THE YALE Rape Trial Isn’t Over Yet
A criminal court cleared Saifullah Khan of the charge of raping a fellow undergraduate, but he’s about to face a campus committee. The March 2018 acquittal by a New Haven jury has been much lamented on campus and in the national media. But a review of the evidence shows that the trial was fair, the defense was ethical, and there was much more than a reasonable doubt about the accuser’s claim that she was so drunk as to lack the capacity to consent. Defense lawyers are required to do their best to discredit accusers who are trying to put their clients behind bars—Khan faced a maximum prison sentence of 46 years and deportation back to Afghanistan, where he believes he would have been executed, stoned, or lashed under the country’s laws. And wasn’t it part of the defense’s duty to probe the accuser’s claim that she had had so much to drink that she was losing consciousness several hours later? The lead defense lawyer, Norman Pattis, called the reaction “a form of mass hysteria.”
weeklystandard.com By Stuart Taylor
