Word: assaultively
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Words are powerful. In court, they can make or break a case. But just how far should the judicial system go to control them? That's the question central to one case in Lincoln, Nebraska, where a sexual assault trial has morphed into a federal case over the First Amendment rights of witnesses and, more broadly, the language surrounding rape...
Because the issue at stake was one of consent, not assault, the words that Bowen and Safi chose in court to describe the incident were particularly fraught. And according to Clarence Mock, Safi's defense attorney, the term rape seethes with enough emotion to prejudice a jury and is itself a legal conclusion. Once that word is uttered, Mock says, "the skunk is in the jury box and it's hard to get the smell...
...second trial was scheduled to begin last spring. This time, Bowen refused to comply with the court-ordered language ban, which had been expanded to include the terms "sexual assault kit" and "sexual assault nurse." On Bowen's behalf, protesters demonstrated outside the Lincoln courthouse, and a petition, which Bowen signed, circulated on the Internet to change Nebraska law. Because of the publicity surrounding the case, Judge Cheuvront declared a mistrial during jury selection, accusing Bowen of inciting public furor over her case. "Ms. Bowen and her friends hoped to intimidate this court and interfere with the selection...
...family who nevertheless love each other with a strange, sinister tenderness, is one of the unexpected pleasures of the late Potter books.) The goblins get a more extended cameo appearance. At one point Harry casts a spell with three wands in one hand, resulting in a triple-charged sorcerous assault, which expands my understanding of the laws of magical physics. Harry also takes a road trip to Godric's Hollow, which is in many ways the book's Ground Zero: Dumbledore's family lived there, and Harry's parents died there. (That's Godric as in Godric Gryffindor, a connection...
...girls busy themselves by sweeping the corridor outside the government school's single row of tiny classrooms. The boys crib last-minute homework from each other. Then the men with guns arrive-six of them in a pickup truck, two more on a motorbike, all toting M-16 assault rifles. It is the job of these government militiamen to protect two cars and five motorbikes carrying a dozen teachers. Their convoy speeds into this sleepy village with the well-rehearsed urgency of a presidential motorcade...