I'm Going to Get Into Soooo Much Trouble

For even thinking this let alone writing it down and explaining it.

Marcel Berlins tells us that there are not two types (or more) of rape. There's just the one, date rape is the same as violent stranger rape:

Then along comes John Redwood, the wayward Conservative MP, trying to turn the clock back at least 20 years. Date rape, he asserts in his blog, should be regarded as a "disagreement between two lovers" and not be treated as seriously as rape by a stranger; he wants to restore the discredited two-tier approach. I would normally take no notice of anything Redwood says. The reason I'm writing about him is not to discuss the merits of his argument - there are none. But I know that others hold those views, jurors in rape trials among them. I also know (including from personal conversations) that sometimes juries are reluctant to convict and have someone sent to prison - even if they believe he committed the rape - if the circumstances involve a past or present relationship. In other words, men are being wrongly acquitted because some jurors are taking the Redwood approach. Somehow, juries need to be told firmly that a rape is a rape, whoever commits it.

Now Marcel may well believe that a rape is a rape whatever, but that is in fact his belief. The belief might be supported by a large swathe of enlightened thinkers, even by the legislation of the land, but that doesn't actually make it true. The final arbiter of the law is the jury: it might be plain as the nose on your face that the law says this person is guilty, that the evidence says this person is guilty, but unless the jury agrees, they're not guilty. And that's one of the purposes of having juries: so that what the average person thinks should or should not be a crime is reflected in the determination of whether someone has indeed committed a crime or not.

We can trivialise this: famously a woman was arrested for wearing a "Bollocks to Blair" t-shirt. No prosecutor is going to be stupid enough to allow a case like that in front of a jury as they know that 12 stout citizens simply will not believe that it is a crime to swear about politicians.

No, this isn't the only purpose of having a jury but it's the one that is most important in the long term preservation of our freedoms and liberties. That whatever the rules made by the political classes, whatever fads sweep through the legislature, they still, in order to secure a conviction, need to pass the scrutiny of 12 citizens, drawn at random, who apply the mores of the population to the question at hand.

And as Berlins himself points out, that population doesn't believe that there is only one form of rape, doesn't believe that "a rape is a rape, whoever commits it".

Now it may well be that Berlins is correct and the people are wrong, it's been known to happen: but we are a democracy as well.