JUDGE SCOLDS UConn For Banning Witness Testimony That Could Undermine Rape Accuser
Last week we reported on a federal judge’s approval of a temporary restraining order against the University of Connecticut for running an alleged sham trial against a student accused of rape. U.S. District Judge Michael Shea said the taxpayer-funded university deprived the student the opportunity to mount a “meaningful defense.”
The order was released just hours after a telephone status conference with the parties, including lawyers for “John Doe,” UConn and the state – and a newly released transcript shows Shea’s exasperation with the latter two. Even though John was seeking to change the status quo by returning to his graduating class, and thus would have to make “a clear showing or a substantial likelihood of success,” the judge indicated UConn had basically made his argument for him.
“I’ll put my cards on the table,” Judge Shea told Mary Kathryn Lenehan of the Attorney General’s Office:
I am troubled by aspects of this procedure, and in particular I think the thing that troubles me the most is the fact that the hearing body refused to hear from four of the plaintiff’s witnesses.
Indeed, UConn had blocked the testimony of other students in the car where “Jane Roe” first allegedly started “grinding” on John’s lap without asking for his consent. That matters because Jane denied “initiating any sexual contact” on John, raising a credibility problem for her other claim that John raped her later that night.
Shea noted that John’s reduced punishment – from expulsion to two-year suspension, assuming UConn agrees to readmit him – does not much change “the potential damage to his career prospects,” raising the due process requirements for his case:
When the state’s lawyer Lenehan tried to argue that John’s witnesses had to give in-person witness testimony, Shea cut her off and read from UConn’s own rules, which put no conditions on how witnesses provide their statements…It got worse from there. The state’s lawyer tried to argue the witnesses from the car “grinding” incident were irrelevant to the bedroom incident, and Lenehan appeared to be unaware that Jane had denied grinding on John at all. Lenehan continued flailing, trying to argue that anything other than directly looking at Jane grinding on John’s lap rendered a witness irrelevant. Shea noted that Jane also denied inviting John “to come back into the car and to go to the dorm. These witnesses would testify to the contrary.”
The judge scolded Lenehan, representing the state of Connecticut, for not having “read the statements a little more carefully, frankly, if you’re going to kind of debate it with me … because you’ve got the facts wrong.” She eventually agreed to stop debating Shea, and he responded: “Yeah, please don’t.”
thecollegefix-Piper
