Word: bowens
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...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...
...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...
...Bowen's attorney, Wendy Murphy, says her client had nothing to do with the protest, which was organized by PAVE (Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment), a Chicago-based advocacy group for rape victims. "She supports the protestors and is glad they are there and signed the online petition, but that's it," said Murphy in an e-mail. But since Bowen has decided to take her language-ban appeal to the federal district court, she and her lawyer have begun soliciting support from PAVE and other national advocacy groups...
...because often in acquaintance rape cases, the woman experiences the intercourse as rape and the man experiences it as sex," Anderson says of the language ban. "It's a way of denying the woman's ability to describe her experience as she lived it." To her, the fact that Bowen described her ordeal as simply "inside of me" was a problem because "it's so bland that it could describe what a dentist does with dentist tools to excavate a cavity." Murphy agrees: "Nobody in that courtroom was allowed to describe what happened as a crime...