Author: Edward Bartlett

233 Investigations of Colleges for Sex-Discriminatory Programs and Scholarships

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date February 15, 2021

PRESS RELEASE

Rebecca Stewart: 513-479-3335

233 Investigations of Colleges for Sex-Discriminatory Programs and Scholarships

WASHINGTON / February 15, 2021 – The federal Office for Civil Rights has announced that it currently has 233 open investigations of programs and scholarships that allegedly discriminate against male students (1). The sex-bias complaints have been submitted by a variety of individuals and groups, including the SAVE Title IX Equity Project.

The sex-discriminating universities are located in 47 states across the country. These states are listed at the bottom of this press release, along with the number of institutions in each state under investigation. The states with the largest number of colleges under investigation are Pennsylvania (22 institutions), California (19), New York (16), and Ohio (10).

Last week, for example, it was reported that OCR has opened an investigation of the BOLD Leadership program at Ithaca College, which “requires that applicants identify as women.” (2) The University of Missouri – Columbia offers 70 scholarships for female students, and one for male students. The scholarship for male students, the Eric G. Rowe Scholarship Fund, is reserved for “deserving farm boys,” according to a description on the university website (3).

Sex-discrimination in higher education appears to be widespread. A review of North Carolina’s largest colleges concluded that discrimination on the basis of sex is “rampant.” “In the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion, North Carolina universities have often chosen inequity and exclusion,” author Adam Kissel ironically comments (4).

A number of the institutions have eliminated their sex-discriminatory programs (5). But many of the OCR investigations were opened over six months ago, revealing that some universities may be resisting efforts to assure equal opportunity for all students.

The federal Title IX law states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” On January 14, the Department of Education released a guidance that re-affirms the ban on sex discrimination, stating, “a school may not administer scholarships, fellowships or other forms of financial assistance that impose a preference or restriction on the basis of sex, with limited exceptions.” (6)

Female students now represent 56% of all undergraduate students, compared to 44% male students (7). Male students are under-represented in numerous fields such as the health professions, public administration, education, and others (8).

To avoid government sanctions, SAVE urges university officials to take steps to assure sex-discriminatory programs and scholarships are promptly removed.

Listing of States with Universities Under Investigation for Sex-Discriminatory Programs

AL – 5 universities
AR – 3
AZ – 4
CA – 19
CO – 3
CT – 3
DC – 2
DE – 1
FL – 9
GA – 4
HI – 1
IA – 4
ID – 5
KS – 6
KY – 7
LA – 2
MA – 4
MD – 5
ME – 1
MI – 1
MN – 8
MO – 4
MT – 4
NC – 3
ND – 1
NE – 3
NH – 2
NJ – 5
NV – 3
NY – 16
OH – 10
OK – 2
OR – 4
PA – 22
SC – 2
SD – 2
TN – 3
TX – 3
UT – 5
VA – 9
VT – 1
WA – 4
WI – 9
WV – 2
WY – 2

Citations:

https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/investigations/open-investigations/tix.html In the Type of Discrimination box, select “Title IX – Single Sex Campus Programs” or “Title IX – Single Sex Scholarships”
https://theithacan.org/news/bold-program-under-investigation-for-title-ix-complaint/
https://endowedscholarships.missouri.edu/EndowmentPublicInfo.aspx?id=2344
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2020/12/pervasive-sex-discrimination-at-north-carolina-universities/
https://www.saveservices.org/equity/case-resolutions/
https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/qa-single-sex-20210114.pdf
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cha.asp#:~:text=In%20fall%202018%2C%20female%20students,trends%20between%202000%20and%202018
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/table-of-the-day-bachelors-degrees-by-field-and-gender-for-the-class-of-2015/

Trauma Informed Victim-Centered Investigations

PR: Defense Attorneys Should Tell Police Chiefs to Halt Program that Will Bias Investigations, Worsen Wrongful Convictions, and Target Black Men

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date February 12, 2021

PRESS RELEASE

Rebecca Stewart: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Defense Attorneys Should Tell Police Chiefs to Halt Program that Will Bias Investigations, Worsen Wrongful Convictions, and Target Black Men

WASHINGTON / February 12, 2021 – SAVE is today calling on defense attorneys to urge the International Association of Chiefs of Police to promptly suspend a proposed program to promote so-called “victim-centered” investigations around the country (1). Such methods serve to negate the presumption of innocence and remove investigative impartiality.

