False Rape Claim Leads To 2 Months Jail

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Hampton, Virginia woman who falsely accused a man of raping her -- landing him in prison for four years -- will spend two months in jail.

Elizabeth Paige Coast, 26, will be allowed to serve her sentence on weekends. She came forward in 2012, saying that she lied about Johnathan C. Montgomery raping her. He spent four years in prison over the false claim, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.

Coast told a judge Monday that when she was caught by her mother looking at pornography on the internet, she said she had been sexually assaulted, blamed her neighbor. The lie snowballed from there, she said.
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During Montgomery's case, Coast testified that he molested her in 2000 when he was 14 and she was 10. Montgomery was convicted and sentenced to more than seven years in prison, according to the Washington Post.
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Despite a lack of evidence in the trial, the judge took Coast's word over Montgomery's and sentenced the innocent man.
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The consequences for sending an innocent man to prison for four years include paying $90,000 in restitution along with her jail sentence.'

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He was in jail for 4 years, probably lost everything: family, job, reputation, etc. She gets 2 months and has to pay "restitution". And tell me, really, how does an adult (supposed) getting "caught" by her mother watching porn on-line translate into her thinking she can or should escape her mommy's condemnation by accusing the neighbor of molesting her? Did she think her mommy would believe her porn-watching was caused by her little girl's getting molested? Possibly they were both that ignorant, dunno.

Ms Coast really ought to do at least the same amt. of time her victim did. At least.

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So unbeleivable that a judge can convict with no physical evidence. Makes me sad, angry and fearful for the innocent men who can get trapped like this.

more...

and what about the judge? Shouldn't s/he have any consequences for being a shitty judge. I am so angy at government and public employees who have no fear of being fired. no sense of having to do a good job to get a paycheck. no accountability, act like gods over everyone else's lives...

I bet that judge makes $100K per year.

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Here is a more detailed article on the case:

http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/state-regional/innocence-case-stemmed-from-perjury-not-error/article_f7847128-377e-11e2-b2a7-001a4bcf6878.html

A judge was brought out of retirement to hear the original case in 2008. He said "the girl has no reason to lie" so he found the man to be guilty.

Now, learning that the girl has lied, the judge has "no comment".

from the article:

"This is a much harder problem to prevent and to uncover, in part, because human beings are poor lie detectors," said Steven A. Drizin, legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law.

I say bullshit!! it's simple, you don't send people away like this without physical evidence.

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I couldn't agree more, Kris.

The fact that a person can be convicted of a charge based solely on the testimony of another person is extremely disconcerting. He-said, she-said obviously does not meet the "clear and convincing" standard of evidence. Hence, this judge was not following the law, and he should be charged with breaking it.

Feminists get upset whenever a man accused of sexual assault walks free. They are truly convinced that women and girls never lie about such a thing. It's hard to believe such a ludicrous claim, when one could put together a novel full of one page articles dealing with instances of false accusations of rape.

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If tried accurately and fairly, rape and sexual assault cases should be difficulty cases to prove resulting in occasionally guilty people deemed innocent (at least that's how it should be under "innocent until proven guilty"). It is just the nature of the crime being personal and often no witnesses. In cases of date rape, often the majority of the physical contact is consensual and becomes one big "he said, she said".

Any logical person should be able to see this. I don't know what has happened, but we have become obsessed with rape and zero tolerance to the extreme that it is now guilty until proven innocent and we error on the side of putting innocent people in jail.

We need to accept that some guilty people will go free under a fair system, but it is better than ruining the lives of innocent people.

It is also angering that people that are part of "the system" are above the law, Xtrnl is correct when he says the judge broke the law by not appplying the law as written. It is professional negligence. I wish the judge could be punished, but unfortunately I don't think our system allows for it. I know several cases where cops, public defenders and judges broke the law by way of professional negligence.

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Next time she does it, will the judge permit the jury to be told about this conviction for false accusation? Or will they not be told, out of some preposterous notion of "protecting the victim"?

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"It is just the nature of the crime being personal and often no witnesses. "
Meh - you could say the same about burglary, which by its nature is also usually perpetrated in secret. If anything, rape by its nature always has at least one witness (except in cases where the victim is passed out).

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