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> "The reason for this decision is that the evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question." I

by ivl 7y ago

> "The reason for this decision is that the evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question." I'm not sure I understand what's meant by this. Did the victims testimony change? How does evidence weaken over time?

ceejayoz 7y ago
Memory weakens over time, and the case would've largely hinged on memory-based testimony.
- Shihan 7y ago
  Yeah, but the testimony was surely recorded already some years ago? Or did they just wait.. I doubt so.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    If admissible, there'd still be the opportunity for cross examination. Any competent defense attorney should be able to easily impeach ten year old testimony by eliciting a whole bunch of "I don't remember" responses.
    - walterstucco666 7y ago
      Sweden is not U.S.
  - vertex-four 7y ago
    Sure, except that the victims would be called to the stand and get to answer everything they're asked with "I don't really remember", which isn't amazingly convincing.
  - ptaipale 7y ago
    The defence can still challenge the reliability of the testimony based on the time passed.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    Assange for one haven't been properly questioned, and he could well make relevant claims that are not covered in the old testimonies.
- peterwwillis 7y ago
  This is true, but "people are unable to retrieve roughly 50% of information one hour after encoding" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183265/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183265/). Memory distortion can happen all kinds of ways, but it doesn't take very long at all for it to happen. The idea that after 9 years they would finally decide that maybe the witness's memory might be degraded, that ship has already sailed around the world several times. Prosecutors will wait until the end of time and still trot out memory-based testimony (as long as it still supports their case), so I think the claim about why they dropped the case is specious.
jakelazaroff 7y ago
Eyewitnesses’ memories get worse, records get lost, etc. This is one of the reasons that statutes of limitations exist.
- willis936 7y ago
  And they probably shouldn’t. Statute of limitations should only be to protect against fast changes to the law that apply retroactively.
  - rzwitserloot 7y ago
    The notion that a new law does NOT retroactively apply to acts done before the law was enacted is not called a 'statute of limitations'. A statue of limitations serves a few purposes. 1. At some point closure is better than justice, or at least, that's a theory. Better to get a crime on record because the committer of it confesses to it than not. The idea being that after, say, 10 years, the odds that the criminal would get caught have drifted off to as near to 0 as can be. 2. Records eventually get shredded if you wait long enough; eyewitness recollections in particular slowly mutate into conjecture (whilst said eyewitnesses will believe what they remember is accurate, there's plenty of proof out there that given enough time what they remember is not at all accurate and it gets worse over time). This makes it easier to accidentally convict on flawed evidence, and makes it harder for the defendant to defend themselves.
    - willis936 7y ago
      The only cases I’ve seen it become relevant is when a crime, typically sexual assault, becomes impossible to prosecute. The assumption made is that all evidence becomes irrelevant after x number of years. x happens to be well within a human lifetime and it clearly is not accurate when using 1970s technology, let alone 2010s. There are a myriad of reasons that victims don’t charge crimes that have been committed against them. Its existence points towards having a “legal system” rather than a “justice system”.
    - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
lettergram 7y ago
If I recall the evidence was always pretty weak. I don’t have time to find the news article from back then, but it was “sexual assault” because he didn’t wear a condom and at the time the woman (perhaps plural) didn’t want to really participate. Could be wrong though... Does anyone have some news from back then?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/julian-assange-explainer-819208/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/julian-ass... > Assange, who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used, consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her without her knowledge. > Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep, was in a helpless state. It is an aggravating circumstance that Assange, who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used, still consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her. The sexual act was designed to violate the injured party’s sexual integrity.
  - Nerdfest 7y ago
    There was also some chatter about the woman being a former CIA operative. The whole thing has smelled so bad right from the start.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      There's chatter that the Queen of England is a lizard shapeshifter. The claims that one accuser was a CIA operative appear very, very thin. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/07/rape-claims-julian-assange https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/07/rape-claims-ju... > What has most engaged the conspiracy theorists and Assange's more excitable defenders, however, are a few key incidents in Miss A career, in particular that she is said to have worked in the Swedish embassy in the US, and wrote her university thesis in 2007 on a vision of Cuba after the death of Castro.
trentnix 7y ago
The charge had served its purpose and the evidence was eventually going to actually be scrutinized. It was just lawfare all along.
- toxik 7y ago
  While this is certainly part of the answer, it is not the whole answer. Staying on your ally’s good side is important, but there really seems to be weakened evidence; new hearings have been made, and they _are_ substantially less impactful due to it being ten years ago.
zaroth 7y ago
I don't think there's any reason to believe the prosecutor is going to tell the BBC the full story behind the decision making for dropping the case, versus a sound bite that seems reasonable. If they had obtained internal first-person memos discussion the reasons for dropping the case, then you could probably assume those would be credible.
injb 7y ago
He's now safely in police custody and the US has already revealed its plans to extradite him, so there's no longer any need for the charges in Sweden. That's what's meant by this, imo.
- mtgx 7y ago
  Or they never had any strong charges to begin with and the whole plan was to hand over Assange to the US, just Assange said.
- Jamwinner 7y ago
  Or they never had any strong charges to begin with and the whole plan was to hand over Assange to the US, just Assange said. This is a copy of a dead comment. Not mine.
  - Forbo 7y ago
    You can vouch for dead comments if you believe they are contributing to the conversation. Click on the timestamp to see if the option is available, I'd imagine it is karma dependent.
    - monocasa 7y ago
      I know my vouching ability was taken away for reasons never really clear to me.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
    To hand him over to the US they would, under EU law, need the UK's permission. So it would be harder to hand him over from Sweden than from the UK, and the latter is well-known for being America's lapdog. If the accausation is false, why did they not make it in the UK instead of Sweden and make things easier?
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  Why is he in police custody? Excuse my ignorance, I don't know a lot about him other than he's a popular whistleblower who was involved in WikiLeaks. Is he in police custody for that?
kkarakk 7y ago
He got picked up in a country that the US can extradite from and they would actually have to look at the case now. This thing has been so transparent. Stay safe Snowden and all you other possible whistleblowers/leakers out there! To people downvoting me - check out the vox article on this earlier this year. https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/4/12/18306901/julian-assange-arrest-wikileaks-rape-sweden-embassy https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/4/12/18306901/julian-ass... The women were "vehement" about restarting the case. Reportedly were "willing to do whatever it takes to force case to be re-opened" The statute of limitations is August,2020. But suddenly it doesn't matter according to sweden
gutnor 7y ago
Maybe the victim have moved on. Rape without physical violence like this rely entirely on the victim testimony and even if there is a record and everything that will weaken the case terribly if the victim is no longer on board.
- whamlastxmas 7y ago
  The alleged victims never pressed to have Assange questioned or charged for sexual assault.
geofft 7y ago
Sweden already announced in 2017 they were giving up prosecuting the case because of the futility of proceeding. https://theintercept.com/2017/05/19/sweden-withdraws-arrest-warrant-for-julian-assange-but-he-still-faces-serious-legal-jeopardy/ https://theintercept.com/2017/05/19/sweden-withdraws-arrest-...
philwelch 7y ago
Sometimes a rape victim will just want to move on with her life instead of being unfairly smeared as a CIA puppet by a bunch of neckbeards on the internet.
mikl 7y ago
There was no evidence, just two women accusing him of sexual misconduct (if memory serves, it wasn’t even rape in the classical sense, but Assange not wearing a condom when he’d said he would).
SiempreViernes 7y ago
They had new interviews after reopening the case to check the reliability of the various old testimonies, as well as talking to some new people, and I guess they concluded that the totality of the evidence wasn't as strong. Presumably some people have changed their testimony somewhat. In any case, this was always the most likely outcome: very few sexual assault cases ever make it to court in Sweden.

