Last year, rape charges against former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn were dropped after New York City prosecutors determined that the hotel maid who had accused him was not a credible witness and that no physical evidence supported her version of the incident (Strauss-Kahn claimed the sex was consensual). She recently filed a civil suit against him.
So this past Monday, he filed a counter-suit against her, demanding compensation for the loss of his job (the IMF leadership), defamation, false imprisonment, and legal fees, claiming that she “falsely and maliciously” accused him “when she knew such allegation to be untrue.”
The media has not been kind to Strauss-Kahn over the counter-suit, and one of the maid’s attorneys said that it “personifies Strauss-Kahn’s misogynistic attitude.”
To which it can be counter-argued “Yeah, but only if he’s guilty.”
© 2012 by Bill Bickel unless otherwise noted.
Justified if he’s innocent, reprehensible if he’s guilty. And while I tend to think he’s guilty, I don’t know whether he is, so I don’t know how to vote.
Same here. I picked the middle answer just to see what everybody else thought, but I’m clueless.
The maid’s accusation will never be heard in criminal court, the rape case will be tried in civil court during her lawsuit. That’s not a great way to try a rape case, but since that’s what will be used, he’s justified in defending himself the same way.
If he wants to have his suit heard, he HAS to raise it now. The courts want to try all related cases together to save time and effort, so the rules require that countersuits be filed or the right to raise the claim(s) involved is waived.
Not sure why he bothered, though, since it seems unlikely that a hotel maid has resources to pay a judgment should he win.
The government has admitted that a majority (around 3/4 if memory serves me correctly) of the prisoners held in Gitmo are almost certainly innocent — they were swept up in American operations for no good reason other than looking foreign (while being in a foreign nation, natch) and subsequent investigation has turned up nothing against them at all. Nevertheless, these people have been held in physically and psychologically deforming conditions, in some cases for about a decade, to the point where even if they were released tomorrow, they would never be able to lead a normal life ever again.
Strauss-Kahn has more evidence against him than many of these people. He, after all, was actually accused, and even admits that he actually had sex with the woman, who he obviously treats with contempt. Many of our Gitmo friends were never even accused falsely.
Obviously, the solution here is to throw Strauss-Kahn into Gitmo for a few years. Then, as with the Gitmo prisoners, we can continue to hold him even if his innocence is actually proved, on the grounds that releasing him might cause publicity which would endanger the continued existence of Gitmo and thus National Security. (Which is pretty much what Obama has said on the subject.)
What’s that? He’s rich and white and western? Oh, well never mind then.
The foundation of the legal system in question is the presumption of innocence. He’s not guilty of a reprehensible crime and someone is very publicly repeating that he is. That sounds like defamation for sure.
To win a defamation suit, you have to prove that the allegations were false. The criminal case having been dropped does not satisfy this requirement. It seems difficult to me for him to prove this (I’m not saying this because I believe he’s guilty OR innocent, just because it’s difficult to prove either way when there are only two witnesses and they are each testifying in favor of a different party.
Truth is not a sufficient defense in many places in the world, including in Canada. Wouldn’t the US version require one to prove the statements are true if that is the defense?
In the U.S. defamation law varies from state to state, but I believe in any state proving truth is always sufficient for defending against a claim of defamation, but never necessary. In fact, in some circumstances, statements that are later proven to be false can still fail to be defamatory, because they’re constitutionally protected.
I find it hard to hold Obama responsible for the continued holding of people at Guantanamo Bay when the Congress has very publicly forbidden him to do anything else with them: Congress will not let him bring them into the US for trial, nor will it allow him to just release them.