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I’m getting this sinking feeling that the ‘you’ this chapter is talking about isn’t the victim.
I’m actively wondering whether the trauma has actively altered her memories to fit the facts before her.
Which if true, is going to be a tremendous can of worms.
Not to mention the even more uglier fact that the perpetrator is black.
It’s not trauma, it’s the brain’s natural affinity for shortcuts. Present someone with an incomplete or abstract picture with something that can fill in the blanks and the brain will fill in the blanks.
It’s one of the major problems with eyewitness testimony – and something the police these days are trained on, although they don’t always use that knowledge for the good of the suspect.
Yep. Unfortunately, the only way to really be sure of getting an aggravated-assault-and-rape perp is to shoot them while they’re still in some stage of the act.
The memory issue at least is generally solved (or at least highly mitigated) in a case where the perpetrator isn’t a stranger to the victim. Which is most of the time
This is a comic about criminal law, not about social services. Focusing on what happens to criminals is kind of *the point*.
You’re making an assumption there that defendants are criminals.
And I see everyone in the room is white; guy is surely thinking he’s the one being raped, like Ku-Klux-Klanners finding a way to legally hang someone whom they think is an uppity n—-r who dared touch a white woman, assuming he’s actually innocent.
Is this a demonstration of how things can go wrong, even though it might look fine to a non-critical eye? That would explain why you have an old setting.
I occasionally meet people who clearly recognize me accurately (based on what they say), yet I have little or no clue who they are; some of them have obviously remembered me from mere months earlier, and I feel like there’s something wrong with me for not remembering them.
The old setting is at least in part so that DNA testing isn’t a thing yet. (See the next few pages.)
Assuming no priors, life without parole is pretty heavy for a non-fatal first offense.
There’s nothing saying no priors. It’s not any more just in this case if he committed armed robbery of a 7-11 and served his time.
I’m not entirely sure it is, for this particular crime.