I've been storing up a lot of thoughts, and in light of the release of more information last night, wanted to share some of them. I apologize in advance for the long post.
First of all, a lot of posts are addressing the prevalence of false accusations, unreported crimes, and topics one might consider part of the "culture wars" of our time.
The first thing to recognize is that many people are convicted for crimes they didn't commit, while many others did commit crimes and aren't convicted. Both things can be, and very much are, true.
The prevalence of both types of mistake also can and should guide the questions we ask around how we handle criminal cases. How many actual offenders walking free is too many? How many wrongful convictions is too many?
It's all well and good to say that, morally, one of either is too many. But realistically, we will never make both numbers zero. Even more unfortunately, efforts to reduce one number will most likely lead to an increase in the other. Want to be tough on crime? Fewer criminals will walk free - but you're going to lock up a few innocent people too. Or is "innocent until proven guilty" the most important thing? In that case, more innocent people will see justice prevail - but more victims won't, because the burden of proof can't be met.
In the case of sexual violence, the trend that has been playing out over the past decade is a recognition of (and response to) the fact that this ratio was heavily skewed towards guilty persons going free.
I am not an expert, and I can't prove this as fact, but I'm still choosing to use the word "fact" because it seems so thoroughly supported by everything I've attempted to learn. This trend manifested itself in many ways: overt victim blaming or shaming; non-reporting due to low expectations for any justice being done or relief given; reframing of acknowledged acts as appropriate rather than inappropriate. The response to that, then, has been to make efforts to ensure more actual crimes are reported and prosecuted. And this involves a whole host of efforts: awareness campaigns; efforts to encourage belief in those making an accusation; likely an increase in decisions to prosecute cases with less concrete evidence.
That is the context we're in on a societal level - a shift away from the heavy presumption of innocence in cases of possible sexual violence.
Second, the strength of this particular case is a topic of ongoing discussion.
This is where "IANAL" comes in, of course. That said, in trying to read the documents that were released yesterday with an impartial, disinterested mind, I arrived at the conclusion that this is, at present, a "he said, she said" case. It sounds neither like something that absolutely had to have happened, nor like something that absolutely could not have happened. It also sounds like something that, if it did happen, matches what was charged.
That's really about all I can say from what I read. The caveats and ongoing questions are much more numerous and significant. We (or at least I) have no idea if there's additional evidence that has yet to surface. Personally, I have no idea what the standards are for conviction on either charge - what they were, whether they've changed in light of the societal changes above, or to what degree judge or jury variability weighs in. To my untrained eye and (probably futile) attempts to be impartial, the case seems to be on the weaker side. But, I put very little confidence in that assessment. The posts by others with more expertise, which I greatly appreciate, seem to have some level of variability, confirming my view that this is not a straightforward assessment to make.
That, in summary, is where the legal case seems to be at - a case of conflicting accounts with a huge amount still uncertain.
My last point is the one I feel is perhaps the most challenging. As important as these discussions are - as relevant as first is to the world we're constantly re-shaping, and as critical as the second may be in determining whether we see TSJ play again - to me, they amount to approximately zero information about whether what's alleged did or didn't occur.
And that's hard, because we all want to know. How could we not?
Like most of us, I had a good impression of TSJ's character before the charges were filed. He seems like a nice guy, a hard worker, and a good teammate. But I have to be honest with myself - the impression I have is based on watching him play basketball, on thirdhand message board reports, and on the curated media personality that every high-profile athlete works hard to polish. In other words, I like the guy, but would be seriously kidding myself to feel like I know him.
And yet, despite my best efforts to be impartial, I still want to know whether TSJ is "good" or "bad". I want to know if he "did it" or not. I want concrete information to tell me whether to root for him unequivocally or to write him off entirely. I'm not proud of this inclination, but at our core, morality and the desire to be one of the "good guys" is really what drives us all, and this is no more than an expression of that desire. The fact that I regard almost everyone in the world as striving for good within their own worldview, though I hold that at the core of my identity, helps only a little.
Unfortunately again (as so many things are in this case), I don't hold out much hope that we ever will know what happened. Even if the case turns out to be the thinnest of thin, barring something specifically exonerating, that would only amount to an absence of evidence - not an evidence of absence. On the flip side, if there's enough evidence to lead to some sort of conviction, it will still be natural to question that evidence, or even to go a level deeper and concede the action but wonder about the motivation.
In summary, time - a lot of time - will eventually tell us how we as a society chose to change our response to sexual violence claims in this era. Trying to assess that via what happens to TSJ is short-sighted; not useless, but of the same value as any other single sample. Time - a bit less of it - will also tell us whether TSJ is criminally guilty or not. That is the key question of the day, the one that impacts us as fans and, on some level, the only one that matters to us as participants in a society governed by the rule of law.
No amount of time, in all likelihood, will reveal what really happened in that bar on that day at that hour. The challenge, as I see it, is to make peace with that uncertainty.