This story, via Feministe, is truly bizarre:
A DEFENDANT accused of forcing a prostitute at gunpoint to have sex with him and three other men got lucky, so to speak, last week.
A Philadelphia judge dropped all sex and assault charges at his preliminary hearing.
Municipal Judge Teresa Carr Deni instead held the defendant on the bizarre charge of armed robbery for – get this – “theft of services.”
Unbelievable.
Deni told me she based her decision on the fact that the prostitute consented to have sex with the defendant.
“She consented and she didn’t get paid . . . I thought it was a robbery.”
And before I get smeared as being objectively pro-rape, let me assert I am quite comfortable with the notion that if someone says no, and you force them to have sex, even if they are a prostitute, it should be considered rape. That being said, I can see the Judge’s point- to some extent, although I think rape charges should still have been filed.
At the very least, shouldn’t he also be charged with soliciting a prostitute? And she with prostitution? Those are laws I do not agree with, but they are, in fact laws, and the two have admitted to those ‘crimes.’
The whole thing is just weird and sick.
*** Update ***
More here at Shakes.
And it only took six comments before someone seems to think I agree with the judge. I don’t. I think rape charges should have been pursued. I hope that is clear enough, because I will be god damned if I spend the next two years hearing nitwits misrepresent my position on this.
chopper
you know, i could have sworn that it isn’t legally considered consent if you have a gun up to your head.
Andrew
In the south, that’s a marriage proposal.
Dreggas
Actually it sounds like a two-fer to me, He get’s charged with armed robbery and sexual assault/rape among the many other crimes he could be accused of.
What this really highlights is the BS that because she consented to having sex for money it couldn’t be rape. Uh did she get the money? Nope. Therefore it is still rape and he should also be charged with armed robbery (theft of services).
Punchy
I’m no lawyer, but I think they were filed. The judge dismissed them out of hand, so that a jury wouldn’t be able to consider them. From the blog’s analysis + common sense, I’d have to agree she has disregarded the intent of the law concerning rape. Activist judge, natch.
But I hear she has granite countertops, so who cares.
(by the way…you can solicit prostitution on CraigsList? Can you broker drug deals and gang hits, too?)
Zifnab
Ok, first off, you can’t really go that route because then you’d basically be trying to prosecute a crime where ever witness pleads the fifth. The DAs would have no case.
Much like cutting a small mob thug a deal to rat out his boss may “spare” the thug, you will inevitably have to spare the prostitute if you ever want to convict her attacker of assault or rape, because she’d never testify if she thought she’d see hard time for solicitation. And society benefits more by keeping rapists off the street than prostitutes. Or so the conventional wisdom goes.
That said, robbery? That’s just insulting and stupid. Tantamount to getting convicted of larceny for breaking into a gym to do push-ups. But not getting convicted of breaking and entering.
If anything, the fact that prostitution is illegal should in and of itself disqualify the robbery charges. Unless the court wants to run out and put a standing monetary value on getting some action, this is just going to make a giant legal headache. And it opens the door to future stupidity, where rapists can try to duck their crimes for lesser charges because they can claim the girls were hookers.
It’s stupid on so many levels, it hurts.
Linda
John, my understanding of the case, is that the woman in question agreed to have sex with one man, for $150 and then agreed to let a friend participate for $100 more. Unfortunately for her man #1 brought in 3 additional people and a gun and demanded that she participate with all of them. Although not paying her for the original threesome would be theft of services, forcing her to add three more men at the point of a gun does, to my very feminist mind make this a clearcut case of rape. She never agreed to that many men, and apparently she was never offered an amount that would allow her to consent to the additional sexual partners. What make this more egregious is that apparently the DA was planning to bring a second case against this dependent with similar circumstances. What we have is a gang of serial rapists, who have now been told by the court that this form of serial rape is acceptable in society. The facts as reported in the Philadelphia Daily News are appalling.
John Cole
Linda-
Maybe I wasn’t clear enough and that charges should have been filed and advanced. I think all the men should be charged with rape.
Jake
I get it. If a woman consents to have sex with one guy, he can bring his all of his friends. According to DeniLogic, if there are no weapons involved, and the woman isn’t a prostitute there’s no underlying crime.
