Mistaken identity, perjury, six of one half dozen of the other.
An almost rape and UFO abduction, opposite sides of the same coin.
I spent thirty years interviewing witnesses, suspects, informants and crime victims. I learned quickly to take information gleaned from those sources with a grain of salt. Some of them lie. Others report their perceptions but due to lack of experience, intoxication, limited attention or emotion get some or all of what they report, wrong. Time is not a friend to accuracy when trying to unravel events. Nobody has instant credibility due to their status as a victim.
It is not unusual, for victims and witnesses to provide conflicting descriptions of a suspect. I don’t know how many times a suspect description provided by multiple witnesses resulted in a description that the suspect was old, young, short, fat, tall and skinny, Anglo, Hispanic, Black, bald with long hair. Every victim that has ever looked at gun pointed at them has a described a bore diameter that would comfortably accommodate a freight train.
What is a cop and later a jury to do? First, is to understand that victims are typically overtaken by events. Had they known in advance, they would have taken notes. Most honest statements have elements of truth. Those elements can be teased out by comparing the statement with known facts. These known facts can come from a variety of sources, observations at the scene, other witnesses, and past history.
Ms. Ford reports that at an unknown time and place she attended a party with another girl and four guys. The identity of the all of the players has not been disclosed. However, three; the two accused and one female deny the incident ever took place. All were drinking. She wound up in a bedroom, otherwise undescribed. The one thing she is certain of is that the future Judge Kavanaugh, pinned her down on the bed, tried to disrobe her, groped her and put his hand over her mouth. She struggled, broke free and hid in a bathroom, also otherwise undescribed. Although she has forgotten about events and people leading up to and the aftermath, she remembers the future Judge.
What else do we know about the event? There is no contemporary report from Ford that the event took place. Ford’s yearbook from that time period indicates a lifestyle that includes drug and alcohol abuse, to the point of “blackout.” It also indicates a penchant for casual sex with one night stands. This supports her story, in that it serves to explain how the little slut ended up in a strange house in a position to be a potential rape victim. Ms. Ford explains (supported by her defenders) that a woman never mistakes the identity of her potential rapist.
Here is what the Innocence Project has to say about eyewitness identification.
Ford and defenders would point out this is rape or attempted rape and that is different. They would be right! Mistaken ID in sexual assault crimes is almost twice that of all other crimes.
Surf the web, it doesn’t take much effort to find instances of false identification in rape cases that resulted in conviction. Here are some examples:
In 1996 a suspected serial rapist dubbed by local media the “River Park Rapist” preyed on female residents of South Bend, Indiana. Police arrested Richard Alexander (then 30 years old) in August 1996 for four of the rapes, largely on the basis of the statements of the victims.
DNA evidence definitively excluded him as a suspect in one of the rapes, although both the victim and her fiancé continued to insist that Alexander was the perpetrator.[1] Not all of the investigators were convinced of his guilt, particularly as three similar rapes occurred while Alexander was in police custody.[2] In the case of one of the rapes that took place while he was in custody, Alexander’s picture was accidentally placed in a photo-lineup shown to the victim. She selected his photograph as that of her assailant, despite his incarceration at the time of the offense.[1]
Nevertheless, Alexander was prosecuted for the three rapes, with charges totaling two counts of robbery, two counts of criminal deviate conduct, two counts of attempted rape, confinement, attempted robbery, rape, burglary and auto theft.[1] His 1997 trial ended in a hung jury, with two of the three black jurors voting with the nine white jurors for conviction. He was re-tried for the crimes in 1998 by an all-white jury. At the second trial, one of the victims, though identifying Alexander as her assailant, asserted that he had a hairless chest without tattoos. When it was demonstrated that Alexander had a hairy, heavily tattooed chest, he was acquitted of that rape.[1] Nevertheless, he was convicted of the other two and was sentenced to seventy years in prison.[2]
In 2001, with Alexander already having served five years in prison, an alleged burglar and child molester named Michael Murphy confessed to one of the two rapes of which Alexander had been convicted, knowing details only the true assailant would know.[1] With this revelation, a judge ordered a new round of DNA testing in Alexander’s case. Hairs found at the scene of the rape were submitted to mitochondrial DNA testing.[3] At the time of Alexander’s original conviction, such testing was not available in the state of Indiana. The tests proved that the DNA did not match Alexander’s profile, but did match Murphy’s.[1]
Because of this new development, Indiana prosecutors came to believe that Alexander was in fact not responsible for any of the rapes. In the remaining rape for which he was incarcerated, the evidence against him consisted of the victim’s tentative identification of his voice and an eyewitness’s visual identification of Alexander. The Indiana prosecutor and Alexander’s defense attorney filed a joint motion to have Alexander’s convictions overturned.[1]
The courts granted the motion, and Alexander was exonerated of all charges and released from prison on December 12, 2001.[2] It is now believed that the River Park Rapist was actually two separate perpetrators.
Here is another:
James Curtis Giles spent 10 years in prison for a gang rape he has long said he did not commit. On Monday, more than a decade after his release, a prosecutor acknowledged Giles’ arrest had been a case of mistaken identity, and a judge recommended he be exonerated.
If the appeals court formally approves State District Judge Robert Francis’ recommendation as expected, Giles, now 53, will become the 13th Dallas County man to be exonerated since 2001 with the help of DNA evidence.
And yet again:
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) on Wednesday granted an absolute pardon to a convicted sex offender, ending a decades-long campaign by an imprisoned man whose claims of innocence were eventually joined by prosecutors and police.
Final proof that Michael Kenneth McAlister, 58, was wrongly convicted came when another man — a serial rapist who bore an uncanny resemblance to McAlister — recently confessed to the 1986 attempted rape and kidnapping in Richmond, the governor said.
McAlister was a 29-year-old carpenter living with his mother when he was identified in a photo array, and later in court, by a woman who was assaulted in the laundry room of the Town & Country apartment complex in Richmond on the night of Feb. 23, 1986.
The unconditional pardon wipes away a prosecution that has haunted officials familiar with the investigation for decades, and came days before McAlister faced what his attorneys called the “Kafka-esque prospect” of being locked away for years more under a Virginia law that allows the civil commitment of sexual predators after they complete their criminal sentences.
People are brought up to believe all sorts of things that aren’t true. Usually, by the age of eight, most doubt the existence of the Easter Bunny, Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. There will always be a gullible group that holds with the idea that the Holocaust never happened, Neil Armstrong didn’t walk on the moon and aliens regularly abduct people for nefarious experiments. This, despite the fact that there is overwhelming evidence that the Holocaust happened and Armstrong did walk on the moon.
Ford’s story falls into the same category of the UFO abductees. The location is unknown. The description of the event is vague. There is no independent evidence that the event occurred. The statements of the event must be taken on faith. Unlike many of the UFO abductees, at least Ford managed to avoid the dreaded “anal probe.”