Michael Stern is a former prosecutor from Michigan. He admits that he found prosecuting sexual assault cases difficult:
In my early career, as a state prosecutor outside of Detroit, I dreaded handling sexual assault cases. After my first 10 cases, the ache in my stomach would come like clockwork as I sat down to open a sexual assault file for the first time. Evidence in sexual assault cases is often thin and trying to bring justice to a victim in a case with thin evidence is a prosecutor’s worst nightmare.
It all came down to he said/she said. But there was a witness to what happened between Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford -- Mark Judge:
To a prosecutor, learning of a third-party eyewitness to an alleged sexual assault is a boon. Apparently, this additional evidence has had the opposite effect on the Senate judiciary committee.
Rather than embracing testimony from Judge as a means of finding the truth about Ford’s allegation, the Republican Senate judiciary committee chairman, Charles Grassley, has scheduled a hearing for Monday and has refused to call Judge as a witness.
There is a sleight of hand that has allowed Grassley to turn a blind eye to this pivotal piece of evidence. Mark Judge sent a letter to Grassley’s committee saying he had “no memory” of the incident Ford disclosed. Judge also said he never saw Kavanaugh “act in the manner Dr Ford describes”. Other Republican senators, including Lindsey Graham, have fallen in line behind Grassley, saying that there is “no reason” to call Judge to testify because they already know what he will say – exactly what he said in his letter.
But wait. If Mark Judge’s letter to the judiciary committee is sufficient to make its Republican members accept the contents of the letter at face value, why don’t they do the same for the letter Ford sent to ranking committee member Diane Feinstein? The answer simple: Republican members of the judiciary committee want to believe Judge, not Ford.
And that's precisely the point. The fix is in. As Mitch McConnell told an audience yesterday, Kavanaugh will be confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Image: BBC
