06-27-2018, 04:10 PM
(06-27-2018, 12:43 PM)PhilHos Wrote: How often is that actually brought up in rape cases?
It was brought up so often that there were specific laws passed to keep it out of trials.
My favorite "war story" when I talk to other lawyers involves these laws. I had a case where my client was charged with "aggravated rape" because they claimed there was bodily injury. The injury was an abrasion on the labia. This is not the type of injury that the law was written to cover. It was supposed to be for cases where a woman was beaten during the rape. What had happened was a teenage girl had had consensual sex with her boyfriend and was so afraid she might be pregnant that she charged an immigrant laborer with rape. She was supposed to be just relaxing at home, but she was wearing a thong. Thongs are not really comfortable for women so they usually just wear them when they want to make their ass look better or when they want to look sexy. Under the law in Tennessee I usually could not have introduce the fact that she was wearing a thong, but because the state had made the abrasion on the labia an element of the crime I argued that the abrasion was just a "thong scrub". I just made up that term but when the states medical expert was testifying I crossed examined her about the possibility of a "thong scrub" and kept repeating the term like it was a well known thing. It was great that their doctor was a woman because when I kept asking her about the effects of wearing a thong she said "I don't know because I would never wear a thong."
That was not the only evidence that helped me win that case, but I feel like it really helped.