Paul L.
Linda,
Could the 3 additional people be charged with rape and the first 2 with robbery and aiding in a rape?
While I agree with John that the men should be charged with rape, can I use a progressive Terri Schiavo talking point?
Why are you attacking the judge and undermining the Judiciary!
I am wondering what are the races of the accused and accuser.
If the Duke rape case taught me anything, the outrage level must vary depending on the race(s) of the alleged suspects and victim.
Bubblegum Tate
What, misrepresent your objectively pro-hooker rape position?
;-)
Tsulagi
Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see that in Linda’s comment.
At any rate, that judge is a real asshole. Not going to wish her any ill, but if she was forced off the bench, I wouldn’t shed a tear. Like her when she dismissed charges, I’d sleep fine at night knowing that judge was in an unemployment line.
John Cole
Tsulagi, I was reacting to that, which I interpreted as stating I didn’t think it was rape.
If that was not Linda’s assertion, I apologize, but I have been Marcotted before and want to be clear.
Xanthippas
This judge needs to go back to law school. You can’t lawfully compensate someone for sex (because it’s a crime) therefore you can’t steal the service by failing to compensate them.
Secondly, if someone touches you without your consent, it’s assault. If someone has sex with you without your consent, it’s rape. If if prostitution were legal, it wouldn’t matter, because the prostitute didn’t consent to sex with three men; she was made to at gunpoint. Would it matter if they handed her $300 afterwards and “paid” for their services? Or course not. For example, if I was running a kissing booth (which I presume to be legal) and I charged $5 for a kiss and some extremely impassioned female weight-lifter ran up to me, grabbed me, threw me on the ground and french-kissed me for five minutes while I struggled to get up, would that be “theft of service”? Of course not. It would be assault, or sexual assault, because I didn’t consent to being thrown on the ground and mugged on. Would it matter if she handed me the $5 afterwards? Of course not.
Seriously, I know this is only a municipal court judge, but they’re still required to go to law school and pass the bar exam, right?
sparky
Law school and the bar exam are pretty low barriers. You wouldn’t want someone who can’t pass the bar exam driving your taxi, either.
grumpy realist
Actually, I’m going to be WAAAY cynical here and say that in certain jurisdictions, the average penalties for armed robbery are higher than those for rape.
Zifnab
Call me crazy, but that sounds eerily consistent.
Well, that’s the game. Does this mean assailants in lucky districts can duck out on robbery charges? Even if the penalties are stiffer, does this mean the assailants can avoid being labeled as sex offenders?
Krista
Charming. Absolutely bloody charming — don’t you just love the mentality of “she’s just a whore, so she automatically consents to anything I want to do to her”?
David
So if I arrange a fight with a boxer, he bows out, and I get pissed off and start beating the shit out of him with a 2×4, it’s not assault? Neat.
Also, in response to Krista’s post, it seems that the rapist actually had a higher opinion of the woman than the judge did – after all, putting a gun to her head kind of implies that you agree she’s not consenting. The judge made no such allowance.
David
Incidentally, if they had sex as arranged and the john took off without paying then I could see a “theft of services” argument. It still runs into the “you can’t steal a service that you can’t legally pay for” thing, but it’s closer to the mark than “put a gun to a woman’s head and forced her to service you and three friends.”
Tax Analyst
…And don’t forget “Mister Ed”…horses need love too, ya’ know.
chopper
by this judge’s logic, it would be like arranging a fight with a boxer, he says cool, then on the day of the fight you show up with two of your pals saying ‘all 3 of us are gonna fight you’, and when the boxer says ‘screw this’ and walks away you beat his ass with a 2X4 and instead of getting arrested for assault, you get hit with fraud charges.
WTF?
Xanthippas
Indeed. In fact, as we can see from comments, a law degree is in no way necessary to understand the nonsense of this judge’s actions. In fact, a law school degree may only hinder efforts to use some common sense.
jcricket
Two years? John, this will haunt you forever. Don’t try to run for office (not that you would) because someone would bring it up as you being objectively pro-rape or pro-prostitution.
jcricket
Yes, one merely has to ask Larry Craig (law degree, plead guilty, hoped it wouldn’t show up on the news !?!?) or this gem from Hindrocket, to prove that point:
whippoorwill
A gun always changes everything. It is the decider and the exclamation point. When you pull a gun on anybody and demand anything, even something possibly owed then it’s armed robbery and in this case rape by four perpetrators. My non lawyer opinion.
jake
Craig doesn’t have a law degree.