“Victim-centered” approaches, sometimes referred to as “trauma-informed,” are known to bias the conduct of police investigations, which contribute to one-third of all wrongful convictions (2). A recent National Registry of Exonerations report documents five ways in which biased police investigations contribute to wrongful convictions (3):

Concealment of evidence
Fabrication of evidence
Witness tampering
Misconduct in interrogations, or
Making false statements at trial

Such guilt-presuming investigations were found to target Black men. For murder cases, 78% of Black exonerees, compared to 64% of White exonerees, were victims of official misconduct. The misconduct disparity was even greater for drug crimes: 47% among Blacks and 22% for Whites, according to the National Registry of Exonerations (3).

A recent editorial describes victim-centered investigations as a “Pandora’s Box” because they place “emotional sympathy, prejudice, and ideologically driven agendas above cool-headed forensic and legal reasoning.” (4)

On January 28, 2021, CPI sent a letter to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, calling on the group to suspend the project (5). To date, the IACP has not acknowledged or provided a substantive response to the letter.

The inter-related problems of police accountability, wrongful convictions, and racial bias have been repeatedly cited as top legislative priorities for 2021 (6,7,8). Defense attorneys are urged to tell the International Association of Chiefs of Police to suspend its unethical and harmful “victim-centered” program. Contact IACP Executive Director Vincent Talucci at talucci@theiacp.org , or telephone: 703-836-6767.

Citations:

Campus Title IX

ATIXA’s Plan to Push a ‘Title IX Restoration Act’

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date February 5, 2021

ATIXA’s Plan to Push a ‘Title IX Restoration Act’

Wendy McElroy

February 4, 2021

President Joe Biden vowed to put a “quick end” to the Trump administration’s Title IX regulations and return to Obama-era ones at universities. If this happens, the sexual misconduct hearings will be deeply impacted. These “trials” judge whether those accused of sexual misconduct are innocent or guilty. The Obama-era hearings expressed social justice standards that greatly favored an accuser; the Trump-era ones were closer to the Western tradition of due process…..

Now a woke regime has returned to campus justice. Whatever happens will offer a window into how mainstream justice may evolve in the coming years. And ATIXA offers a window into the dynamics.

ATIXA is influential. Indeed, it is currently drafting what may be the next Title IX bill. ATIXA is “a professional association for approximately 5,500 Title IX coordinators, investigators, and administrators,” (as of January 18, 2021). It has the mission of “helping to advance gender equity in schools and colleges”; since 2011, it has trained and certified “more than 7,250 Title IX Coordinators and more than 23,550 Title IX investigators.” ATIXA’s job might seem to be the facilitation of whatever laws and policies are on the books, but it adamantly resisted implementing DeVos’s changes.

The College Fix documented one example. DeVos required the training materials used by Title IX administrators to be posted. This allowed an accused to access the rules and procedures by which he would be tried. ATIXA president Brett A. Sokolow has a history of covertly resisting such regulations. In a January 15, 2020, op-ed for Inside Higher Education, he advised: “About 20 to 25 percent of the (new Title IX) regulations are potentially very detrimental…and we will need…to work within those requirements, challenge them in court or find clever work-arounds” (emphasis added). Sokolow tried to work around posting training materials by claiming they were copyrighted and not able to be shared. The College Fix’s interpretation: “ATIXA will sue colleges for following a legally binding regulation.” Sokolow backed down, however, when the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) noticed and doubled down on its demand.

Passive-aggressive obstruction is no longer necessary. A memorandum to ATIXA listserv members in early January 2021 commented, “Dear Members….The Senate will now be in Democrat control.” A lobbying firm was duly engaged, as Sokolow now considers new Title IX legislation to be “a realistic possibility”; it is an endeavor in which ATIXA wants to take a leadership role. “Our initial thoughts include the promulgation of a model Title IX Restoration Act (TIXRA, naturally),” he writes, to show “how Title IX should be reshaped by the Biden administration and Congress to best serve the field and the goals of sex/gender equity.” (Sex/gender equity is not clearly defined.)