by ivl 7y ago

ceejayoz 7y ago

Memory weakens over time, and the case would've largely hinged on memory-based testimony.

Shihan 7y ago
Yeah, but the testimony was surely recorded already some years ago? Or did they just wait.. I doubt so.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  If admissible, there'd still be the opportunity for cross examination. Any competent defense attorney should be able to easily impeach ten year old testimony by eliciting a whole bunch of "I don't remember" responses.
  - walterstucco666 7y ago
    Sweden is not U.S.
- vertex-four 7y ago
  Sure, except that the victims would be called to the stand and get to answer everything they're asked with "I don't really remember", which isn't amazingly convincing.
- ptaipale 7y ago
  The defence can still challenge the reliability of the testimony based on the time passed.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  Assange for one haven't been properly questioned, and he could well make relevant claims that are not covered in the old testimonies.
peterwwillis 7y ago
This is true, but "people are unable to retrieve roughly 50% of information one hour after encoding" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183265/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183265/). Memory distortion can happen all kinds of ways, but it doesn't take very long at all for it to happen. The idea that after 9 years they would finally decide that maybe the witness's memory might be degraded, that ship has already sailed around the world several times. Prosecutors will wait until the end of time and still trot out memory-based testimony (as long as it still supports their case), so I think the claim about why they dropped the case is specious.

jakelazaroff 7y ago

Eyewitnesses’ memories get worse, records get lost, etc. This is one of the reasons that statutes of limitations exist.

willis936 7y ago
And they probably shouldn’t. Statute of limitations should only be to protect against fast changes to the law that apply retroactively.
- rzwitserloot 7y ago
  The notion that a new law does NOT retroactively apply to acts done before the law was enacted is not called a 'statute of limitations'. A statue of limitations serves a few purposes. 1. At some point closure is better than justice, or at least, that's a theory. Better to get a crime on record because the committer of it confesses to it than not. The idea being that after, say, 10 years, the odds that the criminal would get caught have drifted off to as near to 0 as can be. 2. Records eventually get shredded if you wait long enough; eyewitness recollections in particular slowly mutate into conjecture (whilst said eyewitnesses will believe what they remember is accurate, there's plenty of proof out there that given enough time what they remember is not at all accurate and it gets worse over time). This makes it easier to accidentally convict on flawed evidence, and makes it harder for the defendant to defend themselves.
  - willis936 7y ago
    The only cases I’ve seen it become relevant is when a crime, typically sexual assault, becomes impossible to prosecute. The assumption made is that all evidence becomes irrelevant after x number of years. x happens to be well within a human lifetime and it clearly is not accurate when using 1970s technology, let alone 2010s. There are a myriad of reasons that victims don’t charge crimes that have been committed against them. Its existence points towards having a “legal system” rather than a “justice system”.
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

lettergram 7y ago

If I recall the evidence was always pretty weak. I don’t have time to find the news article from back then, but it was “sexual assault” because he didn’t wear a condom and at the time the woman (perhaps plural) didn’t want to really participate. Could be wrong though... Does anyone have some news from back then?