This guy does.
Which proves that just because someone has a fancy honorific (Senator, Judge, Monsignor) doesn’t mean they aren’t felony stupid.
David's Hasselhoff
What he said.
If a pizza delivery guy walks up to your door, hands you a pizza and stands there waiting for payment, he is acting completely within the law. If the guy pulls a gun on you and demands payment, well now he’s pretty definitely not acting within the law.
Once you bust out with the heaters, things get illegal. And when sex is involved, that means we’re talking about illegal sex. I think the fancy lawyer term for that is rape.
You don’t have to be a man-hating feminist to be offended by this crap. My libertarian ass is really sick of how escorts get treated like shit by society, and I think it’s awful that people assume that just because a girl consents to engage in sex for money with a guy, that then means she’s a nasty whore who has no right to respect and that pretty much any guy with $100 can fuck her at will. It doesn’t work that way. Alot of women in this business are in fact rather selective, and end up turning down the majority of the offers they get. And the one thing that these women are most turned off by is guys like the assholes in this story.
Whatever consent the women gave before hand almost certainly ended the moment the gun was pulled, if not before. And the woman always has the right to stop any and all activities at any point in time. Guys that can’t deal with that need to find another hobby, it’s part of the deal.
Longhairedweirdo
I’d have some sympathy for the judge if the woman had been paid, performed sex acts, and then was robbed, or if she’d agreed to a set price, she did her stuff, and then they walked away without paying… but that’s not what happened.
The key is, during sex, did she feel she could walk away at any time? Did she have control over the situation? The answer in this case is clearly “no”, so it was rape, and there is no reason to think the judge has a point.
Krista
What David’s Hasselhoff said.
Part of it makes me wonder if prostitution shouldn’t be legalized. Am I way out to lunch in thinking that if prostitutes felt more comfortable actually going to the cops, we’d see a lot less of this bullshit being pulled?
The Other Steve
Is this what you call Judicial Activism?
Or is it ok, because she used Republican morality to make this decision?
Jess
Of course it should be legalized, but I think you’re describing a chicken/egg scenario here; it’s the attitude that thinks sex is a sin and that women should be punished for making men want sex that’s behind both rape and the criminalization of prostitution. Very different attitude in places like Amsterdam, for example, where I felt perfectly safe stumbling home at 3am alone through the red light district after partying all night. (Of course, maybe I was just stupid and lucky…)
rachel
Or just decriminalized. I remember reading that in Germany at least one woman on the dole, who couldn’t find other work, was required to work as a prostitute (since working in a brothel is a legal there as any other employment). I don’t know whether this is a true story, but it seems plausible.
TenguPhule
Worse. It’s so stupid it makes you want to hurt someone else.
TenguPhule
Translated Paul L: I see no difference between a judge upholding the law regarding illegal interference by idiots and a judge who fucking ignores the law using a line of reasoning that only a complete fucking moron would think of.
Kathy Hogan
The part of this story you don’t know is that this was a manipulation of the press by political operatives, who purposely fabricated a twisted version of the facts right before an election, to smear Judge Deni’s reputation for political reasons that have nothing to do with the case they used to launch the campaign against her.
Once they got one paper to print their twisted version of the facts, the other papers piled on, repeating the false facts from the first story.
What you think happened is not what happened, and her political opponents knew they had her over a barrel, because the rules of judicial conduct prevent her from arguing the facts of a pending case in the press.
The operatives accomplished their goal, which was to create a public outrage to fan the flames of a public drum beat to remove Judge Deni from office.
Some people will not find it easy to accept that they were played.
Others who know how politics are played in Philly will acknowledge that what I am saying has a certain familiar ring of truth to it.
I have known Judge Deni for better than 30 years. I am telling you that what you read in the papers, and the firestorm that was created out of it, was a calculated political manipulation that had nothing to do with the truth.