lise lotte lublin
After Bill Cosby, States Shift on Statutes of Limitations in Sexual Attack Cases
Lise-Lotte Lublin started a petition and testified earlier lawmakers in Nevada terminal year, part of a successful attempt to extend that state's statute of limitations for sexual assault.
In Colorado, where lawmakers made a similar change this year, legislators had been lobbied hard on the bill by Beth Ferrier and Heidi Thomas.
In California, it was Lili Bernard, Victoria Valentino, Linda Kirkpatrick and Janice Baker Kinney who helped organize a campaign, EndRapeSOL, and rallies as role of a movement that this fall eliminated that country's statute of limitations for rape altogether.
The seven women live in different places and take different lives. But they were all stirred to activism, they say, by a shared history: They all say they were sexually assaulted by Beak Cosby. And in each case, by the time they decided to come up forward, many years afterward they say they were attacked, their ability to press for criminal charges was precluded by a statute of limitations.
None of the women volition benefit directly from changes in the laws, but they said they still felt compelled to get involved.
"If I'm going to be attached to him the residuum of my life, and so I would like something good to come up out of information technology," said Ms. Ferrier, who says Mr. Cosby drugged and assaulted her in the mid-1980s.
In the final two years, at least half dozen states have extended or eliminated their statutes of limitations on sexual assaults. Activists are seeking similar changes in at least three others.
Surfacing in many of the efforts has been the specter of accusations confronting Mr. Cosby, an entertainer whose legacy had long been his pioneering work in one-act and on goggle box, but who now has also go something of a stimulus for the reform of America'south laws on sexual assault.
"Cosby's case has spurred a lot of modify," said Rebecca O'Connor, vice president for public policy at the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. "A lot of states saw the headlines coming out, and legislators had a lot of pressure coming on them to take a critical look at whether laws were limiting access to justice."
Of class, much of the flurry of efforts is non attributable to Mr. Cosby, who has denied all of the accusations. There is a greater climate of awareness toward accusations of sexual assail evident even in the presidential race, and to the outrage sparked past individual crimes. In California, for example, the six-month sentence given this year to Brock Turner, a former Stanford University pupil convicted of sexual set on, unleashed a torrent of anger.
The bug raised in the various debates over legislative amendments have been substantial and go well beyond the question of whether the changes provide a measure out of satisfaction to Mr. Cosby'due south many accusers.
There are many defenders of strict statutes of limitation who opposed the changes that have been made. In California, under the sometime law, charges could not be brought unless the reported incident of rape had occurred inside x years. Supporters said the different states' limits encouraged timely reporting of crimes. Getting rid of them, they said, put defendants at a severe disadvantage, even risked putting innocent people in jail because of faulty memories and deteriorating evidence in old cases.
"The power to detect evidence that can back up a defense 20 years later — it'southward an almost insurmountable task," said Nina J. Ginsberg, a criminal defense lawyer in Virginia who has handled a number of sexual assault cases.
"Having these really long statutes of limitations where information technology makes information technology almost impossible to disprove what the victim is proverb is grossly unfair," she added. "But from the defense attorney'south perspective, it'southward disabling."
This is nearly the exact position being taken by Mr. Cosby'south lawyers in Pennsylvania, where he faces charges of having drugged and sexually assaulted a immature Temple University staff fellow member, Andrea Constand, at his dwelling outside Philadelphia in 2004.
It is the merely criminal case that has been brought against Mr. Cosby. It was filed last Dec just weeks before Pennsylvania's existing 12-year statute of limitations on sexual assail had expired.
The prosecution in that instance also hopes to introduce, in improver to Ms. Constand'southward testimony, the accounts of 13 other women who say they were assaulted but whose ability to pursue the charges was precluded past the fact that they came forward also tardily.
Lawyers for Mr. Cosby, who is 79, argue that the delay in bringing charges and the effort to introduce the other women's accounts are unfair. His retention and eyesight have declined, they say, preventing him from aiding his defense and his ability to produce witnesses that might back up his view of events has been damaged past the passage of fourth dimension. In addition, they challenge to what extent the women's ain recollections have deteriorated over time.
"Witnesses accept died and prove disappeared forever," Mr. Cosby's lawyers, Brian J. McMonagle and Angela C. Agrusa, said in court papers last week.
"Their stories of 'that night spent partying with a famous celebrity' are based solely on the tainted, unreliable memories of women, now in their senior years, recalling alleged events from a single meet from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s."
On the other side, experts say that women who have been sexually assaulted, specially many years ago, are reluctant to report information technology. Advocates say that the time limits prevent accusers from bringing criminal cases even when in that location is ample evidence, and that they should at least take a chance to examination their cases in court.
"You lot tie it to the fact that you stayed silent considering you were agape," said Charlotte Pull a fast one on, who said Mr. Cosby sexually assaulted her in the 1970s and who is involved in efforts to change the statute of limitations in Washington, D.C.
For her and other women who opened themselves to public scrutiny by accusing Mr. Cosby of sexual assault, the changes in the law experience like a victory, they said.
"It was surreal," Ms. Lublin said about seeing the neb signed into law in Nevada. "It was absolutely empowering to know how many people this was going to affect."
In Colorado, Mike Johnston, a state senator who was 1 of the sponsors of the legislation, said the pecker's success had been congenital atop the public opinion taken by Mr. Cosby's accusers, who, he said made it possible for other women with similar accounts to come forward.
"They were the catalyst to first this conversation," he said.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/arts/television/after-bill-cosby-states-shift-sexual-assault-statutes-of-limitations.html
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