Obzerver
Well-known member
I just served on a 2nd degree rape and 2nd degree assult case(three weeks ago). It was ugly. Some similarities but still different in the degree of assult. Without going into details the girl lived a questionable life and the guy was a veteren of the streets. She 19 he 31. Conflicting stories from the victim even on the stand but the PA did a fine job of explaining various inconsistencies in her closing statement. I had doubt as to the cicumstances and the delay of reporting(4 days) and lack of physical evidence(no rape kit or vaginal inspection done). The pictures were pretty bad with multiple bruising and bite marks. What swayed most of us was when the accused took the stand. The pictures were showed to him and he took a tissue and blew his nose as if crying/upset...a very poor acting job. He then preceeded to answer questions as if he was still on the streets. Tuff atttitude/condecending/smug/conflicting statements from the police report when first questioned and no sign of regret saying she wanted to have rough sex. Even after the closing statement by his attorney to do some damage control he was in trouble. Only took three hrs to return a guilty verdict...he won't be raping/beating on a women for over 20 years*****My point is with all the evidence in this particular trail on both sides(no matter how weak or strong) and then both having strong closing statements it very well could come down to whether or not JJ takes the stand and how he comes accross to the jury.