Women jurors are biased

Subject: Women jurors are biased Mon Nov 17, 2008 4:36 pm

WOMEN jurors are more likely to clear rape defendants because they believe the alleged victim is likely to have been "asking for it", Helen Mirren says.

The Oscar-winning actor said lawyers defending men accused of rape preferred a female-dominated jury because "women go against women". She said this might be due to sexual jealousy.

Her comments came weeks after she said women who were raped after willingly going to bed with a man should not expect their attackers to be charged. Campaigners have condemned her views.

Jill Saward, who advocates changes in the way rape victims are treated by courts, said Mirren's comments could have an "incredibly destructive" effect on efforts to get victims to come forward. She said: "She might have a point about women - that they sometimes judge other women more harshly than men - but I don't know what she is trying to prove by talking again about how cases are treated in the courts.

"She has obviously found a way of dealing with her own experiences, which she has indicated were not violent, but it is not always so easy for other women, and the circumstances are often very different."

In 2003 Mirren, 63, said she had been date-raped more than once when she was younger but had not gone to the police because "you couldn't do that in those days".

In her latest comments, in an interview in the Sunday Times magazine, she discussed her attitudes to both sexes and gave examples of competitiveness among women. "I'm more careful when I'm being interviewed by a woman because, from experience as well as reading articles about other women, I know there is a little stiletto knife hidden behind the back."

She continued: "In a rape case, the courts - in defence of a man - would select as many women as they could for the jury, because women go against women.

"Whether in a deep-seated animalistic way, going back billions of years, or from a sense of tribal jealousy or just antagonism, I don't know, but other women on a rape case would say she was asking for it. The only reason I can think of is that they're sexually jealous."

Mirren said date rape was a "tricky area" and something men and women had to work out between themselves.

LNK

Women jurors are biased

Women jurors are biased

Anarcho-Capitalist Categorical Imperatives

Via AnCaps: Law & Enforced Unnatural Order