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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28512 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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I guess it's sex crimes week on The Motte. Here is one I've been puzzling about.

How on Earth was Danny Masterson actually convicted?

This has been a slow boil for me. I'd seen headlines here and there about the slow rolling case against him. I totally missed when the first trial went to a hung jury. Then suddenly I see he was convicted on 2 out of 3 rape charges and sentenced to 30 years. Even saw some headlines about Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis getting dragged for writing a character witness letter for his sentencing. But something jumped out at me.

He was being prosecuted for crimes 17-19 years old at the time the prosecution started. Red flag number one, I don't know the specific law in CA, but surely that's pushing the statute of limitations, right? Indeed it is! Statute of Limitations for rape is 10 years. So how did they still prosecute him?

Well there are a few exceptions.. Namely

  • Kidnapping the victim
  • Drugging the victim
  • Using a firearm
  • Having been previously convicted of a sex crime (or maybe just being accused of multiple sex crimes?)

What appears to have sunk Masterson's SOL is that there are multiple accusers. Now reading the law myself, the reading seems clear to me. The exception requires a seperate conviction. But I'm no lawyer or judge, obviously.

(d)(1) The defendant has been previously convicted of an offense specified in subdivision (c), including an offense committed in another jurisdiction that includes all of the elements of an offense specified in subdivision (c).

Or

(e)(4) The defendant has been convicted in the present case or cases of committing an offense specified in subdivision (c) against more than one victim.

And I believe this is the part pertaining to SOL

(g) Notwithstanding Section 1385 or any other law, the court shall not strike any allegation, admission, or finding of any of the circumstances specified in subdivision (d) or (e) for any person who is subject to punishment under this section.

So I donno, maybe it's not as clear cut as I think. I repeat, not a lawyer.

Moving past the SOL concerns I have, what was the evidence against Masterson? Near as I can tell none. There were 3 victim testimonies, some expert testimony, and that was it. Zero evidence corroborating the witnesses, zero physical evidence, zero circumstantial evidence. And this is why SOL is so important. It's not a get out of jail free card. It exists so the defense can practically gather some evidence to exonerate their client. After 20 years, most physical evidence will be gone, alibis will be impossible, witnesses will be difficult to find and their testimony will be even more unreliable than already notoriously unreliable witness testimony. All we're left with is he said/she said, and the biases of the jury pool.

This was an idle, principled frustration for me. I honestly could give a shit about Danny Masterson. However, now that figures more politically salient, like Russell Brand, are in the crosshairs, the precedent set by Masterson's chilling conviction are all the more frightening.

How on Earth was Danny Masterson actually convicted?

It’s pretty simple. Rule of evidence 413. This is an exception to the general principle (rule 404) that prior bad acts are inadmissible to prove propensity in court. If you were charging someone with robbing a bank, you wouldn’t be able to put a witness on the stand who says they were robbed by the defendant at a CVS in a completely separate incident years prior. That’s prejudicial and against rule 404. Rule 413 let’s you do that in sexual assault cases.

The analogous CA provision is Evidence Code section 1108

And note that a prior robbery might indeed be admissible under certain circumstances, if admitted to prove something other than propensity, such as motive, intent, identity. or common plan (i.e, M.O.). At least that is the law in California:

The least degree of similarity (between the uncharged act and the charged offense) is required in order to prove intent. (See People v. Robbins, supra, 45 Cal.3d 867, 880.) "[T]he recurrence of a similar result ... tends (increasingly with each instance) to negative accident or inadvertence or self-defense or good faith or other innocent mental state, and tends to establish (provisionally, at least, though not certainly) the presence of the normal, i.e., criminal, intent accompanying such an act...." (2 Wigmore, supra, (Chadbourn rev. ed. 1979) § 302, p. 241.) In order to be admissible to prove intent, the uncharged misconduct must be sufficiently similar to support the inference that the defendant "`probably harbor[ed] the same intent in each instance.' [Citations.]" (People v. Robbins, supra, 45 Cal.3d 867, 879.)

A greater degree of similarity is required in order to prove the existence of a common design or plan. As noted above, in establishing a common design or plan, evidence of uncharged misconduct must demonstrate "not merely a similarity in the results, but such a concurrence of common features that the various acts are naturally to be explained as caused by a general plan of which they are the individual manifestations." (2 Wigmore, supra, (Chadbourn rev. ed. 1979) § 304, p. 249, italics omitted.) "[T]he difference between requiring similarity, for acts negativing innocent intent, and requiring common features indicating common design, for acts showing design, is a difference of degree rather than of kind; for to be similar involves having common features, and to have common features is 403*403 merely to have a high degree of similarity." (Id. at pp. 250-251, italics omitted; see also 1 McCormick, supra, § 190, p. 805.)

To establish the existence of a common design or plan, the common features must indicate the existence of a plan rather than a series of similar spontaneous acts, but the plan thus revealed need not be distinctive or unusual. For example, evidence that a search of the residence of a person suspected of rape produced a written plan to invite the victim to his residence and, once alone, to force her to engage in sexual intercourse would be highly relevant even if the plan lacked originality. In the same manner, evidence that the defendant has committed uncharged criminal acts that are similar to the charged offense may be relevant if these acts demonstrate circumstantially that the defendant committed the charged offense pursuant to the same design or plan he or she used in committing the uncharged acts. Unlike evidence of uncharged acts used to prove identity, the plan need not be unusual or distinctive; it need only exist to support the inference that the defendant employed that plan in committing the charged offense. (See People v. Ruiz, supra, 44 Cal.3d 589, 605-606.)

The greatest degree of similarity is required for evidence of uncharged misconduct to be relevant to prove identity. For identity to be established, the uncharged misconduct and the charged offense must share common features that are sufficiently distinctive so as to support the inference that the same person committed both acts. (People v. Miller, supra, 50 Cal.3d 954, 987.) "The pattern and characteristics of the crimes must be so unusual and distinctive as to be like a signature." (1 McCormick, supra, § 190, pp. 801-803.)

People v. Ewoldt, 7 Cal.4th 380 (1994)

But do we know for sure that past assaults were used against him?

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