Sokolow’s memo gives lip service to “due process”—a term that appears with scare quotes around it. Elsewhere, a poll of “ATIXA Title IX experts” offers a more concrete sense of the looming danger to due process. JD Supra reported on the poll in an article by Sokolow entitled “Biden Is President-Elect. Can We Just Ignore the Title IX Regulations Now?“ The new woke hearings should include:

Relief from direct cross examination by an advisor

Removal of nonsensical exclusionary/hearsay rule regarding “statements”

Revocation of the confusing rules on relevance v. directly related evidence

Two ten-day review periods likely collapsed into one period

Formal complaint requirement will be reversed

Hearing requirements for at-will employees will be limited

Hearings only required when some form of separation is on the table, and the definition of hearing will be broader and less formal

Mandated dismissal of Title IX complaints removed

Broad retaliation protections rolled back, especially as applied to respondents

Removal of any necessity for two processes

In short, the woke campus hearings would discourage direct cross-examination, allow hearsay, loosen rules of evidence, be conducted quickly, and bypass the need for a formal complaint…the denial of due process would be policy. This despite the fact that, as Sokolow stated in a phone interview, “Probably 40 or 50% of allegations of sexual assault are baseless. There are a lot of cases where someone says they were incapacitated, but the evidence doesn’t support that they weren’t able to make a decision.” A “model” Title IX bill is currently being drafted by ATIXA and will be circulated the “to Congress and Biden Administration.” An earlier draft entitled “ATIXA Submission to the ED ART on Title IX 12.18.2020” that was submitted to Biden’s education transition team hints at the content. The hints are confusing, however. The bill endorses Biden’s progressive approach while stating, “a return to…the 2011 DCL (Dear Colleague Letter) or maintaining the status quo of the 2020 regulations would not be supported by ATIXA’s 6,000 practitioner members.” In short, there is pushback from the membership. Also, a mountain of complaints and lawsuits have proven expensive in time and money.

Therefore “ATIXA seeks a balanced approach that honors the rights of all parties in the Title IX resolution process.” So far, so good. The same hearing standards would seem to apply to all participants regardless of gender or race. Yet, elsewhere, the submission commits to “focusing broadly on the impacts that Title IX work can and should have on the LGBTQIA+ community [and] on people of color.” There is a tension between the two statements.

Moreover, an accused’s due process rights are directly attacked. The right of cross-examination, for example, would be restricted to spare an accuser distress; “if cross-examination is required in a jurisdiction [where the campus is located], it is sufficient to have party-proposed questions submitted to and then posed by the neutral, impartial decision-maker,” presumably appointed by the university. The right of direct examination by the accused or his advocate would be denied. (Nothing is said about jurisdictions in which courts do not require the cross-examination.) Currently, if a witness refuses to submit to cross-examination, his or her statements during the investigation are not considered at the hearing. ATIXA wants this rule to be “revisited,” because “it’s too drastic, is too complicated for laypersons to apply, has no litigation equivalent, and takes away the discretion of the recipient to appropriately assess relevance and credibility.” Why “laypersons” are holding court-like hearings when the basics of due process and court procedure are too complicated for them to understand is not addressed.

Elsewhere, the clarity of ATIXA’s recommendations is chilling. For example, “ATIXA supports universal application of the preponderance of the evidence standard….Existing regulations permit a choice of standards.” Preponderance of the evidence means that if a hearing believes a rape complaint to be supported by 50.01 percent of the evidence, the accused is “guilty” and open to expulsion or other common punishments.

All in all, a prediction in the JD Supra article seems half correct. “If we had to prognosticate, we’d guess that fairly early on, the Biden administration will rescind the 2020 regulations, and implement another new Dear Colleague Letter/Q&A style approach.” BUT the new Title IX is likely to be a new Obama-style DCL approach that is tweaked to avoid the legal pitfalls visited on the 2011 one. I disagree; withdrawing the 2020 regulations will not be a quick process.

The DeVos administration did not use a DCL or other guidelines to impose its regulations. It went through the arduous Administrative Procedure Act notice-and-comment process, which is why it was not enacted until 2020; the process and obstructionist tactics made it take that long. To rescind DeVos’s regulations requires the same long slog through bureaucracy and Congress. This alone makes new regulations unlikely before 2022 at the earliest.

