is such a law lying about such things as perjury, particularly if you do it under oath, but, of course, perjury never ever gets prosecuted.

[beefcakebradybatson]

Welcome to the club, white boys !!! We black lads have been subjected to false accusations by white (especially), black, brown, yellow and red broads since we were brought to the Americas in 1619. Suck it up, boyos !!!

[Kelley1]

The past was evil, but it should not apply to white boys who were not born during the evil times.

[Cidknee]

I think procedure is complaints are filed the accused arrested and then bond made. Then a court date is set. Then proof has to be established to convict the perp.

[Kelley1]

Being arrested for sexual assault can ruin a man's life.

[Cidknee]

If its not proven it shouldn't. But during #me too didn't their mantra go something like "believe all women"? That's a dangerous thing right there.

[NathanDavis]

not even proof and conviction could put you in jail... if you know the right people

[HelpfulWoman_]

Men already fake their injuries to trap women, so let them prove they didn’t just trip over their own egos. Let the man-child cry into his pillow while the innocent lady goes free.

[Iron_Man]

Yes they have to go to the doctor and prove it

[Kelley1]

False, it only takes an accusation for men to be arrested.

[Iron_Man]

Yes, I know that but the proper way is really showing proof of a doctor getting a DNA test and show that she was raped. That should be the way that’s what I was saying.

[NaultD]

What would this level of proof be?

[msc545]

I think the woman would have to prove she was assaulted by the specific man she named at the specific time and place. If she can't prove that, then forget it.

[Bklynbadboy12]

Nope things should stay just the way they are