That is totally fucked up. But it’s definitely a victory for the “she was drunk” defense.
Background for folks who haven’t been following the case: A woman was escorted to her apartment by two New York City police officers late at night. She was drunk, and they helped her into her building. They left, and then falsified an emergency call to go back into the building; video shows them entering the building three separate times. One stood guard while the other went into the woman’s room. The woman says she woke up to find the officer on top of her; her memory is hazy, but she recalls him raping her. He says they never had sex, even though there are recorded conversations of him telling her, after the fact, that he wore a condom. And then there’s this:
Although the defense never conceded that the two had sex, a central point of argument in the case was whether the woman was too drunk to consent to sex. Under the prosecutors’ theory of rape, they had to prove that the woman was physically unable to consent to sex, meaning that she was either unconscious or unable to speak when she was penetrated.
Defense lawyers pointed to surveillance footage of the woman walking on her own as she entered the building in front of the officers as evidence that she was conscious and able to communicate. They also contrasted what the woman told some friends shortly after the alleged rape — that she thought she was raped — with the certainty that she was expressing on the witness stand. Her spotty recollection of that night, the defense said, was enough to raise reasonable doubt over whether she was raped.
The officer admitted to getting into bed with the woman, who was nearly naked, and “cuddling.” Which is wildly inappropriate in and of itself. I hope she has more success in civil court.