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Jury awards damages of $8.4 million to man falsely accused of rape
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Did someone say that we should never question or doubt any accusation of rape? Read the last paragraph.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/...m_term=.c5190c9e9e56


Col. David “Wil” Riggins, after a highly decorated Army career that included multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was on the verge of promotion to brigadier general in July 2013 when he got a phone call at the Pentagon from the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division to come in for a meeting. Once there, he learned that a blogger in Washington state had just accused him of raping her, when both were cadets at West Point in 1986. An investigation was underway.

Riggins waived his right to an attorney and immediately gave a statement denying any sexual assault of the woman, Susan Shannon of Everett, Wash. Shannon also cooperated with the CID investigation, which could not “prove or disprove Ms. Shannon’s allegation she was raped,” the CID report concluded. But in the spring of 2014, with the armed forces facing heavy criticism for their handling of sexual assault cases, Secretary of the Army John McHugh recommended removing Riggins from the list for promotion to general. Riggins promptly retired.

Then, Riggins sued Shannon for defamation, claiming that every aspect of her rape claim on the West Point campus was “provably false,” and that she wrote two blog posts and a Facebook post “to intentionally derail [his] promotion” to brigadier general. During a six-day trial that ended Aug. 1, a jury in Fairfax County, Va., heard from both Riggins and Shannon at length. And after 2½ hours of deliberation, they sided emphatically with Riggins, awarding him $8.4 million in damages, an extraordinary amount for a defamation case between two private citizens. The jury ordered Shannon to pay $3.4 million in compensatory damages for injury to his reputation and lost wages, and $5 million in punitive damages, “to make sure nothing like this will ever happen again,” according to one of the jurors.

She has acknowledged staking out controversial positions on her blog, including that the mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn., was “a planned event” and that “I believe our GOVERNMENT shot those kids and teachers and used Adam Lanza and his family to pull it off.”
Last edited by: rick_pcfl: Aug 11, 17 16:53
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Re: Jury awards damages of $8.4 million to man falsely accused of rape [rick_pcfl] [ In reply to ]
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WOW! That's really quite an award. Good on him for not letting it go as I assume that trail was an ordeal.
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Re: Jury awards damages of $8.4 million to man falsely accused of rape [rick_pcfl] [ In reply to ]
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Granted, I'm not privy to the evidence, so this is one sided (but based upon the verdict): what sucks is that this doesn't (and probably will not) make national news. So that $5m punitive settlement to 'mame sure it doesn't happen again' likely will go on deaf ears.

And because I lime to play both sides... maybe that's a good thing: I'd hate to see any woman that was raped question whether she should press charges out of fear of being sued like this and losing.

Just so it's known: my belief is that all rapists should be strung up by the balls with piano wire, tied to the bumper of my truck, and drug down a skid-road at 80.

So don't do it, and don't be falsely accusing anyone of this shit.
- Jeff
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Re: Jury awards damages of $8.4 million to man falsely accused of rape [jkstevens] [ In reply to ]
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jkstevens wrote:
what sucks is that this doesn't (and probably will not) make national news. So that $5m punitive settlement to 'mame sure it doesn't happen again' likely will go on deaf ears.

Why should it make national news? It's not terribly unusual.

The Duke lacrosse one certainly made national news, though.
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Re: Jury awards damages of $8.4 million to man falsely accused of rape [trail] [ In reply to ]
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trail wrote:
jkstevens wrote:
what sucks is that this doesn't (and probably will not) make national news. So that $5m punitive settlement to 'mame sure it doesn't happen again' likely will go on deaf ears.

Why should it make national news? It's not terribly unusual.

The Duke lacrosse one certainly made national news, though.

People that are vindicated should always be news... but that won't actually ever happen.
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Re: Jury awards damages of $8.4 million to man falsely accused of rape [jkstevens] [ In reply to ]
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jkstevens wrote:
People that are vindicated should always be news... but that won't actually ever happen.

