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He sliced out her eyes??? Eeeek!
Oh no, that’s supposed to be mascara. She’d be a terrible eyewitness without eyes. It got dark enough without doing that to her.
Even if he’d cut her eyes, that presumably would have been after she got a good look at him. I don’t think she’d be in much shape to make phone calls with her eyes cut, though.
In my experience, on an ordinary rotary dial phone like I have, if you repeatedly press the hook that hangs up the phone, you’ll get an operator. Of course, that’s an old rotary, I don’t know if modern phones would. If they still have a physical hook I’d expect that to work.
It should, if it stills have a physical hook that connects and disconnects the line. That’s actually how it dials in the first place… I imagine “wtf is this even” goes to the operator for purposes of figuring out broken equipment, dealing with toddlers, etc.
No, I meant I don’t think she’d even be thinking much about anything except AGONY!!! of eyes.
Whew!
Ho-lee crap.
So let me guess — there’s going to be something about identifying suspected/eyewitness testimony in this storyline?
Storyline, nothing. This is the eyewitness identification CHAPTER. We’re just getting started.
Oh boy, I’m actually reassured it’s about eyewitness identification here. When I saw “It was you” and a case of rape, I thought for a minute it was going to be something much, much darker about the justice system.
About a decade before DNA was well defined technology. Eye witness testimony as the only deciding factor.
Got a feeling this isn’t going to end well for someone
Bonus trivia: In 1985, less than half the country had 911 service.
or with the usual way rape cases go, she is going to get hammered by the defence and her credibility shot to pieces
That is grossly inaccurate, and cross-examination is critical to a fair legal system. As I’m sure this chapter will discuss, eyewitness make mistakes.
It’s more like eyewitnesses are occasionally accurate.
The victim will most likely be coached into picking a suspect (not necessarily her actual rapist) and the defense is going to attack her credibility. Needless to say, we will all be frustrated by the end of this chapter. Or perhaps not should be educational either way.
You can see it’s one of the larger cities, but perhaps not New York, judging from the size of the phone book. The Houston book was slightly smaller than that. I think.
In addition to the victim issues, maybe we’ll also see racial and social issues related to possible suspects (or “suspects”). And, unless there’s a flashback or a cameo hint, we’ll likely never see who it really was, although if this storyline continues in later chapters, it could take a long while. Before DNA? Perhaps the Innocence Project will appear in a later chapter.
It is amazing that eyewitness testimony is still allowed in trials, given the science demonstrating how unreliable it is. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/
What is worse, is how many people have been wrongly convicted based on the practice?
Hey Nathan–
You really should put a trigger warning before stuff like this. Even just a vague warning at the top of the page. Please. That’s some very evocative art and material.
A longtime fan and surviver
I apologize if this is was too disturbing to you or anyone else. But believe me, I’m being disturbing on purpose here. Just as at the beginning of the previous chapter (which upset my wife terribly, btw — she was shouting at me for it).
I’ve thought about giving trigger warnings many many times. But pretty much everything from mens rea onward is going to trigger someone — crime is traumatic by nature, whether being victimized by a criminal or by the state — so I’ve just sort of left it up to the reader to decide whether to read a section or not.
I do go out of my way to avoid depicting the actual violent acts whenever merely talking about what happened does the job (as here). But I realize that not showing the actual act can be worse for some people than showing it. Any depiction would be cartoonish and silly, on most levels, whereas what’s going on in the reader’s head can be as bad as their imagination (or memory) allows. Rape is a particularly sensitive topic, but one that is unavoidable in criminal law. It’s really challenging to depict it in a way that’s not too awful or offensive. I’ve tried to deal with it in a few different ways (see the chapter on self-defense and the section on rape itself), but in each one I’ve tried to err on the side of not depicting the act itself.
Chances are, if you’re a juror for something like this, you’ll see far worse than depicted here. Then again, if you’ve had to deal with something like this, you probably won’t get picked as a juror.
> “Just as at the beginning of the previous chapter”
Uh…the fifth amendment flowchart?
Maybe I’m confused about what counts as a “chapter”.