ceejayoz 7y ago
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/julian-assange-explainer-819208/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/julian-ass... > Assange, who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used, consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her without her knowledge. > Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep, was in a helpless state. It is an aggravating circumstance that Assange, who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used, still consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her. The sexual act was designed to violate the injured party’s sexual integrity.
- Nerdfest 7y ago
  There was also some chatter about the woman being a former CIA operative. The whole thing has smelled so bad right from the start.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    There's chatter that the Queen of England is a lizard shapeshifter. The claims that one accuser was a CIA operative appear very, very thin. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/07/rape-claims-julian-assange https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/07/rape-claims-ju... > What has most engaged the conspiracy theorists and Assange's more excitable defenders, however, are a few key incidents in Miss A career, in particular that she is said to have worked in the Swedish embassy in the US, and wrote her university thesis in 2007 on a vision of Cuba after the death of Castro.

trentnix 7y ago

The charge had served its purpose and the evidence was eventually going to actually be scrutinized. It was just lawfare all along.

toxik 7y ago
While this is certainly part of the answer, it is not the whole answer. Staying on your ally’s good side is important, but there really seems to be weakened evidence; new hearings have been made, and they _are_ substantially less impactful due to it being ten years ago.

zaroth 7y ago

I don't think there's any reason to believe the prosecutor is going to tell the BBC the full story behind the decision making for dropping the case, versus a sound bite that seems reasonable. If they had obtained internal first-person memos discussion the reasons for dropping the case, then you could probably assume those would be credible.

injb 7y ago

He's now safely in police custody and the US has already revealed its plans to extradite him, so there's no longer any need for the charges in Sweden. That's what's meant by this, imo.

mtgx 7y ago
Or they never had any strong charges to begin with and the whole plan was to hand over Assange to the US, just Assange said.
Jamwinner 7y ago
Or they never had any strong charges to begin with and the whole plan was to hand over Assange to the US, just Assange said. This is a copy of a dead comment. Not mine.
- Forbo 7y ago
  You can vouch for dead comments if you believe they are contributing to the conversation. Click on the timestamp to see if the option is available, I'd imagine it is karma dependent.
  - monocasa 7y ago
    I know my vouching ability was taken away for reasons never really clear to me.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  To hand him over to the US they would, under EU law, need the UK's permission. So it would be harder to hand him over from Sweden than from the UK, and the latter is well-known for being America's lapdog. If the accausation is false, why did they not make it in the UK instead of Sweden and make things easier?
MuffinFlavored 7y ago
Why is he in police custody? Excuse my ignorance, I don't know a lot about him other than he's a popular whistleblower who was involved in WikiLeaks. Is he in police custody for that?

kkarakk 7y ago

He got picked up in a country that the US can extradite from and they would actually have to look at the case now. This thing has been so transparent. Stay safe Snowden and all you other possible whistleblowers/leakers out there! To people downvoting me - check out the vox article on this earlier this year. https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/4/12/18306901/julian-assange-arrest-wikileaks-rape-sweden-embassy https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/4/12/18306901/julian-ass... The women were "vehement" about restarting the case. Reportedly were "willing to do whatever it takes to force case to be re-opened" The statute of limitations is August,2020. But suddenly it doesn't matter according to sweden

gutnor 7y ago

Maybe the victim have moved on. Rape without physical violence like this rely entirely on the victim testimony and even if there is a record and everything that will weaken the case terribly if the victim is no longer on board.

whamlastxmas 7y ago
The alleged victims never pressed to have Assange questioned or charged for sexual assault.

geofft 7y ago

Sweden already announced in 2017 they were giving up prosecuting the case because of the futility of proceeding. https://theintercept.com/2017/05/19/sweden-withdraws-arrest-warrant-for-julian-assange-but-he-still-faces-serious-legal-jeopardy/ https://theintercept.com/2017/05/19/sweden-withdraws-arrest-...

philwelch 7y ago

Sometimes a rape victim will just want to move on with her life instead of being unfairly smeared as a CIA puppet by a bunch of neckbeards on the internet.

mikl 7y ago

There was no evidence, just two women accusing him of sexual misconduct (if memory serves, it wasn’t even rape in the classical sense, but Assange not wearing a condom when he’d said he would).

SiempreViernes 7y ago

They had new interviews after reopening the case to check the reliability of the various old testimonies, as well as talking to some new people, and I guess they concluded that the totality of the evidence wasn't as strong. Presumably some people have changed their testimony somewhat. In any case, this was always the most likely outcome: very few sexual assault cases ever make it to court in Sweden.