Word: bowen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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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...
...when the trial began last October, Mock convinced Judge Jeffre Cheuvront to ban the words rape, victim and assailant from the trial - including from Bowen's testimony - arguing that such words would be "unfairly inflammatory, prejudicial, and misleading." Nebraska state law holds that "evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed" by the potential for unfair prejudice...
Under the language restriction, Bowen testified that Safi "was inside of me and on top of me" when she regained consciousness the morning following their meeting. That trial ended in a hung jury...
...Bowen says that the court's vocabulary ban hurt her credibility with the jury because she had to remain so cognizant of word choice as she testified, knowing that one mistake could result in a mistrial. "At first I just wanted a conviction," she says, "but now I want to be able to tell my testimony without language obstruction and have a jury decide...
Mock felt that the ban ensured his client a fair trial. "She, like any other witness, is subject to the rules of evidence," he says of Bowen. "To say that there is a First Amendment right of the witness to say whatever they want in a courtroom is a silly notion...