ATIXA and Title IX may seem arcane to those not on campus or without a loved one who is. But the incredible bias and injustice embedded in earlier sexual misconduct hearings was integral in promoting a social division that borders on hatred. Close attention must be paid to the social justice measures on campuses, because they are part of the ideology promoting street riots, increased violence and hostility between groups. College administrators and professors have actively stoked hatred between the genders and the races for decades. And now society reaps a whirlwind.

Excerpted from https://mises.org/wire/title-ix-will-become-vehicle-more-injustice

Office for Civil Rights Title IX

Biden OCR Acting Head Appointee Has Dubious Record

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date February 4, 2021

Biden OCR Acting Head Appointee Has Dubious Record
by James Baresel

February 1, 2021

For over fifteen years Columbia University law professor Suzanne Goldberg has intermittently hovered around the fringes of major news stories. In 2003 she nearly achieved 15 minutes of fame as co-council in the Lawrence v. Texas case that saw the Supreme Court contradict its own precedents and declare a law against sodomy unconstitutional. Just over 10 years later she was a special advisor to her university’s president on matters of sexual assault during one of the first high profile controversies over academic institutions’ responses to rape allegations. Now Joe Biden has appointed her assistant secretary of the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

Goldberg’s new position only sounds obscure. In fact it means she will be acting director of the OCR, responsible for planning and implementing the thousand and one details needed to translate a broad agenda into practical action—rendering its new holder’s record of considerable interest.

One key point in assessing Goldberg is the distinction between how she interprets the meaning of laws is interpreted and how handles allegations concerning the facts of particular cases. Where the former is at she undoubtedly favors “spinning” laws (including Constitutional law) to fit her own ideological presuppositions, as displayed in Lawrence v. Texas. The issue here is not what one thinks of the anti-sodomy law the Supreme Court struck down. It is Goldberg’s support for a judicial activism that disregarded the original intentions of legislators and spun the meaning of texts in order to bring about a change she desired through a court’s fiat rather than normal legislative processes. That she will give similar treatment to the meaning of the civil rights legislation she is now responsible for implementing seems probable.

What this does not tell us is what standards Goldberg would set for assessing allegations that a particular person violated (her interpretation of) civil rights legislation. This question does not concern what behaviors she believes violate such legislation or whether her beliefs correspond to legislators’ intentions. It concerns the standards of evidence that must be met for allegations to be officially “proven.” On this topic her record at Columbia University is too ambiguous to be reassuring.

Insight into Goldberg’s attitudes can be gained from the case of Emma Sulkowicz, who attained notoriety in 2014 as a sort of forerunner to the “Me Too” movement by melodramatically carrying a mattress around Columbia’s campus for her entire senior year. To the media she claimed to be protesting the university’s refusal to expel a student who had raped her. In reality a university investigation had concluded her allegation failed to meet even the standard of “more likely than not,” a decision reached despite excluding evidence in the accused student’s favor . The New York City police also determined Sulkowicz’s claims could not be substantiated, while the accused student voluntarily met with a member of the district attorney’s office and was assured there were no grounds for prosecution.

Sulkowicz then took her story public, launching a campaign to drive her alleged attacker from the university and revealing his name in violation of Columbia’s confidentiality policies. Short of expelling the accused student without evidence, the university surrender as abjectly as possible. Policies establishing that the break of confidentiality was grounds for disciplinary action were changed rather than enforced One of Sulkowicz’s professors accepted her mattress carrying as a “visual art project” that served as her major’s equivalent of a thesis with the full acquiescence of the administration. Not surprisingly, the accused student was subjected to ostracism and harassment.

Goldberg would not only have played a role in formulating the administration’s response to this situation as an adviser on sexual assault policies but was appointed to the office of Executive Vice President for University Life created (in part) to more thoroughly address such matters It is hard to imagine she would have been in such positions of trust while deeming the university’s low standards of proof unacceptable. When Sulkowicz’s supporters staged a “Day of Action” (carrying their own mattresses) Goldberg and the university president issued a statement saying that: “No person who comes to a university or college to learn and live should have to endure gender-based misconduct today, particularly the young women who most frequently sustain these violations.” After the accused student sued the university, its entrusted its defense to a lawyer with whom Goldberg co-taught classes rather than a member of the firm it usually employed.