National news? National news is crowded space these days. It'd be impossible to make space for every single case thing like this, and hard to argue it's important enough to push past plenty of other things. Regional news, sure.
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Re: Jury awards damages of $8.4 million to man falsely accused of rape [rick_pcfl] [ In reply to ]
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Yeah, but does she have 8.4 million to pay him?

Somehow, I see this as her being deducted $100 every 2 weeks from her paycheck and that is all he will ever see.
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Re: Jury awards damages of $8.4 million to man falsely accused of rape [trail] [ In reply to ]
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trail wrote:
jkstevens wrote:

People that are vindicated should always be news... but that won't actually ever happen.


National news? National news is crowded space these days. It'd be impossible to make space for every single case thing like this, and hard to argue it's important enough to push past plenty of other things. Regional news, sure.

As far as I can tell, national news is mostly just about President Trump, so no, I don't think this would have much trouble moving past most of what is being reported.

Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)
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Re: Jury awards damages of $8.4 million to man falsely accused of rape [jkstevens] [ In reply to ]
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Quote:
People that are vindicated should always be news... but that won't actually ever happen.

It would never happen but I believe it should be equal air time. Take the Duke lacrosse team example cited above. As much time as media spent prosecuting , I mean reporting the story, equal time should be given stating their innocence.

"I think I've cracked the code. double letters are cheaters except for perfect squares (a, d, i, p and y). So Leddy isn't a cheater... "
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Re: Jury awards damages of $8.4 million to man falsely accused of rape [rick_pcfl] [ In reply to ]
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Good for the attorney who took on this case on behalf of the plaintiff. The defendant was represented by Ben Trichilo who is a top notch attorney in Fairfax. I suspect that there is an umbrella insurance policy that will cover some of the damages awarded.
Last edited by: too.tall: Aug 13, 17 21:58
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Re: Jury awards damages of $8.4 million to man falsely accused of rape [Leddy] [ In reply to ]
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Leddy wrote:
Quote:
People that are vindicated should always be news... but that won't actually ever happen.

It would never happen but I believe it should be equal air time. Take the Duke lacrosse team example cited above. As much time as media spent prosecuting , I mean reporting the story, equal time should be given stating their innocence.

In concept perhaps (certainly they *should* warrant the same emphasis), but in practice the legal process unfolds more slowly, often over weeks if not months, so the story tends to build up to a greater extent on the front end ~ whereas the exhonerating verdict is delivered all at once, so the narrative concludes far more abruptly by comparison. It's kinda like a balloon takes longer to deflate than blow up; just the reality of the mechanics involved more so than an intentional reflection of importance.
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Re: Jury awards damages of $8.4 million to man falsely accused of rape [Leddy] [ In reply to ]
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Leddy wrote:
Quote:
People that are vindicated should always be news... but that won't actually ever happen.


It would never happen but I believe it should be equal air time. Take the Duke lacrosse team example cited above. As much time as media spent prosecuting , I mean reporting the story, equal time should be given stating their innocence.

C'mon. It's a story when private school white boys rape a black stripper. It's not a story when a stripper and/or a lawyer lie.
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Re: Jury awards damages of $8.4 million to man falsely accused of rape [rick_pcfl] [ In reply to ]
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You have to talk the allegations seriously, but the accused are also innocent until proven guilty and false claims should be met with criminal charges. I thought this was a good article about what happens to men on college capuses the moment a accusation has been made: https://www.nytimes.com/...=cur&mtrref=t.co


Investigative processes have not been “fairly balanced between the accusing victim and the accused student,” Ms. Jackson argued, and students have been branded rapists “when the facts just don’t back that up.” In most investigations, she said, there’s “not even an accusation that these accused students overrode the will of a young woman.”
“Rather, the accusations — 90 percent of them — fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk,’ ‘we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right,’” Ms. Jackson said.
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