UK Police considering using text to ’snare’ rape suspects
Link: Police to use text message tactics to snare rape suspects | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited
The tactic, used by investigators in the United States, involves women sending texts or making calls to their alleged attackers to see if they can extract an admission of guilt.
Lawyers and detectives believe the approach could be vital in helping to boost the stubbornly low rape conviction rate in England and Wales, where barely 6% of cases reported to police end in conviction.
“Police get the victim to send a text saying something like ‘how could you do that to me?’” said a senior CPS source. “They sometimes get a text back saying ‘I’m really sorry, I know I was out of order, it won’t happen again’ or something like that.”
When anyone can fake a text message originator with the likes of any number of anonymous texting services, the UK Police and the Crown Prosecution Service will need to give serious, serious thought to exactly how they prove the alleged rapist sent the text. Smart trial barristers will have a field day with the issue unless the Police are able to obtain proof from the mobile operator that the text message was actually transmitted from the owner’s handset. The next issue? What if the alleged rapist claims he didn’t send the text or that he lost his handset or that he’s been setup.
It’s a difficult one.
(Image from pressdisplay.com).
eh, what if he thinks its down to an argument where he was in the wrong and nothing else?
It’s easy to interpret text messages in a number of ways and two people reading the same text can easily think it means different things.
I think this is flaky at best and wouldn’t stand up in court.
Posted by Mark on January 14th, 2008 at 12:16 pm.I agree… the likelihood of this contributing anything useful to a case seems low (I’m not a laywer, but…) I recently witnessed (from only yards away) someone kicking the front-door of my apartment block to break the lock and gain entry. The CPS declined to prosecute the person for the resulting damage as I hadn’t actually seen the door frame, wall and lock being damaged by his action (that was inside and I was inside). The massive bang, crash and freshly smashed plaster with a door that could be pushed open by hand immediately after wasn’t sufficient…
The severity of the crimes are obviously worlds apart, but how much room for uncertainty in an emotional 160 characters is there (in addition to Ewan’s point about verifying the sender)? And would the standard of proof required really be lowered for more severe cases? This is playing cynical politics with a serious issue and will never benefit a real case…
*gets off his soapbox*
Posted by Ben Smith on January 14th, 2008 at 4:08 pm.