Despite her indulgence of unofficial tarring of individuals cleared by formal investigations, Goldberg does seem to have the integrity to insist that such investigations be conducted in an unbiased manner aimed at objectively determining whether or not allegations are corroborated by the level of evidence stipulated by whatever regulations happen to be in force. On this point at least she has been willing to protect justice despite the ire of Columbia’s would-be lynch mobs She also revised Columbia policies not only to more effectively respond sexual assault allegations but to better assure due process for the accused in formal investigations. Subsequent to this, however, it introduced further policies revisions aimed at countering federal regulations instituted by the Trump administration in the interests of due process.

While Goldberg has the integrity to rise above show trials and (at least in official proceedings) guilty until proven innocent assumptions, her concern for justice seems too meager to be reassuring.

Source: https://ifeminists.org/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.1492

Investigations Start By Believing Trauma Informed Victim-Centered Investigations

PR: New Resource for Defense Attorneys: Mounting an Effective Defense in Proceedings Tainted by ‘Victim-Centered’ Philosophy

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date February 3, 2021

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

New Resource for Defense Attorneys: Mounting an Effective Defense in Proceedings Tainted by ‘Victim-Centered’ Philosophy

WASHINGTON / February 3, 2021 – A new report released today addresses the growing influence of guilt-presuming “victim-centered” concepts in criminal proceedings. Titled, “Defending Against ‘Victim-Centered’ Proceedings: Guide for Criminal Defense Attorneys,” the report features strategies and verbatim statements to counter bias during each stage of the legal process:

Voir Dire
Opening Statement
Cross Examination: Complainant
Cross Examination: Investigator
Cross Examination: Prosecution Expert Witness
Closing Argument

“Victim-centered” approaches, also known as “trauma-informed” or “Start By Believing,” are gaining wider acceptance among police officers, prosecutors, and even judges in sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse cases:

Investigative bias by police officers has been linked to 35% of all wrongful convictions (1). But the International Association of Chiefs of Police makes the claim that “Victim-centered, trauma-informed approaches to crime can support victim recovery and engagement with the criminal justice system.” (2)

Prosecutors increasingly are invoking victim-centered theories. One of the most common theories is the complainant experienced “tonic immobility,” resulting in the person being unable to resist an impending assault. This claim has been refuted by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (3).

Judges are being urged to embrace victim-centered philosophy, as well. The website of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, for example, reveals, “The NCJFCJ’s work with courts is informed by a focus on trauma using a universal precautions approach that assumes children and families involved in the court system have experienced some form of trauma that may be mitigated through court-based interventions.” (4) Policies that “assume” a party has been traumatized serve to vitiate the presumption of innocence and harm judicial impartiality.

Many authorities have voiced criticism of “victim-centered” and “trauma-informed” methods. Defense attorney Scott Greenfield ironically reasons, “The ‘trauma informed’ approach is not to ask, not to question, but to believe.…Who is the victim would seem to be a critical question, but ‘trauma informed’ policing says it’s the woman and should it be the falsely accused man, too bad, so sad. Take a bullet for the cause, guy.” (5)

Victim-centered methods remove a defendant’s due process right to a fair investigation and adjudication. Defense attorneys making discovery requests of police, prosecutors, and judges are urged to ask if they have received “victim-centered” training in order to assess the potential for actual bias and/or the need for recusal.

The new report, developed by SAVE, is available online: https://www.saveservices.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Defending-Against-Victim-Centered-Proceedings.pdf

Links:

Title IX

Will Biden’s Education Secretary Avoid Ideological Battles?

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date January 25, 2021

Will Biden’s Education Secretary Avoid Ideological Battles?
By James Baresel

No sooner had United States Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos issued new Title IX regulations for the handling of sexual assault and harassment allegations by colleges and universities this past May than Joe Biden pledged a reversal of policy—claiming that restoring the presumption of innocence and mandating opportunities for cross examination of accusers would “shame and silence survivors.” Whether or not due process will come under renewed assault now largely depends on the man Biden has chosen as DeVos’s replacement, Miguel Cardona.

