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Dear Pericles,

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You could be right in thinking that "The DA system is not designed to elicit the facts, as perhaps might have happened under a juge d'instruction in France, but to assess whether the case would survive the court process.".

However, it is difficult to imagine how this could be done without hearing both sides of the story. Collecting the material evidence and hearing just one side of the story is insufficient to make a valid evaluation of the chances of the case to survive the trial process within the adversarial court system.

The only way to hear the other side of the story was to put the case to trial. DSK's continued silence may then have exposed him to the accusation of willful contempt of court and impact negatively on the jury.

No doubt Cyrus Vance's decision to abandon the charges was largely due to his loss of confidence follwing a whole string of losses of high profile cases leading up to the one in hand.

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Dear Otokonoko,

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I believe the essence of the message here is not that which you consider to be a biased opinion but that it has not been possible for justice to be allowed to freely run its normal course in one of the world's greatest democracies, if not its greatest democracy.

It is justice (supposedly at its best) that is on trial here, not the protagonists, nor what may or may not have occurred during their btief encounter in the hotel suite.

Justice is clearly the Achilles' Heel of democracy and this is just one more example of its difficult existence.

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I take your point, Mr Paterson. I just wonder why Mr Crisp feels the need to sully his valid argument with shamelessly emotive language, colouring one party as a villain and the other as a victim.

Whether or not DSK sexually assaulted the woman has not been determined, and it is unlikely that it ever will be. The article uses his sexual indiscretions against him, but attempts to sweep the poor lady's difficulties with honesty under the rug. That bothers me, really.

The author is entitled to his opinions and, as he has mastered the art of rhetoric, is capable of presenting it very well. For that, I applaud him. It's only natural that, in a 'David and Goliath' battle, one tends to take the side of little Dave. It is possible, though, that David isn't always right.

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Dear Otokonoko,

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Understood and agreed. There are two things that bother me. Most importantly, that justice has been swept under the carpet, seemingly, because it is a logical consequence of the normal workings of the system.

Justice has led to no justice which, to me, seems eminently unjust. There can be only one victim of such an outcome: "the poor lady".

The second thing that bothers me is the injustice associated with the simple reality of being born a female. Civilisation is incapable of compensating this natural handicap. Males enjoy quasi-immunity and dispose of a large margin of freedom to abuse females sexually or otherwise at their discretion.

When it comes down to the word of one against the word of the other, the match is over and the male is declared innocent. The automatic inference is that the female lied. The roles are inversed. The female is the aggressor and the male is the victim.

This result is quasi-systematic to such an extent that it simply cannot correspond to reality. This means that, in cases of this nature, justice fails quasi-systematically in its mission. The system is out of gear and headed in the wrong direction.

For that reason, I consider that justice has lost all credibility in such cases. Its decisions are irrelevent to the truth. A mountain of probabilty is stacked up against it.

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