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Emotional Credibility
In early 2007 I served on a jury for a cold-case murder trial involving two black men who killed a white student named Marty Brown on Michigan State University’s campus in 1973. I intend to write more fully on this for Ricochet in the future, but I wanted to share a relevant portion related to the Kavanaugh hearings.
Yesterday I kept hearing from friends that Dr. Ford’s testimony was “credible,” and it reminded me of a particularly emotional witness at this trial who recanted on the stand. She was the ex-wife of one of the murderers, Kumbi Salim (who did not stand trial until later the same year). She had confessed earlier to the prosecution that she had known all along of the guilt of both her ex-husband and the defendant, Gary Mason. Once on the stand, she detailed a life of physical and emotional abuse, and how frightened she was when confronted with questions about the murder in 1973, when she originally talked to police. While the crestfallen prosecutors looked on, she tearfully recanted her testimony, and explained why she had lied to police about the name, “Mason.”
She said that her father had always warned her about stopping in Mason, Michigan while driving from Detroit to Michigan State University, which she attended. According to her testimony (which was punctuated by crying jags), her father feared for her life because Mason was filled with racists with ties to the Ku Klux Klan. When police questioned her about Kumbi Salim’s friends, asking for a name, “Mason” just popped out of her mouth. Wiping away tears, she was now very very sorry for all the trouble she had caused an innocent man.
During deliberations, the other jurors bought it. “She’s credible,” they said, “Did you see how she cried?” It always makes me cringe to know that if a woman speaks emotionally, and especially if she cries, and more especially if she claims she is damaged, tender-hearted people tend to believe her.
One of the most challenging aspects of my persuasive argument for the defendant’s guilt involved this testimony. I asked everyone to review the tape of how the defendant smiled and visibly relaxed when he saw this witness enter the courtroom. Apparently, no one else had noticed this. Secondly, I pointed out that Mason Mi. was not a hotbed of racists in 1973, or even earlier, in 1940, when a popular kid named Malcolm Little excelled at Mason Junior High, even getting elected Class President, as detailed in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and celebrated in murals on the walls of the current high school there.
The introduction of facts turned what was “emotionally credible” testimony into a series of lies that we decided she told out of fear of retribution. I found out after the trial that her ex-husband was suspected of committing other murders, and likely had threatened her.
This is not meant to accuse Dr. Ford of lying, but her testimony, with its weird lack of corroborating evidence, especially in the face of the Kavanaugh calendar/diaries, is indistinguishable from an emotionally delivered, persuasive lie, making it not very valuable as evidence.
Published in General
I think she knowingly lied about it, demonstrating the ability to act . . .
“I swear to tell the truthiness, the whole truthiness and nothing but the truthiness…”
“Without G-d, all things are permitted.”
Suppose she knowingly lied about everything she said, how would her testimony have been any different? Do “credible” people get emotional while liars are calm and robotic? Were we supposed to look for some sort of poker tell, like her eyebrows twitch whenever she lies? Or is this just one of those “gut instinct” things where people claim they can spot a liar, they can’t explain why, but they “just know?”
Everything about the whole process tells me it’s an orchestrated character assassination with a female Democrat operative willing to come forward and lie before a Senate subcommittee to destroy an honest, decent man’s reputation and his family . . .
And a year or so from now when it is clear to all that that is exactly what was going on, some mid-level operative will openly laugh about it on an MSNBC show as he/she brags about the details involved behind the scenes and the complicity of various media personalities to help pull it off. And the Republicans will just shuffle off down the hall with the “kick me” signs still on their backs…and back to business as usual. Fools.
Just like how Harry Reid bragged about the “Mitt Romney not paying his taxes” lie. His response in an interview was something like, “It worked, didn’t it?”
And just the other day, Bill Bennett was talking about his WH experience, saying that the Dems would routinely go on camera spouting their idiocy and then go back in the green room and laugh about it with him. They’d even say they didn’t even believe in what they were saying themselves.
And I can tell you that in my college days of activism (well, it was age-appropriate), if any of our little tactics ever worked, if anyone actually gave in to our demands, we were shocked because we didn’t really expect them to. I can promise you those Democrats are laughing their butts off at us.
And this is the problem, and maybe the Republican Senators don’t realize it. What might be a DC game to them has a real impact on the rest of us out here . . .
When a class of victims (democrat women)is accorded the right of unquestioned veracity, we are allowed only unchecked emotional testimony. Had Ford begun to speak in tongues or had some kind of a fit during her time in front of the Senate, I have no doubt the left would have gleefully pounced upon it as more evidence of trauma.
What is to keep the left from smearing a female Supreme Court candidate in a similar fashion?
From Victor Davis Hanson:
“The “process” of memorializing Ford’s testimony involved a strange inversion of constitutional norms: The idea of a statute of limitations is ossified; hearsay is legitimate testimony; inexact and contradictory recall is proof of trauma, and therefore of validity; the burden of proof is on the accused, not the accuser; detail and evidence are subordinated to assumed sincerity; proof that one later relates an allegation to another is considered proof that the assault actually occurred in the manner alleged; motive is largely irrelevant; the accuser establishes the guidelines of the state’s investigation of the allegations; and the individual allegation gains credence by cosmic resonance with all other such similar allegations.”
read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/life_in_a_gynocracy.html#ixzz5ScN6IreH
I don’t often disagree with VDH, but must do so to a certain extent. In a background check, the statute of limitations is not relevant. That said, some teenage conduct should get some slack. Rape, no. Stupidity, more likely to.
So if the event (if it happened at al) was really an “awkward pass,” but the girl – now woman – wants to use it to keep someone of the opposite party from achieving a higher position in government or elsewhere, she just claims it was “rape?” Wonderful.
It’s a shame Bill Bennett didn’t have an iphone or something back then to record that stuff, as would be possible now. These days they’re probably more circumspect about revealing their true behavior in front of “the enemy.”
Would an outright, deliberate liar have invented dates/times/places that might be easily refuted? I don’t see why they would. Not “remembering” where or when anything happened, does seem suggestive at the very least.
By publicly declaring that she imagined he would have raped her had he not been so drunk, Ford inferred that Kavanaugh was a rapist who had been denied an opportunity. This of course, was happily peddled by the press to add an additional layer of emotional drama.
Some hopeful opinion:
https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2018/09/30/10-reasons-the-fbi-will-clear-kavanaugh-n2524076
I don’t know how else to say it. A “direct response” from the author of this post, truly honors me. (Is that the right expression? Hope so. When I read it back it sounds self-serving but I can’t think of any other way to put it.)
Oh, maybe this:
Author! Author!