A former public school teacher and administrator who became Connecticut’s Educational Commissioner in 2019, Cardona has yet to take public stances on most contentious issues, Title IX included. His record, however, suggests a man who, though disconcerting enough, is about as tolerable as any Biden might have appointed. The bad news is that he seems to embrace the usual leftist laundry list of policies and “causes.” The good news? Strong indications that they are not his real priorities. One cause for concern is Cardona’s promotion of the narrative claiming certain segments of the population constitute “victim groups” that are habitually mistreated by “privileged” ones. Though the context in which he did so concerned racial issues rather than women or sexual assault, a certain mindset approaches these various matters in the same way. “Victim groups” (women or racial minorities) are given the strong benefit of the doubt. The “privileged” (men or white people) are treated as guilty until proven innocent.

That Cardona shares such presuppositions is suggested by his reference to “several tragic, high profile and disturbing acts of violence against people of color at the hands of police.”

Aside from George Floyd’s death, fuller investigation into such cases has generally shown narratives based in anti-police prejudice to be false. Even those officers not fully exonerated by the evidence have tended to be guilty of no more than poor reactions to tense situations created by their alleged victims. In other cases the final evidence has been inconclusive. For a man who promotes a “guilty until proven innocent” narrative to an entire state’s public school system to be charged with the administration of justice under Title IX can only be cause for concern.

Concern is also raised by Cardona’s promotion of the theory of “microaggressions.” The question is not so much what Cardona believes to constitute harassment as the potential consequences of broader attitudes he has attempted to inculcate. If students come to believe that making a “fake-smile” while “our body language says we’d rather be somewhere else” can be a “microaggression” they can be depended upon to allege sexual harassment when others’ behavior can be (artificially) construed as “insufficiently” avoiding the slightest hints of unwanted romantic or sexual attention.

As already mentioned, however, Cardona does seem to be primarily concerned with educating children rather than pushing ideological agendas. Continuing the policy he pursued in Connecticut, the first task he has assigned himself in his new role is reopening schools that have continued using online learning to control the spread of Covid. This does not just indicate his real priorities. It also suggests a man willing to buck party lines for the good of children and a realist willing to accept dangers, risks and imperfections.

Further evidence that Cardona’s ideological orientation might not be central to his new work comes from the Center for Education Reform. A conservative organization devoted to reducing federal influence on schools, the Center praised him for expressing “understanding about the importance of options and of communities making decisions for their own unique circumstances.”

Such dispositions could take the edge off implementation of Biden’s agenda. A man focused on getting students back into classrooms probably won’t be in a rush to alter Title IX regulations, a process that could take years to complete. And he could bring moderation to the latter issue rather than see it become a partisan quagmire that, each new administration revising regulations at the cost of time and effort that could be focused on education efforts.

Taken as a whole, Cardona has the potential to follow somewhat moderate courses. Finding areas of agreement that allow for bipartisan cooperation could help him to develop respect for and goodwill towards more conservative individuals and interest groups. Work on time consuming common projects might leave him putting more contentious matters on the back burner. Reopening of schools provides an issue on which conservatives and libertarians can ally with Cardona. Left-wing Covid alarmists might alienate him.

Fighting the new education secretary might become necessary. But since some ideologues will be doing their best to drag him into their combative camp, it would be best to find ways of enticing him towards moderation rather than pushing him into their arms.

Source: http://www.ifeminists.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.1489

Domestic Violence Sexual Assault Start By Believing Trauma Informed Victim-Centered Investigations

One-Third of Wrongful Convictions Involve Police Manipulation of Evidence

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date January 21, 2021

One-Third of Wrongful Convictions Involve Police Manipulation of Evidence. With ‘Victim-Centered’ Investigations, It May Get Worse.

Center for Prosecutor Integrity

January 21, 2021

The National Registry of Exonerations has catalogued every exoneration in the United States since 1989. Recently the NRE published a report on the long-standing problem of police misconduct. Titled, “Government Misconduct and Convicting the Innocent,” the document is based on the review of 2,400 exonerations (1). Overall, the analysis found that 35% of the cases involved police officer misconduct and 30% implicated prosecutorial misconduct.

