Saturday, June 23, 2007
In Our Courts - "What's in a word?"
It's not this case in particular, it's just an indication of what can happen in today's courtrooms...
I found this at WorldNetDaily.com:
"Wendy Murphy, of the New England School of Law in Boston, said the ban could be powerful.
"It's very difficult to explain why jurors feel the way they do," she said. "The point is, language is so passively absorbed they don't even know it."
She said banning the word "rape" is unprecedented and said such a restriction on witnesses "impugns their candor, their credibility."
"Jurors will go back to their room and say, 'She didn't feel it was harmful. After all, she called it sex,'" Murphy told the newspaper. "It's like saying to a robbery victim, 'You can’t say you were robbed, because that's a legal judgment. You can only say you gave your stuff to the defendant.' That's absurd."
