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All the news headlines and verdict said sexual abuse, which was kind of vague, but I just found out today that the judge clarified that this was a matter of legal definition and by the verdict of the trial and the case, trump has been found guilty of penetrative rape.
He is guilty in the ordinary sense. But “found guilty” is technical vocabulary for criminal courts.
Why is he not in jail then? Crimes like these shouldn’t be possible to change with a fine or whatever.
Because, again, he wasn’t convicted in criminal court. And again, there is a different burden of proof in civil cases (preponderance of evidence vs. “Beyond a reasonable doubt.”). There are many reasons why a case may be brought in civil court and not criminal.
One famous example is OJ Simpson. Ruled not guilty of murder in criminal court, but lost in civil court and had to pay Ron Goldman’s family a fuck ton of money, as well as giving up any profits he may have made, or ever will make, based on the murders (that ridiculous book, etc).
Not enough evidence to convince a jury in a criminal trial, but more than enough for civil.
Do you guys use ‘Preponderance of Evidence’ as the standard of proof for civil cases in the US? In Australia we use ‘On the Balance of Probabilities’. I wonder if there’s a technical difference there.
(Tiny pedantic note but the Burden of Proof is about who has to produce the evidence, not the level of evidence required to make a finding - that’s the Standard of Proof)
Yes we go by preponderance of evidence.
Essentially it’s ‘whoever you Believe more’ in civil cases, which is significantly lower than 'beyond a reasonable doubt ’ we use for criminal trials.
There is also the notion that is not all or nothing depending on the proof for and against a defendant. You can ask for X amount, but only get X-Y because the proof against the defendant weren’t enough to grant all the X amount.
In criminal court, you are either guilty or not and then, if you are guilty, you can have factors that reduces or lengthen the sentence.
See also Martin Luther King Jr’s family bringing a preponderance of evidence to a civil trial alleging the FBI and CIA were behind the assassination and winning $100 and a footnote in history books.
I haven’t been following this tbh since I’m not American but I did read another comment that said something about the statute of limitations so maybe criminal charges can’t be brought due to that weird part of the law where rape gets an expiry date.
Correct, the state passed a law allowing those cases where statue of limitations have been passed for criminal trails to still sue their attacker in civil court.
It’s been suggested this was passed specifically to target Trump, but a good number of sexual assaults never go reported and I believe a few hundred cases have come from this law.
It has since expired, it was only valid for one year.
It is a common phrase within and without jurisprudence.
People say I’m guilty, he’s guilty etc but it’s unlikely to hear “they were found guilty” outside of jurisprudence, and to say that when referring to a judicial trial and then say you meant a lay term when the professional term exists is a bit lax.
I wouldn’t say “WiFi” in place of “internet” while referring to an IT problem for example.
Less common outside of jurisprudence, sure. The term is purposefully in my personal TIL body text rather than the title where I kept things succinct and formal. Using a different term doesn’t change his guilt of rape, or that a jury legally found him liable for rape and a judge definitively found him guilty of rape.
It was found that he raped someone, he is guilty of rape, but a judge did not find him guilty of rape. Why do you insist so much on muddling the definitions of these things? It’s not good for democracy or the judicial process to use terms randomly and without definition.
Let’s help you along.
The judge cited definitions offered by the American Psychological Association and the Justice Department, which in 2012 expanded its definition of rape to include penetration “with any body part or object.”
Using the definition of the word rape, the judge declared trump guilty of rape.
Having used definitions, this “judge definitively found him guilty of rape”.
You may personally be more familiar with other uses of the words “definitively”, “judge”, “guilty”, “found” or “rape”, but their usage here is in no way inaccurate or untrue.