The document reveals that police actions that lead to a conviction of an innocent person typically involve the manipulation of evidence in order to increase the likelihood of a conviction. The manipulation of evidence by police officers falls into five categories (some cases fell into more than one category):

Witness Tampering — 13% of wrongful convictions

Procuring false testimony — Inducing a civilian witness to testify to facts the officer knows the witness did not perceive (3% of wrongful convictions)
Tainted identifications – Deliberately inducing a witness to identify a suspect during a lineup, whether the witness recognizes that suspect or not (7% of wrongful convictions)
Improper questioning of a child victim – Repeated, insistent, and suggestive questioning of a child, precluding the child from denying that he or she was a victim of sex abuse (3% of wrongful convictions)

Misconduct in Interrogations – 7% of wrongful convictions

Actual or threatened violence
Sham plea bargaining and other lies about the law
Threats to relatives and other third parties

Fabricating Evidence – 10% of wrongful convictions

Fake crimes – Making false claims as ordinary lay witnesses, saying the defendant committed a crime that never happened, often involving the planting of contraband (5% of wrongful convictions)
Forensic fraud – Presenting false evidence against the defendant, concealing/distorting true evidence that might have cleared them, or planting false evidence (3% of wrongful convictions)
Fabricated confessions – Making up confessions by the defendants that in fact did not occur (2% of wrongful convictions)

Concealing Exculpatory Evidence – 7% of wrongful convictions

Impeachment of prosecution witnesses:
- Incentives provided to testify
- Inconsistent statements
- Criminal records and histories of dishonesty
Substantive evidence of innocence:
- Forensic tests
- Alternative suspects
- Evidence that the defendant did not commit the crime

Perjury at Trial – 13% of wrongful convictions

False statements about the conduct of investigations
False statements about witness statements

Overall, there were only small differences in percentages of official misconduct for White versus Black exonerees. But for murder cases, 78% of Black exonerees, compared to 64% of White exonerees, experienced official misconduct. The misconduct disparity was even greater for drug crimes: 47% among Blacks and 22% for Whites.

As noted above, misconduct by police officers contributed to 35% of the 2,400 wrongful convictions. The NRE report reveals that virtually all of the cases consisted of actions designed to manipulate the evidence to increase the likelihood of a conviction. A majority of the cases involved the direct manipulation of evidence – fabricating and concealing evidence, and making false statements at trial. The remaining minority of cases involved the indirect manipulation of evidence by means of witness tampering and misconduct in interrogations.

What are prospects for the future?

In recent years, activists have been promoting the use of so-called “victim-centered” approaches, both in the criminal justice system and on college campuses. A recent announcement from the International Association of Chiefs of Police, for example, makes the claim that “victim-centered” approaches “can support victim recovery and engagement with the criminal justice system” and “promote enhanced victim and community safety while helping law enforcement solve and prevent crime.” (2)

Despite the feel-good aura of this gauzy description, the reality of “victim-centered” approaches is that they compromise investigative impartiality, bias evidence against the defendant, and predispose to wrongful convictions. Victim-centered methods (3):

Presume the guilt of the defendant and refer to the complainant as a “victim”
Avoid asking probing or detailed questions in order to not “retraumatize the victim.”
Reflexively attribute inconsistencies in the complainant’s statements to life-threatening trauma.
“Cherry-pick” the evidence in order to increase the likelihood of a finding of guilt.
Write the investigative report in a way to portray the sexual contact as non-consensual.

One Department of Justice report, “Identifying and Preventing Gender Bias in Law Enforcement Response to Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence,” went so far as to urge victim-centered investigations to hand “control of the process back to the victim” (p. 9) and even allow the complainant “to request certain investigative steps not be conducted” (p. 13). (4) The ill-considered report was later removed without explanation or notice. The original DOJ press release with the defunct link can still be seen online (5).

If we want to curb the police manipulation of evidence and ensuing wrongful convictions, we need to discourage the use of “victim-centered” approaches, and work to restore police investigations that are impartial, balanced, and fair (6).

Citations:

Title IX Title IX Equity Project

PR: New ED Directive Says Universities Must End Sex-Discriminatory Scholarships and Programs

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date January 17, 2021

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

New ED Directive Says Universities Must End Sex-Discriminatory Scholarships and Programs

WASHINGTON / January 18, 2021 – The U.S. Department of Education (ED) has just released a new guidance that clarifies the Title IX ban on school scholarships and programs that discriminate on the basis of sex (1). The document, titled, “Questions and Answers Regarding OCR’s Interpretation of Title IX and Single Sex Scholarships, Clubs, and other Programs,” was released on Thursday.

The directive affirms the general principle that colleges should not impose sex-based preferences or restrictions, stating “a school may not administer scholarships, fellowships or other forms of financial assistance that impose a preference or restriction on the basis of sex, with limited exceptions.” (Question 3)

The document goes on to clarify that colleges generally may not:

Use a program title or description that implies a preference or restriction based on sex, such as the “Center for Women and Gender Equity Non-Traditional Scholarship” (Question 5)
Advertise or promote third-party scholarships, fellowships, or other forms of financial assistance that impose a sex-based preference or restriction (Question 6)
Separate or exclude individuals on the basis of sex from academic or extracurricular activities, with the exceptions of programs involving contact sports, ability grouping in physical education classes, and choruses. (Question 10)
Allow a school-recognized club or other program use a name that implies a sex-based preference or restriction, such as a student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (Question 11)

The guidance states that a university may offer sex-specific financial assistance as part of a remedial action effort, but only if the school is able to “clearly articulate why the particular sex-based scholarship or program was necessary to overcome the conditions in its own education program or activity which resulted in limited participation.” (Question 4)

In anticipation of the new directive, George Washington University ordered 23 student groups to amend their constitutions to comply with the school’s nondiscrimination policy. These groups include Girls Who Code and female-only service groups (2).

Over the past two years, the SAVE Title IX Equity Project has reviewed the websites of 346 universities and colleges in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to identify illegal sex-specific scholarships. Overall, the review found that 68.5% of universities offered scholarships that discriminate against male students (3).

The Office for Civil Rights currently has 228 investigations underway to remedy these Title IX violations (4). A number of the institutions already have removed their discriminatory programs and scholarships (5).

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Trauma Informed Wrongful Convictions

Trauma-Informed: A Cancer on Our Nation’s Legal System

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date January 14, 2021

SAVE

January 14, 2021

In recent years, a trendy new investigative approach has been pushed both on college campuses and in the criminal justice system. Called “Trauma-informed,” it claims that sexual assault and domestic violence victims are so traumatized by the experience that they are unable to provide a coherent account of the assault.

Which means that every allegation must be taken at face value as truthful, and investigators are not supposed to challenge or question their statements. And every complainant is called a “victim.”

But “trauma-informed” is factually dishonest, because researchers have found that victims of trauma often have an enhanced recall of the details of the event. “Trauma-informed” ideology also eliminates the presumption of innocence, and turns investigators into therapists and social workers. This leads to wrongful findings of guilt.

Nonetheless, trauma-informed activists continue to push forward. Recently the International Association of Chiefs of Police issued a solicitation to do trauma-informed training, making the misleading claim that, “Victim-centered, trauma-informed approaches to crime can support victim recovery and engagement with the criminal justice system.”

Let’s all speak out on the dishonesty behind the “trauma-informed” movement. Contact the IACP and let them know what you think. Here’s the link: https://www.theiacp.org/contact-us

Please try to be polite.

Domestic Violence False Allegations

New Incentives to Falsely Accuse in NY

Post author By Edward Bartlett
Post date December 28, 2020

NY Adds a New Factor to Consider for Equitable Distribution: Domestic Violence

On April 3, 2020, tucked away in a bill largely addressing the New York State budget for the 2020-2021 fiscal year, the Legislature amended Domestic Relations Law (DRL) §236B(5)(d) by adding a new factor a court must consider in distributing property between divorcing spouses. 2020 NY Senate-Assembly Bill S-7505-B, A-9505-B. The law adds domestic violence as a factor and mandates that the court consider “whether either party has committed an act or acts of domestic violence, as described in [Social Services Law §459-a] against the other party and the nature, extent, duration and impact of such act or acts.” DRL §236B(5)(d)(14).

As admirably well-intentioned as this amendment is, it represents a significant departure from current law, which, absent “egregious” misconduct, has principally been fault-neutral since the advent of equitable distribution 40 years ago. It will have repercussions for the courts, practitioners, and litigants.

Source: https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2020/07/24/domestic-violence-and-equitable-distribution-implications-of-the-amendment-to-drl/?slreturn=20201128110515